Author: Anonymous
Source: free-articles

September 10, 2004 — Premier Assistive Technology announces the world’s most accessible CD / DVD creation software.

Premier Assistive Technology, a world leader in assistive software for reading and writing, announces the release of its new, dvd, Premier CD/DVD Creator, the world’s most accessible CD / DVD creation software.

Steve, dvd, Timmer, Chairman highlights โ€œWhile Premier CD/DVD creator appears to be like many, dvd, other CD burning software, if you, dvd, use screen reading software, you will be able to really HEAR the difference immediately!!. This is the first CD/DVD burning software that is designed to work with a screen reader and is, dvd, now the most Section 508-compliant CD burning software in the market.โ€

Ken Grisham, President, further explains โ€œFor many visually impaired users, while individual โ€œscreensโ€ may be accessible, once you select a button or other function, the user often loses tracking of the progress or status of a task because the screen reader cannot tell them what is happening. Premier CD Creator takes care of all of that. With the new Premier Assistive CD/DVD burning software, you always know what it is doing as it is doing it. No more guess work. The best part is there, dvd, is nothing special you need to do to get it to work with your screen reader! If you have a screen reader running, the Premier CD/DVD software will automatically detect it, and send information through your screen reader.โ€

Mr. Timmer further explains that โ€œThe Premier CD/DVD, dvd, Creator software package contains four unique tools. It comes with an Audio Ripper, Audio CD Burner, Data CD creator and Data DVD Burner. Each one of these products is independent of the version of screen reader being used. They do not require any Script files or Set Files. You never have to worry about what version of the screen reader you have. Just install it and use it. This is a must, dvd, for visually impaired computer users.โ€

Features of the Premier CD/DVD Creator

Audio Grabber

โ€ขRip audio directly into the output file type without going through a conversion process, keeping the fidelity as close to the original as possible.

โ€ขSupports Wave, MP3, OGG and WMA file types

โ€ขInternet support. The built-in internet support will automatically retrieve album information.

โ€ขGrab Scratched, dvd, CD Disk Options

โ€ขAccessible audio player

Audio CD Writer

โ€ขCreate Audio CD’s from multiple file formats, Including Wave, MP3 and WMA file types

โ€ขFully accessible interface

โ€ขMove Tracks before they are,, dvd, dvd, burned

โ€ขWorks with Almost every CDRW drive built after 1998.

CD/DVD Data Writer

โ€ขSupports, dvd, Multi Session

โ€ขAuto detects all Write able Drives on your computer

โ€ขWrite Files to a CD Image

โ€ขCreate CD’s From Images

โ€ขEasily add folders and files to the image with a single key stroke

โ€ขSupports CDR, CDRW,, dvd, DVDR, and DVDRW.

โ€ขWorks with both internal, SCSI and USB Drives

The price of the new CD/DVD Creator is $59.95 for the world’s most accessible CD burning Software!

For more information about, dvd, this and our other, dvd, products, order online at

www.readingmadeeasy.com,, dvd, email us at Info@readingmadeeasy.com or call us at 517-668-8188 or 815-722-5961.

Recently, attention returned to concern about
the role of accessibility in the U.S. government transparency movement. While gov website operators might well deserve a good grade for effort, most sites have obvious failings that experts and users repeatedly point out. In this post, I show some of my personal problems and suggest corrective actions. Visually impaired people can hear a realistic experience with a capable, free screen reader to better understand how websites respond to an intermediate level visually impaired, task oriented user. Sighted readers and accessibility specialists are urged to consider alternatives to reduce causes for stumbling around.

Hear me Stumble Recording

Download MP3 recording (38 minutes, 17 MB) trying tasks at whitehouse, disability, data, and recovery .gov. Starting with some typical tasks, I get into each website far enough to identify and stumble over some problem, then later come back and analyze the cause in both the website and my own practice, written up below. These little experiments are certainly not definitive because someone more experienced with the website might take a very different route or the proper screen reader action just might not occur to me at the moment. So, listen if you’re patient and interested to these 4 segments and follow along in your browser to perhaps grok what I’m missing in the recording.

For the record, I was using Windows XP, Firefox 3.5, NVDA RC 09, and PlexTalk Pocket as recorder.

The BLUF — great availability of useful information but fall short of
excellence in usability

BLUF=bottom line Up front

The Obama administration has unleashed an enormous flow of energy and
information for citizens to use for their personal lives, political causes, and
general improvement of society. I really appreciate the nuggets of
explanations dispensed in RSs feeds and twitter streams, amplified by social
media communicators interested in technology and organizations with a special
thread of accessibility. I offer these stumbles as the only feedback I can
provide, hoping my analyses eventually reach into the administration and d.c.
government apparatus. My stumbles are not flat on my face, fallen and cannot
get up, but rather trips over seed bumps, unnecessary traversals around hazy
obstacles, and stops to reconsider the surroundings to decide my next safe
steps. Just like real physical life, these stumbles absorb way too much energy,
often discouraging me from completing a task. Informed by my own experience
building interfaces, databases, and websites plus software engineering methods
of testing, use cases, complexity measures, and design exploration, I truly
believe each stumble indicates a serious design flaw. The good news is that
while my stumbles may partially track with vision loss and continuing learning the rules of accessibility and assistive technology,
of the ‘curb cut’ principle suggest corrections will smooth the
way for other, abled users who are also troubled with usability difficulties
they cannot understand without the accessibility and usability framework.

Summary of my stumbles on typical .gov tasks

1. Website: whitehouse.gov
   
   Task: Find a recent blog post received by RSS
   
   : stumble: Post was not in recent list, didn’t know how to use archives, didn’t trust search
   
   Follow up: Navigated around November archive, eventually found links to previous articles
   
   Suggestions: Factor archives, Use landmark pattern for list sections
   
   Comments: Now has a text only version but similar navigation problems
   
   Grade: C. Text Only site isn’t much of an accessibility improvement, please work on organizing this mass of information. RSS feeds more useful than website. Also, use your clout to force social media services to become accessible, too.

2. Website: Disability.gov
   
   Task: Discover information about public transportation in local community
   
   : stumble: Found ” Transportation” main topic but could not reach specific information
   
   Follow up: Read “how to use” and eventually figured out info organized by state
   
   Suggestions: “See sidebar” isn’t sufficient so data needs better organization
   
   Comments: Site content is effectively transmitted by RSS and Twitter. good survey can help improve site
   
   Grade B: Good process, but not yet organized properly or communicating website use

3. Website: data.gov
   
   Task: Trial download of a data set using search form
   
   : stumble: Very hard to understand search form components distracting headings and social media,
   
   Follow up: Eventually got search results, but unsatisfactorily
   
   Suggestions: Start over
   
   Comments: Only for wonks on salary, not advised for citizens
   
   Grade: Incomplete, do over, or adapt expensive recovery.gov interface and data management

4. Website: Recovery.gov
   
   Task: Find recovery funding projects in Arizona
   
   : stumble: Locating form for query and then results
   
   Follow up: Found the form under non descriptive heading, easily set query, drilled down past top of page to text version of results table
   
   Suggestions: Make the “Track the money” foremost part of page, submerging feature awards and website data
   
   Comments: $10M+ project needs more usability and accessibility input

Individual Website Analyses

whitehouse.gov — this National Landmark needs ARIA landmarks

I don’t visit this site often but I do read occasional blog and press briefings in my Levelstar Icon RSS client. One article caught my attention, about encouraging Middle Eastern girls, and seemed worth a tweet to my followers with similar interests. But I needed a good web address so set off to navigate myself through the site.

I was surprised to find a link to an “accessible” version, not sure what that mean. It turns out to be “text only” which doesn’t mean much to me if the navigation is the same as a screen reader is abstracting from text decorations anyway. Hence, I was faced with a branching decision with no criteria for which branch to take, somewhat confusing.

As usual to refresh or familiarize myself, I take a “heading tour” to learn the main sections of the site and target the section for my task. Soon, I find the “blog” section but the article list is mainly on President Obama’s Asian trip, not reaching back as far as the article I wanted was a few days old. I declared a “Stumble” by not knowing how to use the archives, needing to train myself and wander a bit more off recording.

Following up later, I found myself confused about the organization of past material. I took the November link but ended up in more heaps of videos, blog posts, briefings, etc. Eventually, I got to blog article lists and found the web construct that linked to past articles, looks like “previous 1 2…. next”.

Answer: DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano blog post on ‘Meeting female students in Abu Dhabi’

To analyze a bit further, let’s separate accessibility from usability. This task seemed to take a little more effort than needed, because I stumbled around learning the archive information architecture and list results patterns. Nothing in the screen reader or the HTML seemed problematic. Headings helped, not hindered. Perhaps this is a stubble that can only be prevented by more practice, but it’s possible we have a jumble of website content that could be factored to make paths easier to follow.

Traversing a list divided into sections is a common pattern, often intermixed with links to articles and media. The list of blog posts was indeed an HTML list that could be followed by items, but got strange at the end the next-previous section is labeled with something like LSQUO, which makes no sense in a screen reader. This construct is also easy to miss using links rather than items. Could this pattern be

standardized (see below)?

Duh, why didn’t I just use the website Search? Unfortunately, I have a deeply ingrained mistrust of site searches, mainly from getting gobs of results that don’t help. Like, how would I know the rules for making a good search query? Is it “Napolitano Abu Dhabi” with quotes where, and default being conjunction? And these words are not the easiest names to type correctly, so is there spelling correction? Well, it turned out “Napolitano” (2nd try) turned up the article about 4 results down but with the same search result bar construct. OK, I’m convinced to bring Search back into my website explorer toolkit. and will work to overcome bad experiences from past generations of website searches.

Overall, I grade myself as a B with my improving mental map of the site, but definitely prefer using the content by RSS feed, i.e. getting blog and briefings spoken from mobile device. Sorry, but whitehouse.gov still gets a C in my ratings, mostly from the need to have a stellar, near perfect website to model for not only .gov but also community, state gov, professional associations, universities, etc. Only 10 months into the website, the amount of content, useful individually, may grow into a giant heap of links that drive citizens away. Regarding accessibility, I simply don’t see the rationale for the text only site and recommend looking ahead to using better overall structure with landmarks (see below).

Disability.gov is very useful but maybe convoluted?

Disability.gov is a regular in both my RSS feed list and Twitter tweetroll. The site has a general framework of disability needs and resources. New resources and classes of resources per day of the week are routinely broadcast. I have a warm feeling when I see these, like somebody is actually looking out for me in that great USG bureaucracy.

For some local surveys, I anticipate needing data and examples of regional transportation systems supported by public and disabled communities. Ok, I know I’m delusional that a conservative wealthy retirement oriented city will even consider such a thing as services for economic, environmental, or social reasons. But, hey, there’s a sliver of hope. Indeed, this is a typical way the USG can foster citizen innovation through better and more transparent data.

The website navigation sidebar is straightforward with tasks and information topics. In the recorded session, I picked Transportation and then got stuck. I had a page headed Transportation, nice, with topic overview, but no real information, just a use the sidebar. Ok, but how? why? After, in my follow up, I figured out that information was organized by state, which makes sense, but wasn’t explicit when I stumbled.

Choosing Arizona from the state list, I found a number of resources, none of which lead directly to the Tri-city Prescott area. Tucson was well represented, but I knew that, been there, seen the buses, and vision services. Overall, I found this site satisfactory, with an encouraging amount of information, but I’m still somewhat befuddled about the relationship between topics and sidebar and details.

At one point, I was presented with a survey. Sure, I’ll give you feedback, thanks for asking. As usual, I didn’t know how long the survey would take, like how many questions. First accessibility glitch was that required fields were designated by some symbol not read by a screen reader in normal mode, probably an asterisk *. That meant I had to switch into listening more punctuation in the screen reader or just answer all questions. Silly, why not say REQUIRED, rather than use a little symbol. Next, I couldn’t figure out the form of answers, which turned out to be radio buttons labeled 1 to 10 and NA. Ok, that’s a lot of tabbing but not overwhelming, as I whizzed through the questions. Then, came a switch to some combo boxes for answers. Annoying, suggesting the survey wasn’t vetted by many people using screen readers, but not really too bad. Do other gov sites have comparable surveys? They should.

Overall, I rate myself and disability.gov with a B. I need more practice, and the website developers need more feedback. But really, I know they’re trying, and somebody will likely read this blog. Good job, and I truly appreciate the resources, framework, and the RSS and tweets.

data.gov for wonks, not citizens

Oh, my, this site is annoying. The headings are sparse and inappropriate. There’s a sideline off to social media sites that aren’t accessible and in the way. A link says “Click here” which indicates deprecated thinking and cluelessness about hyperlinking.

The main purpose of this site is a distribution point for datasets collected from various government agencies distributed in XML, CSV, and other formats usable in spreadsheets and statistical analyzers. Great, but the form is a mess.

I tried to query fo ex ampler datasets, any topic, from National Science Foundation. The agency list is long, painfully, with check boxes. That’s about 40 tab or next line key strokes to get to NSF. Then I found the Submit button. Not so good, which I learned by reading “No search results” at the bottom of the page! Most important effect of a search is to know if it succeeded, produces results, geez! What did I do wrong? Do I need to select format and make an explicit query? Ok, tried that with term “computers”, All Categories, All Agencies. Got 2 results this time, both on illegal exports, spooky and uninteresting.

Argh, I gave up. I’m sure this site will eventually be useful for policy wonks willing to train and practice, but I, an ordinary citizen with a research background, didn’t feel like I could get much out of here. Sadly, the form’s long list of check box agency names uncoordinated and un searchable was painful. But worse was not getting direct feedback about number of or absence of search results combined with uncertainty about the query actually executed. I had little confidence in either the site or myself as searcher, but, luckily, I don’t forecast any personal need for data.gov. Sayonara.

So, I rate this sucker a big Incomplete with good intents but pretty clueless about accessibility and usability. Hey, download NVDA and try this out yourselves, data.gov designers. There are lots of ways to design forms and search results. Back to the design stage, please Now that recovery.gov is launched at great expense, perhaps some of the interface and data management functionality can be used to refresh data.gov, but who am I to reorganize .gov ..

Recovery.gov Usable but Cluttered

Well, it wasn’t fun but I can use this website. The big problem is clutter. I go here to “Track the Money” and cannot find the form to do so. Uh, oh. Plenty of stuff about the site itself, some of the big featured expenditures, but where’s the form. Oh, there it is, under heading “Data, Data, and More Data”, cute but not obvious. This time, I decided to drill down on National Science Foundation awards in Arizona. Unlike data.gov, the agency selection was single choice reached by the convention of first letter, N, and a few key strokes to make the selection. All right, but now what?

So, the search seems successful yielding another page with lots of accessibility and agency clutter at the top I had to listen through. Back and forth a bit, I found the link to text presentation of the data, accompanied with a blue map.

Looking for text data, same boring junk at the top then up comes the table of rows of actual data. It’s hard to navigate by row and column, some columns have no real information, like I know I asked for ” National Science Foundation”, read in every row. But painfully working row by row I can find an interesting item like $80K created .17 job –wow! Indeed, the award details is there and readable and interesting.

The big problem with this iteration of Recovery.gov is that the website is in the way. I definitely do not plan to post anything on MySpace social media service but I have to listen to or bypass this silly text and thought too often to learn what’s on a page. It just seems goofy to send a Recovery dataset to a “friend” on a social network, although it could be relevant in a mature Twitter thread. If the gov goal is to incorporate social media into its normal workflow, then there are big questions of stability, accessibility, and much more of these profit-seeking, ad-driven enterprises.

I give myself an A for conquering this site, although I’m still stumbling around tables of data. Recovery.gov gets a B for assembling this information in readable form, although not in dataset forms as relative to missions like data.gov. In other words, it looks like a lot of page scraping to identify trends. My suggestion is simple: get the “Track the money” form front and center and press the website, social media, and features into the background. Overall, better than I expected, although the recording and further use leave a feeling of irritation, like having to sweep off a desk of junk to find a phone to get the information needed. Like, just give me control and let me track the money myself. I’ll be back.

General Suggestions for Improvement

It’s Time to Bring Landmarks to .gov

I’m getting spoiled by really accessible websites like AccessibleTwitter and BookShare that use the ARIA landmark feature to structure pages and search results. For example, the .gov sites could be separated into (1) agency logo and babble, (2) navigation, (3) main content, (4) reference to other gov sites and external services. Bookshare shows how to organize search results integrated with the next-previous results page bar.

Indeed, this brings up the issue of consistency among .gov websites, which could be kind of nice and helpful. Not meaning to squelch individuality of agencies or artistic license or experimentation with diversity, but a citizen wanting a simple answer to an information question isn’t as impressed with decorations as with ease of use, especially on return visits. And visually impaired users especially appreciate predictability, a trait shared with most human beings, when confronted with pure tasks. With all due respect,most visits to gov websites are not for tours through marble halls or to expand social networks to include anonymous civil servants, but rather to get a piece of info as fast and readable as possible.

Should gov sites link to inaccessible social web services? NO!

All gov 2.0 buzz seems to involve social media, as in Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes Flickr and MySpace. But the accessibility of most of these sites is way below that of the .gov sites. Can a website assert it is accessible if it links to patently inaccessible services? I think not. The good news is the movement toward alternatives like Accessible Twitter and accessible versions of YouTube. These should be mentioned in accessibility statements. Or, better yet, no links to unless these billion-dollar enterprises raise their accessibility levels to the acceptable status demonstrate by these alternatives. Perhaps there should be a warning label on sites known to be poorly designed or not for the newbie. The US government uses its clout for diversity, why not also for accessibility?

After spending several hours on these websites, knowing a lot myself about social media, the focus on social stuff seems rather silly considering the weight of the data involved. Am I, is anybody, going to post a link on MySpace or Facebook of a significant query and insight? I doubt it. Rather, these sites give an impression of trying to be oh, so cool, gotta get our stuff out to the fan pages on Facebook. Gimme a break. From a screen reader user, this is just pure clutter in the way of your main mission, stuff I have to listen to redundantly and irrelatively. Try it yourself and determine what value is really added from social media service references so prominently in users’ faces/ears. Even scarier, if gov agencies are adopting these inaccessible, unstable services for actual business, the traditional discrimination policies must come into play, as well as questions about judgement. For example, Twitter is a great news medium, but its rules can, and do, change at any moment.

How about a gov BEST and WORST practices competition?

I personally don’t get any value, but rather irritation, from the skip links and text size adjustments. First, the skip links are often just plain wrong, often enough to mistrust and not worth a false link and recovery. Text size adjustments are relevant to those who need large fonts not supplied by browser adjustments. Pages with good headings and landmarks don’t require skip links. Pages that aren’t crowded with text don’t need on-page text size adjustments.. To me, these are accessibility decorations that amount to screen reader noise. It’s rather jarring to find major inconsistencies among gov websites, e.g. text-only at whitehouse.gov but not others, different HTML form patterns, and greatly varying degrees of conventional accessibility.

As complained about in the whitehouse.gov blog lists, there’s a common pattern that might be nicely standardized. A list of, say 100, items is divided into sections with a bar of links: previous, 1, 2, … next. If you’re drilling down through several pages of results, getting easily into this bar is important. A landmark is a natural way of identifying results.

Does every search form have to be constructed differently? Above tasks required me to figure out the subdivisions of forms (usually not labeled) and then the form elements. There’s probably a special class of gov site users who can whack their way through a form down to a data set in no time. But the ordinary citizen has to struggle through understanding then mastering the form, finding results, and interpreting answers, which can take hours. How about an award for government service by providing a superior form that other sites can emulate? And give those web designers a bonus or promotion, too!

Sum up, getting better? Yes or No?

Overall, although using these sites made me rather grumpy, the trend is toward better accessibility, more usability, and genuine transformation of how citizens use USG data. My wishes are:

1. Work on clutter and removal and helping users find direct paths to important data, i.e. work on the most significant use cases.
2. Designers and maintainers of these website should listen to recorded TTS of their pages and contents for several hours to really appreciate the clutter effect of featuritis, accessibility decorations, and social media silliness.
3. Cut down on the social media crap and rethink what really matters. Yes, these services are useful but really, do they deserve so much prominence? Will they still be here 3 years from now?
   It just seems incongruous to think of sharing recovery datasets with ad-hungry “friend” oriented services. Most serious is the hypocrisy of declaring accessibility on a gov website when these lucrative services so actively ignore accessibility and force visually impaired service users to volunteer developed accessible alternatives.

4. The most important use of this data is not visible to most citizens. Namely, RSS feeds are the best way for someone to monitor these sites, scanning article titles, downloaded to a mobile device, with rare visits to actual websites. How can the USG foster better offline use of important government developments?
5. Is there a “curb cut” effect from feedback like this? I hope so, that fixing stumbles precipitated by accessibility bumps and usability gaps will help everybody.
6. Finally, a cautionary warning I just heard from my CNN news feed. Many recovery awards seem to have fallen into fallacious congressional districts, making the whole record keeping of job data questionable. Apparently citizens reporting award data don’t know what congressional district they belong to (I’m AZ ONE, I think, maybe). Now, data base developers and instructors know, there’s a TRIGGER for that. Zip codes usually map to unique districts but that might not be a requirement or implemented yet. Just saying.

Related Posts

• Obama whitehouse.gov almost on target, January 2009

• Hear me Stumble around whitehouse, data, and recovery gov, May 31 2009 with recording
• Universally Designed from Knowbility.net comments on recovery.gov

• Series of gov web website evaluations from Jim Thatcher

• Let’s all use our headings, My Accessibility Check

• Accessible Twitter, alternative interface,
  Easy Youtube, alternative interface,
  Accessible Youtube interface,
  mobile, easier Twitter interface,
  simpler, mobile Facebook interface

• Marco’s firefox accessibility blog tips on ARIA landmarks

• AYWC post “Are missing, muddled use cases the culprit for accessibility?”

Recently, I have been playing around with Word 2003 and Acrobat Pro 8 in preparation for a course I am teaching on PDF Accessibility. I decided to experiment with bulleted and numbered lists to see what kind of results I would obtain using various options that are available for these formats and the results were quite disappointing, at least from my perspective.

With regard to web accessibility, the basic lesson that we try to teach is to use the appropriate structure or format for the content. Furthermore, if you don’t like the look of the default appearance of that structure, use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to change the appearance to something that you prefer. Underneath the visual appearance, the structure remains the same, it is just the look that changed.

My assumption (and perhaps that’s where I went wrong) was that the same principles apply to Word and PDFs: select the right structure for the content and change the style to meet your design needs. Although I haven’t found any issues with headings in Word and PDFs, lists are different beasts.

As far as I am concerned, the basic principles should be the same. The first is to use numbered lists where order or importance is significant and bulleted lists where order or importance is not significant. The second principle is that it shouldn’t matter what bullet character or bullet image or numbering style is used, the result should be the same: all bullet characters and images should be treated equally as bullets and numbering styles should all be considered to be a numerical sequence. Unfortunately, the second principle doesn’t seem to be supported by Word and PDFs.

Exactly where the problem is, I don’t know—it could be Word or Acrobat or both—nevertheless, the problem exists and, in my opinion, should be fixed as it could be a source of confusion for screen reader users (my limited experience has been only with JAWS).

The other aspect of this problem is that it is not the visual aspect of styled lists that is the problem, the problem is either or both of the PDF and JAWS. The basic premise of accessibility (web and PDF) is that everyone has equal access to the information but some of the list styles creates a hinderance for those who are using screen reader software. If the screen reader software is simply reading the content supplied to it from the PDF, then the PDF creation process needs to be fixed.

Lists Read by JAWS

When lists are encountered in a PDF by a JAWS user, JAWS states List of three items (or whatever the number of items happens to be). After reading out the content of the last list item, JAWS states List End.

As examples of lists, the two following lists were tested in JAWS.

• cookies
• milk
• bread

and

1. cookies
2. milk
3. bread
4. eggs
5. apples

Problems with Bulleted List Styles

The default bullet (●, solid circle) works out perfectly fine. When a list has been created in Word with this default style of bullet, the Word document has been converted to a PDF and read out by JAWS, each bullet item is preceded by an announcement of bullet before the list item text is read. Using the above list, JAWS read list of three items bullet cookie bullet milk bullet bread list end.

However, if you change the bullet character to the disc (○, open circle), each list item is preceded by an announcement of oh. Using a solid square as the bullet character causes JAWS to say filled square, using the diamond character causes JAWS to say black diamond suit and using the cloverleaf character might make you think that JAWS would say black club suit but in fact, nothing is said about the bullet character, only the list text content is read with no indication that it is part of a new list item.

Therefore, a bulleted list is not read as bullet followed by the list item text content but instead, the description of the bullet character is spoken and when the character is not known by JAWS, nothing is spoken. Although JAWS does announce the number of items in the list, it might be confusing for screen reader users to hear different bullet character descriptions in different documents or worse, not hearing a bullet character at all thereby leaving the screen reader user wondering where the divisions between the list items exist.

Problems with Numbered List Styles

The default style for numbered lists is to have each list item preceded by a number followed by a period such as 1. or 2. or 3.. When JAWS reads the list items in a numbered list that has been styled using the default numbering style, JAWS reads one, two three and so on. Using the example list above, JAWS reads list of five items one cookies two milk three bread four eggs five apples list end.

There also isn’t a problem when alphabetic characters are used such as a., b., c.. (It doesn’t matter to JAWS whether the alphabetic characters are upper- or lowercase, the characters are read the same way.) Again, using the same list, JAWS would read list of five items a cookies b milk c break d eggs e apples list end.

However, if Roman numerals are used, then JAWS reads the numbers strangely. Using the above list styled with Roman numerals (again, it doesn’t matter if they are in upper- or lowercase Roman numerals), JAWS reads list of five items i cookes two milk three break i v eggs v apples list end. In other words, i is read as the letter i not as the number one and iv and v are read as letters too but ii and iii are read as numerals 2 and 3. It is my opinion that Roman numerals should be read as the numbers they represent, not as the letters that are used to create the Roman numerals, and certainly not as a mixture of the two methods.

The situation gets more complex when you create custom numbering styles such as Item 1 or even as simple as (1). In the second example, it is read out as left parens one right parens and the first example is read as item one. While it does make sense that certain text surrounding the numeral be read if you highly modify the numbering style, the second example does seem to be a bit of overkill in terms of JAWS response. Perhaps the best advice to give, with regard to numbering styles and these customization options, is not to use them if you do not wish to confuse the screen reader users that read your PDFs.

Problems with Images as Bullets

Using an image as a bullet character should be no different than using another font character as a bullet character in that they should all be read out by JAWS as bullet. Unfortunately, the situation is worse than alternate bullet characters and I believe that the source of the problem is Word and/or Acrobat.

I tried replacing the bullet character twice with two different bullet images and two different results occured.

Using one of the supplied images (one that is installed with Word) as the bullet character, the resulting PDF had a problem with this from an accessibility perspective. After running the Accessibility Checker against the PDF, the checker flagged the images as images without alternative text. It is my opinion that the images should be considered bullets, not like other images that you might insert into a document (such as photographs or charts). If there is a need for alternative text, then Word should automatically assign bullet as the alternative text. Furthermore, I tried to manually edit the PDF and assign the images with alternative text but JAWS did not read the alternative text and the bullet images remained an accessibility checker issue.

Using an image I created (a small one that should have been suitable as a bullet image) as the bullet character, the PDF had 2 problems with this from both accessibility and usability perspectives. Like the bullet image problem above, the accessibility checker in Acrobat wanted alternative text for the image. A worse problem occurred as well which I can only attribute to the conversion of the Word document to the PDF. For some reason, the image was ignored as a bullet image and the PDF was marked up in such a way that the first letter of the list item text became the bullet character and the rest of the list item content missed that letter. Using the first list example above, cookies became c ookies, milk became m ilk, and bread became b read. Why this would happen with my created bullet image and not with a Word-supplied bullet image, I don’t know but I created the PDF a couple of times and the results were the same. I haven’t tried any other images since then.

Conclusion

Word users should be able to use different list style options and know that the PDFs they create from them will be as usable by screen-reader users as sighted readers. This means that, for bulleted lists, it shouldn’t matter what bullet character has been chosen, the screen reader software should simply announce bullet when a new list item has been encountered. Along the same lines, bullet images should receive the same treatment and not require alternative text (or as a compromise, bullet should be automatically be assigned as the alternative text).

Numbered bullet styles work fine when the Arabic numeral or letter (in either case, followed only by a period) are used as the numbering style. Word should be fixed so that Roman numerals be considered to be the same as Arabic numerals and read out as such. However, custom numbering should be read out as it has been formed and anyone who wishes to avoid any accessibility issues may wish to avoid using custom numbering styles.

Google Calendar is a robust tool for managing and sharing events.  It’s completely free, and anyone who can copy and paste can create an account and drop an embedded calendar on to their site within a few short minutes.  With these advantages, it’s no surprise Google Calendar has quickly become the leading online events calendar publishing tool.

It might not be the right option for you, however, depending on your site’s intended audience and purpose.

There are three major disadvantages to using Google Calendar to publish your online events calendar:  search engine optmization issues, appearance considerations, and accessibility problems.

Google Calendar and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do you get more people to come to your site?  If you find yourself asking that question often, Google Calendar is probably not for you.  The best, most tried and true method for attracting users to your website is to provide them with relevant, high quality content, and lots of it.  If you are slogging away, building a reputation for your blog or online community, inputting all of your events into Google Calendar and publishing them on Google’s servers is a huge step backward.

If you use a PHP-based calendar hosted on your own site, users who search for keywords and phrases contained within one of your calendar entries will find their way directly to your site.  If  your site is a good resource for this type of information, these visitors will come back.  If you are in the business of selling advertising on your site or use your website to raise awareness of your organization, product or company, more visitors improves your bottom line.

If you use a Google Calendar, users who search for these same keywords and phrases may be directed to other sites which aggregate Google Calendar feeds, to your stand-alone calendar at Google, or never find your events at all.

SEO considerations should never drive content.   However,  the way that content is presented and how it is stored should always be done with an eye toward how you expect your users to discover it.  Simply dropping an embedded Google Calendar into your website works great for a well-established site with little competition, and/or in a situation where spreading the word about individual events is more important than sending people to your site, specifically.   (Like, say,  the official website of a city.)

If you depend on search engine traffic to build your readership, look for a calendar solution that is hosted on your own site, preferably within your existing content management system.

Google Calendar Appearance Customization Issues

Google Calendar’s default design style is nice enough, but can’t be customized beyond a few very minor tweaks.  If you design or develop sites  for other people, chances are they won’t like to hear that.  This is the default look for an embedded calendar (sized down a bit):

As you can see, it’s nice enough.  The rounded corners and blue color scheme, however, are not optional.  We also have no control over fonts and spacing.

Here it is again in “Agenda”  view.

Google allows a few minor customizations, such as changing the background color at the top, adding an outside border, toggling on and off some of the labels and tabs, and resizing the whole calendar.

If your site design is harmonious with Google’s, this may all work out just fine.  However, if you use a warm color palette or a very different style of typography it may stick out like  a sore thumb.  If your client insists on a specific style guide, an embedded Google Calendar may not work for you at all.

Google Calendar and Accessibility

As of this writing Google does not appear to have written a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) for Google Calendar. This is a shame, because the VPAT authoring process would doubtless highlight a few serious accessibility concerns with this often-used product.

Google has made some inroads into the development of decent alternatives for the visually impaired, for those who have their own Google Calendar accounts and are logged in to the system.  For example, this view allows a user to read their calendar in a screen reader friendly simple XHTML format.   A screenshot for those of you who don’t have Google Calendar accounts:

Of course, this view doesn’t include all of the bells and whistles.  To provide a more advanced experience for the visually appeared, Google has developed an ARIA-enhanced version of Google Calendar.

Once again, in order to access these features a user must have their own Google Calendar account and be logged in.  In other words, if you are using Google Calendar to publish an events calendar to your website, the casual visitor will not have access to these features.

Embedded calendars (the kind you copy and paste into your site) use iframes, which are not accessible to many screen readers.  To work around this, it is possible to use the calendar’s RSS feed to publish a text-only version of the calendar.  In order to do so, however,  you need to do some customizations to the feed in order to get it to publish in the correct chronological order, rather than by date of event publication.  This post at “Helen’s Nerdy Blog” has some great step by step instructions, but you have to understand how to draft the necessary code to get it to work, and you have to be comfortable using an outside feed generation service.  All of this amounts to a lot of extra work for what should be a simple calendar sharing option.

Given all of these limitations you might be surprised to read that I have still utilized Google Calendar in my site designs, and would do so again given the right set of circumstances.  Is Google Calendar right for your site?  It depends.  Take into account the SEO downside, lack of customization options, and accessibility problems and weigh these factors against the product’s popularity, ease of use, and well thought out features (such as a robust repeating events function) and choose wisely.

This post tells a story of how the NVDA Screen Reader helped a person with vision loss solve a former employment situation puzzle. Way to go, grandpa Dave, and thanks for permission to reprint from the NVDA discussion list on freelists.org.

Grandpa Dave’s Story

From: Dave Mack
To: nvda

Date: Oct 29

Subj: [nvda] Just sharing a feel good experience with NVDA
Hi, again, folks, Grandpa Dave in California, here -
I have hesitated sharing a recent experience I had using NVDA because I know this list is primarily for purposes of reporting bugs and fixes using NVDA. However, since this is the first community of blind and visually-impaired users I have joined since losing my ability to read the screen visually, I have decided to go ahead and share this feel-good experience where my vision loss has turned out to be an asset for a group of sighted folks. A while ago, a list member shared their experience helping a sighted friend whose monitor had gone blank by fixing the problem using NVDA on a pen drive so I decided to go ahead and share this experience as well – though not involving a pen drive but most definitely involving my NVDA screen reader.

Well, I just had a great experience using NVDA to help some sighted folks where I used to work and where I retired from ten years ago. I got a phone call from the current president of the local Federal labor union I belonged to and she explained that the new union treasurer was having a problem updating their large membership database with changes in the union’s payroll deductions that they needed to forward to the agency’s central payroll for processing. She said they had been working off-and-on for almost three weeks and no one could resolve the problem even though they were following the payroll change instructions I had left on the computer back in the days I had written their database as an amateur programmer. I was shocked to hear they were still using my membership database program as I had written it almost three decades ago! I told her I didn’t remember much abouthe dBase programming language but I asked her to email me the original instructions I had left on the computer and a copy of the input commands they were keying into the computer. I told her I was now visually impaired, but was learning to use the NVDA screen reader and would do my best to help. She said even several of the Agency’s programmers were
stumped but they did not know the dBase program language.

A half hour later I received two email attachments, one containing my thirty-year-old instructions and another containing the commands they were manually keying into their old pre-Windows computer, still being used by the union’s treasurer once-a-month for payroll deduction purposes. Well, as soon as I brought up the two documents and listened to a comparison using NVDA, I heard a difference between what they were entering and what my instructions had been. They were leaving out some “dots, or periods, which should be included in their input strings into the computer. I called the Union’s current president back within minutes of receiving the email. Everyone was shocked and said they could not see the dots or periods. I told them to remember they were probably still using a thirty-year-old low resolution computer monitor and old dot-matrix printer which were making the dots or periods appear to be part of letters they were situated between.

Later in the day I got a called back from the Local President saying I had definitely identified the problem and thanking me profusely and said she was telling everyone I had found the cause of the problem by listening to errors non of the sighted folks had been able to see . And, yes, they were going to upgrade their computer system now after all these many years. (laughing) I told her to remember this experience the next time anyone makes a wisecrack about folks with so-called impairments. She said it was a good lesson for all. Then she admitted that the reason they had not contacted me sooner was that they had heard through the grapevine that I was now legally blind and everyone assumed I would not be able to be of assistance. What a mistake and waste of time that ignorant assumption was, she confessed.

Well, that’s my feel good story, but, then, it’s probably old hat for many of you. I just wanted to share it as it was my first experience teaching a little lesson to sighted people in my
own small way. with the help of NVDA. –

Grandpa Dave in California

Moral of the Story: Screen Readers Augment our Senses in Many Ways = Invitation to Comment

Do you have a story where a screen reader or similar audio technology solved problems where normal use of senses failed? Please post a comment.

And isn’t it great that us older folks have such a productive and usable way of overcoming our vision losses? Thanks, NVDA projectn developers, sponsors, and testers.

This feature is turning out to be the backbone of my blog, and there’s nothing wrong with that!. Here are some recent links about, in the broadest sense, accessibility, particularly for blind and visually impaired people.

Blind charity slams ‘dangerous and unlawful’ kerb removal » Local Government » 24dash.com – UK Guide Dogs charity challenges Borough over kerb removal in Exhibition Road, London.

BookServer Offers Books in Text-only DAISY Format « The BAT Channel

Bridging the Gap: Best Practices for Instructing Adults Who Are Visually Impaired and Have Low Literacy Skills

CBC News – New Brunswick – Blind astronomer constructs backyard observatory

Cepstral Text-to-Speech – plenty of voice demos to try.

Descriptive Audio Comes to All Upcoming Sony and Universal DVD Releases

Dolphin Computer Access announce free upgrade to version 11 users

EC Proposes Law To Address ‘Fragmented’ Accessibility Rules « AccessTech News – effort to harmonise accessibility rules throughout Europe.

Education Department hit over Web site access — Federal Computer Week – National Federation of the Blind take the Education Dept. to task over usalearns.org.

Experience the Future of Assistive Technology at Abilities Expo November 6-8 – Atlanta, Georgia.

Google Introduces Free Turn-by-Turn GPS Navigation Service On Android 2.0, iPhone To Get It Soon » ZiggyTek » Blog

IBM gives voice to your web • The Register – new technology allows the plotting of a flow through complex web pages.

ICT Data Gap ‘Hindering Disabled Business Owners’ – from E-Access Bulletin Blog

Intel May Delay USB 3.0 On Chipsets Until 2011, Users Not Too Happy » ZiggyTek » Blog – this may delay the developmet of many gadgets.

Introducing Orator for BlackBerry Smartphones « The BAT Channel – for my money there is not enough hard information yet to make a purchasing decision here.You can sign up for Humanware’s newsletter to be informed of developments.

Invention helps blind feel way | Bundaberg News | Local News in Bundaberg | Bundaberg News Mail – the BrailleOz makes short work of adding Braille to public signs.

Jubilee Sailing Trust: Accessible Tall Ship Adventures Designed for Disabled Persons | Suite101.com

NEW KINDLE MAY ASSIST SOME VISUALLY IMPAIRED but mixed reviews hint that it’s got its limitations.

Nonprofit that helps disabled find work will expand – Business – News & Observer – Enable America matching disabled people with employers.

NVDA 2009.1 beta, what’s in it for Firefox users? « Marco’s accessibility blog – NVDA has come a long way since the previous stable version. We catch up on the news.

Public Firefox 3.6 beta now expected Wednesday, 3.5.4 Tuesday – well, somtime this week with any luck (week of Oct 27th, that is.

“Say No To Shared Streets!” Guide Dogs For the Blind In The UK Is Suing Dixon Jones « Doggy Blurb

SeroTalk Podcast 26 – Upgrading to Windows 7 With Speech and Demo of NLS Digital Talkingbook Player « The BAT Channel

Via-Dux – OpenStreetMap – "Via-Dux is planned to be a OSM and Java based multi platform navigation software for mobile devices for blind and visually impaired persons. The task in this phase of the project is to collect requirements. The result will be a document that can be given to a programmer.&quot’

WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool – rather than presenting a detailed technical report, this service shows up where a site is accessible or not.

webanywhere – Project Hosting on Google Code – WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader that can not only assist visually impaired people but can enable programmers to check their code for accessibility and usability. This page points to some resources.

What’s New in JAWS 11 – security update available for JAWS 11 in versions preeior to 11.734

FPAC – Free Portable Apps Collection

http://fpac.freehostia.com/

This is a collection of accessible programs that will run with NVDA and other screen readers. The collection is built with blind people in mind, and is aimed at those who want portable applications for their pen drives / memory sticks. Used as instructed, the programs should not leave unwelcome settings information on the host computer’s hard drive. Good for library, cyber cafe or work computer use. There’s no knowing what the host computer’s firewall will do, though!

Vince.
http://nystagmite.wordpress.com

Mendapatkan akses informasi merupakan salah satu hak asasi manusia, tidak terkecuali bagi kalangan tuna netra. Di tengah arus informasi yang terhimpun di internet, mereka pun tetap bisa berpartisipasi, baik sebagai pemberi maupun penerima informasi. Open source merupakan media yang membuka kesempatan agar mereka mereka ‘melek’ komputer dan internet, seperti halnya mereka yang tidak buta.

Ketika mendapatkan undangan untuk menghadiri “Workshop Open Source Tuna Netra” yang di selenggarakan Yayasan Air Putih pada akhir Juni lalu, penulis sempat bertanya-tanya: bagaimana mungkin seorang tuna netra dapat mengoperasikan open source?  Namun pertanyaan ini akhirnya terjawab ketika penulis memenuhi undangan tersebut.

Dari sekitar 40 komputer yang berjejer rapih, tampak seorang pria paruh baya sangat asyik mengoperasikan salah satu satu unitnya. Mengenakan headset, pria ini begitu fasih menjelajahi beberapa menu-menu yang tertampil di interface sistem operasi Ubuntu yang digunakan pada komputer tersebut. Dengan mantap, dia mengarahkan mouse ke menu-menu yang ingin ditujunya.

Awalnya, penulis sempat tidak menduga bahwa pria yang bernama Subagio ini adalah seorang tuna netra. Namun, setelah berkenalan dan menyapa, akhirnya diketahui bahwa pria ini mampu mengoperasikan perangkat komputer lewat petunjuk suara yang dihantarkan ke handset yang dikenakannya.

Petunjuk suara tersebut merupakan bagian dari teknologi aplikasi layar pembaca atau screen reader yang terinstal di komputer. Teknologi ini memungkinkan tuna netra menjelajahi menu-menu dan fitur yang terdapat di sebuah sistem operasi yang digunakan komputer dengan petunjuk suara. Artinya, untuk setiap menu yang dijelajahi maka secara otomatis screen reader akan menerjemahkannya dalam bentuk suara, sehingga tuna netra dapat mengerti letak dan posisi menu.

Kesenjangan digital di kalangan tuna netra memang sedikitnya mulai teratasi dengan adanya teknologi screen reader. Sayangnya, piranti lunak untuk teknologi ini tergolong sangat mahal. Sebut saja aplikasi Jaws yang berjalan di sistem operasi Windows. Aplikasi proprietary ini dibandrol sekitar Rp 11 juta untuk lisensi 3 unit komputer.

Beruntung, sebagai sistem operasi open source, Ubuntu menyertakan aplikasi Orca yang didedikasikan untuk tuna netra. Aplikasi ini di-embeded pada jajaran menu assistantive technologies Ubuntu dan menjadi aplikasi screen reader alternatif yang tidak hanya bersifat terbuka untuk didistribusikan maupun dikustomasi, tetapi juga mudah untuk dioperasikan.

Kemudahan pengoperasian aplikasi Orca diakui Subagio, yang sebelumnya merupakan pengguna Jaws. “Aplikasi ini tergolong mudah. Namun, dari segi aksesbilitas tentunya tetap membutuhkan adaptasi. Apalagi, kebanyakan tuna netra lebih dulu terbiasa dengan Jaws,” papar pria yang berprofesi sebagai guru Sekolah Luar Biasa (SLB) Negeri Citeureup, Cimahi, Jawa Barat ini.

Senada dengan Subagio, Machrus Muafi, selaku Program Manager Yayasan Air Putih menyebutkan Orca sebagai aplikasi screen reader yang mudah digunakan sekalipun bagi mereka yang baru berkenalan dengan komputer. Hal ini menyadur dari pengalamannya ketika menggelar workshop yang sama di Kabupaten Biak, Papua.

“Mereka yang mengikuti workshop ini, satu hari berikutnya sudah bisa mengajarkan temannya yang lain. Bahkan, satu jam mempelajari aplikasi ini, mereka sudah mampu mengetikkan namanya sendiri,”  ujarnya sumringah.

Seiring dengan IGOS

Sebagai aplikasi open source yang dapat membantu tuna netra mengoperasikan komputer, Orca tentunya harus disosialisasikan secara beriringan dengan program Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) yang sedang dilakoni pemerintah. Jangan sampai pemerintah terkesan mengabaikan eksistensi tuna netra yang memiliki hak untuk menjadi lebih pintar lewat perangkat komputer dan akses internet.

Hal ini dinyatakan, Irwan Dwi Kustanto, Vice Executive Director Yayasan Mitra Netra, yang merasa pemerintah belum terlambat mensosialisikan Orca sebagai aplikasi screen reader alternatif, karena saat ini kebanyakan tuna netra hanya mengenal aplikasi Jaws sangat mahal.

Berdasarkan pengalamannya, untuk mendapatkan lisensi Jaws untuk pada 3 unit komputer, Yayasan Mitra Netra harus merogoh kocek sebesar US$ 1400 atau sekitar Rp 11 juta, sedangkan untuk manfaat yang sama diberikan Orca, pengguna sama sekali tidak dikenai biaya lisensik karena aplikasi ini berbasis open source.

“Harus diakui, Orca memiliki perbedaan dengan program Jaws. Namun, setidaknya Orca dapat dikostumasi lebih lanjut agar pengguna lebih mudah menggunakannya. Saya berharap Orca dirancang tidak hanya untuk ‘membaca’ teks saja, tetapi juga visual dan gambar,” ujar tuna netra yang mengaku masih beradaptasi dengan Orca ini.

Selanjutnya, Irwan menegaskan, pemerintah harus sebisa mungkin mensosialisasikan Orca ke beberapa SLB maupun panti tuna netra. “Jika dalam 2-3 tahun ke depan masih banyak tuna netra yang belum menggunakan screen reader berarti ini kesalahan pemerintah dan sistem pendidikan di Indonesia. Sekarang kurang apa, bukankah Orca ini gratis? Mereka tinggal sosialisasikan hal ini saja. Gampang kan?,” tandasnya.

Demam Facebook

Teknologi screen reader terbukti mampu menyurutkan kesenjangan digital bagi penyandang tuna netra. Mereka tidak hanya dengan mudah mengoperasikan komputer dan berinternet, tetapi juga sudah mulai menggemari Facebook sebagai situs jejaring sosial paling populer saat ini.

Diakui Irwan, ‘demam’ Facebook juga menjangkiti para tuna netra. Dia menghitung, saat ini anggota Yayasan Mitra Netra yang sudah memiliki akun Facebook berjumlah 20 orang. Jumlah ini tentunya belum termasuk mereka yang berada di luar keanggotaan, seperti beberapa anggota dari mailing-list komunitas tuna netra lainnya. Menurutnya, saat ini terdapat lebih dari 50 anggota terdaftar di  Facebook yang berasal dari beberapa daerah seperti Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Makassar, dan sebagainya.

“Mereka sangat menggemari Facebook dan aktif sekali mengajak teman-teman yang lain untuk segera membuat akun,” ungkap Irwan yang mengaku hampir tidak pernah absen dari Facebook setiap harinya.

Sebagai tuna netra, Irwan mengaku merasa beruntung dengan kehadiran teknologi screen reader yang memungkinkan dia dan komunitas tuna netra lainnya dapat merasakan fenomena-fenomena yang terjadi di dunia maya. Sayangnya, tidak semua situs mendukung aplikasi ini, sehingga keleluasaan berinteraksi di dunia maya tidak selapang bagi mereka yang tidak buta.

“Kami berharap beberapa pengelola situs mengembangkan situsnya menjadi mudah dan dapat dikunjungi oleh tuna netra, sehingga kami mendapatkan kesempatan yang sama dalam menjelajahi dunia maya. Begitupun para pengembang piranti lunak lokal, kami tantang mereka untuk membuat Orca lebih baik lagi sehingga menjadi aplikasi alternatif yang handal,” pungkasnya.

*) tulisan ini pernah memenangkan Terbaik 3 “Lomba Menulis Open Source” yang diselenggarakan Kementerian Ristek pada 10 Agustus 2009.

I knew this topic would have to run on and on. Well, at least for a second day! Some of these topics will no doubt turn up again in more detail, but for now, these are the links.

Accessible Kitchen Appliances « The BAT Channel – your views are wanted on which ones really are accessible.

Bar Code Scanners, an article at Fred’s Head.

BBC iPlayer Guide – A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader (and other screen readers), written by David Bailes

BCI: Thought control for smart home – Taking thought control from parlour trick to scientific reality using brain-computer interfaces. Emerging technology of interest to disabled people and the military.

Bioptic Driving USA – types of technology that may enable mildly visually impaired people to drive, state laws, available training and an explanation about who would be eligible for bioptic driving. 

Website Introduction Video on Youtube

Blind + Linux = BLINUX

BlindAid: Virtual Maps For The Blind

BookSense 1.1 Public Beta Released – GW Micro’s book reading machine gets some stability fixes.

Color Oracle – Design Tips Design for the Color Impaired

Digidesign Demonstrates Upcoming ProTools Accessibility– The Mac-cessibility Network – improvements to this professional recording software for the Mac.

Download WebbIE 3.95 – you will need this update if you want to carry on using the BBC Live Radio program, as the BBC has scrapped its Real Audio streams. The package has several bug fixes too.

EU launches free satellite system to fine-tune GPS – free European Union satellite service could improve accuracy for pilots, drivers and blind people using GPS.

Fifth-generation iPod nano Review | iPod | Playlist | Macworld – another device uses the VloiceOver screen reader.

Flash 10.1: Full Flash for Everyone But iPhone, Actually Playable HD Vids [Flash] « The BAT Channel – up-and-coming fast Flash version invading everything except the iPhone.

Guide to Making Board Games Accessible to the Blind

Guidelines on Presenting Accessible Powerpoint Presentations

High-tech glasses help the nearly blind see – eSight, developing special glasses with cameras looking out and LCDs looking in, which they claim are suitable for people with severe sight loss. Production hoped for in 2010.

iSonic: Interactive Data Sonification for Blind Users

IT PRO | Windows 7: The most accessible Windows yet?

jady_lady: Gadgets We Can’t Live Without – in praise of the Nokia N81

JAWS Public Beta 11 Released! from the Ranger Station Blog

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard With VoiceOver– The Mac-cessibility Network

MacMegasite » Media Atelier introduces Retina 1.0 for iPhone – Color Blindness Helper

Math Education and Nemeth Code for Braille users

Movies For the Blind – enjoy films without looking at a screen. Download audio-described movies.

New software helps blind venture out on their own – BlindAid, developed at tel Aviv University, allows blind people to feel and hear information about their surroundings.

Nokia Braille Reader makes SMS tactile

Open Textbook Resources free from the Orange Grove

Orator for BlackBerry ® Smartphones – this is a Frequently Asked Questions page on this screen reader by CodeFactory, with some less than satisfactory answers.

Phone eyes documents, reads to the blind – the KNFB Reader offers increased independence by reading bills, menus, etc.

Qwitter: the Accessible Way to Access Twitter – "The Qwitter client enables blind individuals to interface with the Twitter service globally, regardless of application focus. Based off of revolutionary concepts pioneered in The Jawter Jaws Scripts, Qwitter, with full support for the three major comercial screen readers and sapi speech, provides you instant access to all aspects of the twitter microblogging service, giving you the ability to post a tweet from anywhere, read tweets, perform searches, and far, far more. "

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic®: Building Bridges Between Print Disabilities and Educational Success

Scanning Pens – these are pens that let you write on ordinary paper, but save your text and drawings in digital format as you go. An example is the Digiscribble. Pens, small scanners, portable printers, consumables. Request a catalogue and the site newsletter via e-e-mail forms on the site.

SOFIA Program Supports Astronomy For Students With Sensory Impairments

Solona – a site that can solve CAPTCHAs by getting volunteers to read and decipher the graphics.

Sony Partners With WGBH to Deliver Descriptive Video Service for DVDs

Students Developing A Car For The Blind – The Early Show – CBS News

Ten Innovative Designs To Help The Sight Impaired » Yanko Design – introduces several products, including Siafu PC, B-Touch mobile phone, Braille Label Maker The Visual Assistance Card, Braille Interpreter, Braille E-Book, Voice Stick, Swatch Sens, Rubik Cube For Blind.

The Nokia N900 Wants To Take On The iPhone, Will It Match Up? 

YouTube Video

Toshiba Touch cell phone for blind people – Google translation from Russian.

Traveleyes – world-wide travel for blind and sighted people. That’s accessibility all right!

Universal Phone For The Blind And Sighted by Seunghan Song » Yanko Design

Updates Everywhere You turn for JAWS, Zoom Text , Dolphin And Window Eyes – Mozilla Firefox

VINUX Project Page – A Customized Version of Ubuntu for Visually Impaired Users

Virtual reality used for blind to map real world – VR used to deal with the world, not escape from it!

Visionplus Sightstick for the Blind – not any old cane, this one has GPS, can output sound, vibration and braille and can bookmark specific locations.

WebAIM Screen Reader Users’ Survey – you may have seen one of these before, but this is a new one. Your chance to influence the industry.

Webvisum – your web helper – WebVisum is an add-on for Firefox that lets you solve CAPTCHAs, those mangled symbols that you have to decipher to get into some web sites. It also lets you label graphics on a site to make clear what they are.

ZiggyTek Blog, part of the ZiggyTek Gadget Community.
RSS Feed

I thought I’d start with the very basics. Without accessibility to the web and other things, blind people can’t get started with anything else. Luckily, this is a very lively area at the moment, and accessibility is likely to be a major theme in this blog.

These are simply alphabetically listed links. Along the way there will be features on particular subjects.

11 iPhone Typing Tips – thanks to
The BAT Channel for this one.

Accessibility in Windows 7 « The BAT Channel

Ameriphone Dialogue JV-35 Big Button Braille Phone for the Hearing & Visually Impaired

[Video] Apple – iPhone – Accessibility – demo video of the VoiceOver Screen Reader

BBC iPlayer – audio-described programmes – about 25 hours of BBC TV are available each week with audio description. Stay up to date with what’s available by installing this
RSS News Feed

Blindness ‘licked’ by new technology | Weird True Freaky | News.com.au – a camera image transformed into champagne bubbles on the tongue….. the Brainport is due to appear late this year.

BookBole – social network for lovers of accessible books.

Call for law to improve websites for disabled – Commissioner proposes pan-European law to include disabled people.

Change Log for WebbIE and the Accessible Programs – WebbIE is a text-based web browser, and comes packaged with many other handy programs – podcast receiver, internet radio tuner, access to Gutenberg Library, RSS news reader, front end for BBC iPlayer …… It’s too good to miss. This page details recent changes in these programs.

Dolphin Released Version 11 of Supernova, Hal, Lunarplus and Lunar, but does not support new technology

Down for everyone or just me? – if you have trouble getting through to a web site, this free online service may be able to diagnose the problem.

Download Instructions for Microsoft Security Essentials from the Blind Access Journal. You may want to research this a bit more before you install the new security tools from Microsoft. It does seem that you are expected to uninstall your current security software.

E-Access Bulletin Live » Blog Archive » Application Opens Up Twitter To Disabled Users

E-Access Bulletin Live » Blog Archive » Google reCAPTCHA Purchase Boosts Accessibility Potential – Google has acquired the company that produced an audio CAPTCHA system. Now let’s hope they use it wisely.

E-Access Bulletin Live » Blog Archive » Ofcom Report Uncovers Major Accessibility Research Gap – UK regulators OFCOM found that communications and broadcasting companies were doing very little to give access to disabled people.

Eye Glasses Turns iPhone into Magnifier For the Visually Impaired « The BAT Channel

Firefox Browser Tips and Addons for Low Vision Patients « The Eye Doc Blog

Free and Open-Source Screen Reader for Windows « AccessTech News – review of NVDA (Non-Visual Desktop Access)

Google Chrome Frame – accessibility black hole « AccessTech News

How Accessible is the Apple iPhone 3GS Smartphone for Visually Impaired?

How Tech for the Disabled Is Going Mainstream – BusinessWeek – the iPhone may now have speech output and be able to respond to voice commands, but this is familar territory for developers of adaptive technology.

HSBC Credit Cards To Deliver Services For Disabled – improved service in New York following customer complaint.

Keys-U-See Large Print Keyboard – Yellow Keys with Black Print – this and other blind-friendly devices are available in the USA from Amazon’s health and Personal Care Department! I don’t make it up, I just report it.

Kindle DX: Amazon’s 9.7″ Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle Store – latest version of this book reading machine available on Amazon’s USA site, but it’s not exactly cheap.

[mp3] Mobile Speak New Touch Interface – Techshare London 2009 – audio recording of one of the presentations, with the microphone, as ever, placed as far away from the person presenting as possible.

National Legislative Measures Aimed at Strengthening Rights of Persons with Disabilities Focus, as States Parties to Convention Open Session – nations urged to embrace the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

New approaches to Flash and Java accessibility in the browser on Windows « The BAT Channel – very useful notes on the approaches taken by screen readers to these sometimes troublesome programs.

PenFriend Audio Labeller – record your own rewritable sound labels for cans, CDs etc. also visit this
BBC News article

Philly Fun Guide – lists accessible arts events in the Philadelphia area

Recent happenings in accessibility-related projects financially supported by Mozilla « AccessTech News – projects include NVDA screen reader, Orca and Firebug

Rogers Wireless launches Nuance’s TALKS Software on Nokia E71 to assist Canadians with vision loss

Sendero Group Podcasts – hear about the well-known GPS system for blind people. 

[mp3] Audio about Sindero version 6

Smart Canews for the Blind – some recent developments.

Textbooks for the Disabled – Inside Higher Ed – publishers and the University of Georgia aim to provide text books in good time for disabled students.

Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text – maybe you already use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to scan your snail mail, but if you’re not blessed with Kurzweil or some other big-name software, you may find this article a very useful introduction.

Traveling Independently Without Sight – how do they do it?

Websites will talk to you now – Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times – India legislates for accessible web sites, and ATMs, washing machines and other devices are soon to follow.

Window-Eyes 7.11 is Now Available! – update of the well-known screen reader.

World’s First Talking Digital TV System – talking technology for television sets and set-top boxes, developed in Bristol, UK, could bring enhanced TV experience to millions.

Web accessibility tools and  software look to bring internet technology up-to-date

Adverts, pop-ups, flashing images: web clutter. Sometimes visiting a web page is more like attending a virtual fairground than accessing information. But I’ve discovered a new way get straight to the core of web page content: Textise.

A clever little web tool. Textise has many uses -

• It can improve accessibility for the blind and partially-sighted.
• It creates pages that are better for printing when it’s just the words you’re after.
• It allows safer navigation to suspicious web-sites.
• It can make cluttered pages easier to read.
• It can show you what a search engine sees when it scans a web page.
• It can show you what a screen reader sees when it processes a web page.
• It can help with web research.

As ijaar.com points out, Textise has other uses too: “Your friend sent you a link but you are not sure if it is safe to open at work? Well, Textise can help you to make it relatively safer to check out.” You can even get Textise as an add-on for Firefox.

It seems for the all the internet’s tech-savvy advances and interactive flash content, sometimes there’s a need to go back to basics and get straight to the point – straight to the important information.

Moreover, Textise highlights the importance of web accessibility, not only for increasing SEO – as discussed by Creare Group in their vlog (below) – but in making websites useable by people of all abilities and disabilities; those with partial-sight, or even those prone to seizures from flashing effects, rely upon web tools and software to use the internet.

Other tools include:

Screen reader – reads out text using synthesized speech

Screen magnification – increases size of print for partially-sighted

Speech recognition – accepts spoken commands to the computer

In 1999, the Web Accessibility Initiative was set up, led by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and they produced Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0). Unfortunately, the WAI guidelines have been criticised for being out of step with today’s technologies and techniques for creating and consuming web content.

Joe Clark has even produced WCAG Samurai: an unofficial set of errata in reponse to the WCAG 1.0 shortfalls.

The need to address the disparity between web accessibility and the advances in technology is discussed by Brian Kelly from UKOLN (a national centre expertise in digital information management based at the University of Bath, UK) in his talk titled ‘From Web Accessibility To Web Adaptability’ given as part of RNIB’s Techshare 2009 conference last week.

Brian Kelly coined the term Web Adaptability, which attempts to support the  “interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”

More than using Textise for ease of printing web pages and ensuring safe navigation (or disguising surfing the web during work hours), this web tool proves that web accessibility is something that should be incorporated into all web sites and pages to bring the latest technology up-to-date with equality achievements beyond the World Wide Web.

You have been Textised!

Apple – Mac OS X – Accessibility.

Snow Leopard the latest update to the popular Leopard operating system installed on all modern day Mac computers has got an update, it’s only a little one and mainly focuses around bug fixes, it’s not a complete overhaul of the way the system looks but at less than £30 you would not expect a miracle.

Opinion as I have understood it has been divided, many see snow Leopard as a bit of a waste of money and time, its well documented how it is faster than Leopard (which I have never found slow).

There are a collection of features that have not been spoken about in the public eye that I have seen in any way and that is the updates to the already good accessibility tools.

To put this into context most of the time I use something called Text- To -Speech or more commonly referred to in is easier form of TTS or a Screen Reader. For Mac this is something called Voiceover. Basically a lovely little American man called Alex reads me everything that happens on screen, all the things I would struggle to read. I navigate through different windows and applications with ease and am able to for the majority of my time edit the two websites and one forum which I own and manage solely using this software.

Its hard to explain to a person that has never used TTS but when Apple created Voiceover they took the manual on making TTS engines and threw it off  a plane before passing it through a mulching machine and stamping on its mussy remains. Voiceover is unique anyone can use it straight out of the box, no additional software needed.

A blind person can go along to an Apple store and say ‘I would like a MacBook please’, pay for it  return home open the box and use it straight off. Apple are the only computer and software developer to do this, they are incredibly committed to accessiblity and see there products as the way forward, even the iPhone3G S now has Voiceover and can be used by visually impaired people.

With the Microsoft  counterparts we all know and… hate that is simply not possible, you would have to purchase your laptop then spend an additional £800 on software to make it accessible and then install the software.

Snow Leopard is once again revolutionising the way that blind and partially sighted people use their computers TTS engines have forever relied on the keyboard to allow users to navigate their way around their computer, this is no more.

With Voiceover and Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 users can now not only navigate with the keyboard but also with the touch pad on MacBook’s using gestures. Now that for many people may well be the closest they ever get to using a computer mouse, something that if you have severe visual impairment you are seriously unlikely to ever do!  Voiceover is more powerful and better at handling complex web pages with the new release which will be very welcomed by many as there are certain web pages that Voiceover currently just does not have the power to understand.  For example the webpage I am writing this on right now, Voiceover cannot cope with all the information and the styling of WordPress, which is as much down to the design faults of wordpress as it is to the lack of Voiceover grunt. With increased power I hope that Voiceover will overcome the WordPress accessibility issues, but time will tell.

I must now buy Snow Leopard and quickly.

Alas I am not the only person jumping up and down giggling with technology fuelled excitement whilst drooling slightly at apples accessibility my freelancer friend Lesley Smith has decided to convert to the ways of apple, mostly because of the accessibility features I have just mentioned and a fair amount of persuading from me.

by Lorraine B. Elder

Dr. Judith V. Boettcher has written Teaching Online for the First Time — The Quick Guide. She lists ten best practices for designing and teaching a course, and most are spot on, with the possible exception of

Best Practice 5: Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities

Using both kinds of activities works only if your online students know up front that’s an expectation. Many students think online inherently means asynchronous, so be clear in your class description about whether synchronous activities are included in the course, and be sure to list the dates and times of the synchronous activities on a class preview page so students can figure out even before they register whether their school, work, and life schedules will permit them to be available at those times.

To Dr. Boettcher’s list, I’d add a few more implementation tips that the e-Learning Center has learned from years of working with faculty in preparing online and hybrid courses.

1. Don’t try to create an online course on the fly while you’re teaching it. You won’t like it and neither will your students.

If your in-person teaching style entails glancing at your notes—or not—a few minutes before class starts and then winging it by speaking extemporaneously, you’ll be tempted to approach online teaching the same way. Don’t do it. You’ll fumble with the technology (or it will go down at an inopportune time); you won’t have an adequate list of resources and supplemental materials available for your students; you’ll forget to include important details in your assignment instructions, confusing your students and sparking a flood of emails or discussion posts asking for clarification; and in an asynchronous course, your students will be irritated if they’re ready to proceed but you aren’t because you haven’t yet built out the course. They’re busy people, too, who don’t want you wasting their time.

2. Posting PowerPoint presentations online does not constitute an online course, no matter how many slides you include.

A bunch of bullet points out of context and lacking a speaker to fill in the details isn’t what students need. Neither are slides packed with overstuffed paragraphs. If you need to write paragraphs to convey your information, put them on a web page, not on a slide. Put the bullet points on web pages, too, and also write the information you would have said aloud in a face-to-face presentation. Or include an audio recording (with transcripts!) of what you would have said to accompany the slides.

Don’t expect students to intuit what you meant by your cryptic, one- or two-word bullets. What’s obvious to you—an expert— won’t be obvious to them—novices. Explain yourself.

I’ll have more to say on the evils of PowerPoint in a future blog post.

3. Make your course accessible to all students, including those who have disabilities.

It’s easy and desirable in an online course to include clips of rich instructional media, such as videos and audio. Be sure to include captioning or transcripts so that all students get the full benefit of the media without having to ask for special accommodations. Even students who don’t have disabilities often appreciate captions and transcripts. Also make sure your course can be navigated easily with a keyboard, not just a mouse, and check with your campus Disability Resources office to be sure that screen reader software can interpret your course material.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

My latest research took me to YouTube. I was impressed that there are YouTube video’s about visual impairment. Here’s a sample I found interesting

IBM Technology Assists Visually Impaired Internet Users

Web Accessibility – through the eye’s of a screen reader

Good and Bad Screen Reading

Version 3.0 is a major release packed with new features that continue to distinguish the Stream as the industry leader among pocket size accessible players. Version 3.0 responds to popular requests received from many Stream customers.

See list of new features.

http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/about_us/press_releases/2009_press_releases/humanware_unveils_victor_reader_stream_3

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer in a garage in the late 70s, I don’t think they realized how much of an impact their tinkering would have on the modern world, let alone the world of the blind.

My first experience with apple computers came when I was young and the CNIB hosted a program whereby blind and low vision children would receive computers as part of a technology training program. I qualified under the low vision category. The first computer I used was an Apple IIe, complete with a spinach screen and two 5.25” floppy disk drives.

The Apple went back and I lived for some time without a computer. That was until high school when I got my first Mac—a Macintosh LC with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. The screen was a 12” 8-bit CRT display and I even got a microphone with it. The LC was a decent little computer for its time and I had loads of fun using Hypercard, SuperPaint and ClarisWorks to complete assignments for school and just have fun.

After the LC I upgraded to the Macintosh LC 630. Now, I had a CD-ROM drive and could enjoy CDs. I also had a 350 MB hard drive and 20 megs of RAM. That was huge in the mid-90s and I appreciated it a lot. Sadly, the monitor I had had an awful colour gamut, but was usable enough to do things like some sound editing, more Hypercard and communicating with FirstClass, a BBS client that allowed me access to Mac run bulletin board systems.

I used CloseView, the Macintosh’s screen magnification program, to enlarge the screen to the point where I could see menus, icons and other screen text.

I also had a Powerbook and used it during part of my first year of university. I don’t remember the specs, but its main purpose was as a note taker.

Near the end of high school, I began losing my vision due to a rare eye disease. Finally, the day I dreaded came near the end of my first year of university. I switched to the PC.

My first PC used JAWS which stands for Job Access With Speech. (Yes, I realize the W stands for “with.”) JAWS is a popular screen reader for the PC. It converts on screen events into synthesized speech, allowing me to control most Windows applications with the keyboard.

My history with JAWS is a shaky one. I initially used JAWS 3.2—a moderately effective package for creating and editing documents in Microsoft Word and Excel and an adequate piece of software for browsing the interwebs. This is when I quickly learned that not all programs for the PC were created for screen readers and that screen readers were very specialized pieces of software. For example, my initial purchase of jaws cost more than $1200 Canadian. Add a software maintenance agreement to that and the cost goes up to over $1500 and that’s not including applicable taxes.

Over the years, JAWS eventually improved to the point where I use it every day for work in programs like Outlook, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and FireFox. I also use JAWS with Sony Sound Forge. I use SF to record, edit and mix commercials for the radio station, thanks to scripts from The Snowman.
JAWS, My Pcs and Windows were not without their flaws. Hardware conflicts, software glitches, the ubiquitous blue screen of death and other ailments plagued me for many years. I hung on though and each time I got a new JAWS release, I lived with the thought that things were getting better for accessibility to the PC. Unfortunately, JAWS seemed to improve marginally while applications and the web advanced at their own pace. JAWS always seemed to be playing catch up with these developments.

One day, I heard that Apple had developed their own screen reader for the Macintosh platform and I began reacquainting myself with Apple. I read blogs, listened to podcasts and communicated with several people who had taken the plunge and were using the Mac and its built-in screen reader, Voiceover. I held my breath, wondering if this was equivalent to Narrator on Windows. Much to my amazement, it was far from anything Windows could offer. Voiceover was a complete screen reader and allowed a blind person to use a Mac in a very similar manner to their sighted colleagues.

Since Voiceover was built in to OS X starting with Tiger, upgrades came in the form of software upgrades for the operating system and not software maintenance upgrades for the screen reader alone. Again, I held my breath to see if Apple was simply placating the blind with a screen reader for the sake of saying they did something for accessibility or whether they were really serious. OS X Tiger gave way to Leopard and Voiceover leapt ahead light years from where it was before. It had a new voice, better compatibility with Mac applications and a growing user base. This got me thinking a bit more seriously about switching, yet I was still very cautious.

After some more frustrations with JAWS on my current machine, I one day vowed that my next computer would be a Mac. I waited, read, listened and began to seriously follow Apple’s developments.

Last week, I finally took my Neil Armstrong first step and ordered a Mac Book Pro. It arrives tomorrow and I am very excited for what I see as a homecoming—my return to the Mac after a 12 year hiatus. I will report my experiences here with OS X Leopard and Voiceover and give you my impressions of how Apple’s screen reader works on the Mac. As I understand it, there is both a lot to be praised and room for improvement.

If you’d like more information on Voiceover, visit Apple’s accessibility page, or visit the Maccessibility website/a. Both are loaded with useful information, resources and links.

As a visually impaired, in order to for me to adapt to information in the computer, I make use of assistive Technologies. It varries in different forms and functionalities. In computing, it goes from magnification software, web accessibility tools, to screen reading applications.

For few days now, I have been using a certain screen reader that I have read about through its promotions from other assistive technology websites. It’s called Thunder and you can read more about it at http://www.sreenreader.net/. Everything from the sofyware itself to the manulas are available there.

This fine application costs free of charge and it will run smoothly with your other voice engines. A good voice engine is a crutial part of a screen reader because it’s what the screen reader use for speech output. Of course a clear voice output means better comprehenssion of the information.

Thunder comes with WebIE, a text-based web browser. This browser is specially-made for the blind computer users that doesn’t want to spend much time going through other web contents, such as images, graphics, flash contents and other media contents. It also rearranges the headings, texts and links so as the user would only use up and down arrow keus and enter keys on it most of the time.

When it comes to typing, Thunder uses the caps key for its functions, so if ont is using a word processor, they have to go first to its format menu and look for the case menu. This feature is a bit of a drag for this software since keys used for typing really should be used for typing. But it just takes some time of getting more used to it, and you will be on it in no tiem.

Lastly, its memory consumption and disk usage is a lot lesser than the more common screnn reading brand out in the market. This means it loads faster and you could do things faster. You get to save more space for more storage and memory for more tasks.

As a conclusion, Thunder is a great screen reader for those wh are just begining to learn computer manipulation and basic internet browsing. It may not have the more advace functionalities as a well-knwn brand has, but its capable enouh to read everything  in common windows and applications, browse the internet and send emails, and a sound of thunder at startup of your login windows.

This post is part of a series on my experiences with web accessibility. Each post condenses what I’ve learned from before and after as a real-life Vision Loser continuing 30 years of Internet use and as a new student of accessibility theory and practice. Sighted readers will learn a bit more about how a low vision persons uses the web and other Vision Losers may sense some of the rationale behind the annotation of graphics.

Why are ALT tags Rule #1 of web accessibility

Ok, so web pages are inherently visually motivated to exploit the power of browsers and graphic images to convey information to users. But does that mean that images can be used freely, for either decorative or information roles, without the slightest indication of their purpose on a page? Wouldn’t that be cruel to people without vision? Of course! And with increase in use of mobile devices with smaller screens, images may also be problematic for sighted people. And browsing without images showing remains common where bandwidth is limited by availability or cost. Hence, providing surrogates for images acquired the primary position in accessibility rule making.

Web standards make it implicit that web content should be perceivable necessitating alternative textual descriptions of graphics. That implementation of this rule is dead simple, to write a description as an accompaniment, denoted by the HTML identifier ALT.

Are ALT tags simple and easy to use?

Well, yes, it’s easy to add such tags. Creating web pages the power user way, with a Notepad, one adds ALT=”the description” to accompany the location , denoted by SRC, of the image. No big deal, but what would the description say? the color of the image? ithe who or where? the artful ambience? The trick here is that the ALT description should give exactly the information needed to place the image usefully in the context of the page, no more, and no less. Ouch, that requires thinking, like why have the image in the first place and what’s its role in the narrative of the page, in addition to attracting eyes and stimulating visual cortexes?

And, wouldn’t you know it, there are more messy questions as described in Web Accessibility Gone Wild from webaim.org. some images are purely decorative and some are used for layout of the page, neither of which require a real ALT description, which would only get in the way of screen readers. And there are charts and graphs where the data displayed is integral to the point of the web page. And some images just take a lot of words to describe. Furthermore, images are often associated with links where the descriptions overlap. Happily, the above article provides good commen sense practices for these situations.

Examples of Accessibility Issues for ALT and images

Images without ALT tags are often cited as “obstacles for the unsighted”, but this Vision Loser has only one experience like this. As described in previous post on “pie charts and literacy” inability to read a pie chart may have doomed my retirement funds during an analysis by my ‘Wealth Manager’. Not really, we’re all doomed, but inability to read the pie chart of asset allocations was a real bummer for me. The problem here is not so much that the pie slice relative sizes and labels were unavailable in a PDF document, but that I could not get my hands into the original data. Pie charts are not so much images as representations of data that stimulate questions about relationships within that data. I am still looking for the pie chart I can manipulate to get those relationships out of the data imprisoned in documents.

Generally, it does help to have image descriptions like ““bicyclists using curb cut in complex intersection” to force my brain into thinking about physical locations and moving objects. But rarely do I find the absence of a good description as a barrier to understanding the content of a page. With low vision myself, I don’t have much practice using images and ALT text, requiring a sighted helper to assure images are what they say.

On the other hand, now that I’m an accessibility advocate, it is annoying to find violations of Rule #1 because this may show a rather serious ignorance of or callousness toward accessibility. I recently found this in a left unnamed output of an NSF project on Broadening Participation in Computing. An excellent project to entice student interest in computing through a journalist pathway produced a newsletter with articles illustrated by images that read out to me as “497″ and “2934″. All I could think of was a missed opportunity to raise the awareness of student authors about accessibility issues, like “how would your great-grandpa’s bad eyes read this page?” Our tax dollars should be properly used only when results are fully accessible. But don’t get me started on university and professional organization web sites!

What next for ALT?

Of course, there’s more to graphic media with Flash and animation. But the message of ALT seems to be:

1. Leave off ALT tags if you want to put up a clear “No blind need apply” sign to your visiting potential clients and students.
2. Put in the time thinking and checking out your web pages for image usefulness. Turn off images in your browser and see what’s missed. Do images still matter? Are they well supplemented by ALT descriptions?
3. Decorative images may be vestigial ways of thinking about getting column 2 of text to start at position 43 when that’s going to interfere with text sizing requirements or be bungled in one or another browser. Or, even worse, really stupid cases are when a screen reader reads out “spacer, spacer” between words, indicating you didn’t know how to or care to test with a screen reader.

Derek’s topic is Madame Butterfly.

Hmmmmm

Intrigued.

Derek reminds us that accessibility is more than technical coding. Its about the entire user experience. Including channels other than the web.

Context of use makes all the difference

The pure accessibility guidelines are not inspiring. Technologies like Zes voice drawing though definitely are.

Progressive enhancement is a baseline. Derek talks about converting people, at a religious level, to this technique. This is still only a minimum though.

Simple wording changes can correct misconceptions. “News” or “highlights”. Each word might be appropriate for your content, but how do users respond to it out of context?

“Just because something is compliant doesnt mean its going to be easy to use”

I totally agree. I spend a lot of time arguing with developers that just because their form passes the HTML validator, doesnt make the form useable.

Derek demonstrated the effect of a perfectly coded page, that reads like a pile of cr*p if you are using a screen reader.  Derek, we only laughed because it was sooooo painful.

Derek’s inspirational view

Derek has spent a lot of time getting fitter and competing in iron man events, and running marathons. OMG! Full credit to you Derek. He points out though that his improvement in fitness took 2 years and was a gradual improvement. We should be taking the same approach with our websites. Small steps and constant improvement.

Derek demonstrated a set of custom controls running over a Google map via the map API, and the controls are accessible.

Next an accessible, navigatable crossword. Semantically coded, layout with CSS, and javascript to provide functionality. Simple principles with amazing output. Why do all this work? CSS means its scalable fonts. No image is required. Even someone like me who wears glasses and sometimes likes to zoom things in (just a little) can do Derek’s crossword.

Grease Monkey scripts injecting buttons into a YouTube video page. So cool. So useable. Oh and its not for people who need accesbility controls. It fixes a known Mozilla bug that prevents anyone from using the keyboard to control flash embedded content. NICE!

Derek’s foo is greater than Ze’s

Derek reminds us to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Derek, your foo is truly awesome