I’m guessing using text-to-speech programs, but I don’t see how they’d help in navigating some of the more trickier elements that are pretty common, like non-descriptive links, filling out web forms, or sites that use Flash heavily. How do they cope?
With difficulty. But text to speech programs do help, and some sites are written so as to work with them. (Lots are not, of course.) I am sure blind people miss a lot of what is out there, but they have been online since at least the early days of the web.
Also, remember that a lot of ‘legally’ blind people are far from completely without sight. I have recently been helping my 90 year old uncle, who has serious macular degeneration, and thus peripheral vision only, set up a text-to-speech program. I think he is now legally blind (he is not allowed to drive.) However, he has been using the internet successfully, though with difficulty, without text-to-speech up to now. He has the magnification of everything turned way up to give him big letters (he has to do a lot of sideways scrolling) and sometimes has to resort to looking at the screen sideways through a magnifying glass, but he gets stuff done, and even apparently surfs porn sometimes.
I met a guy a couple of years ago who was legally blind. He was a software engineer who worked on various text to talk programs. He was pretty much a remarkable guy. In addition to being blind he had some skeleton problems; the surgeon who repaired my busted femur had also performed some surgery on the blind man. We had consecutive appointments with that surgeon and while we were waiting we fell into conversation.
If a web site is properly designed under W3C standards compliance, meets requirements under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (as amended), or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and has a screen reader properly configured, it’s not difficult at all. The computer you are using to post here already has required accessibility enhancements if it was purchased within the USA.
However, most web sites don’t meet W3C nor WCAG. Section 508 only applies to federal web sites. Things should change in the next year or so when the Department of Justice expands provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to incorporate 508 and WCAG into federal law for all commercial web sites doing business within the USA. Several states have already applied ADA to commercial web sites within their states. New York is just one. California was successful against the target.com web site, although Target settled out of court.
And it’d not just “blind people.” Visually impaired, hearing impaired, dexterity and mobility impairments, cognitive disabilities, and photo-sensitivity all impact Internet users.
On another forum, there was a poster who had an “Ask the blind poster” thread. Now, that forum is fairly ideal for a blind user due to the lack of pointer based objects and being largely text.
He used a text to speech converter that he sped up by quite a few factors. My god, it was completely incomprehensible to me and most other user, but he managed quite well in that particular forum.
I am not sure how Window Eyes works, but I know it is widely used. Check out www.gwmicro.com They are one of the leading providers of technolgy to the visually impaired.
Last fall I was maning a booth promoting guide dogs at a expo. I have known the GW people for a long time and their booth was next to mine. I explaned to one lady she could get more information and apply for a dog online. She said she couldn’t use a computer. I told her to go the the next booth, and Jeremy would fix that.
The school I volunteer for is highly oriented towards the net. I am sure their site works quite well with screen readers.
Well, based n friends who are blind, sites that use tricky things like that just don’t get their business. They go elsewhere. Note that there are proper ways to do those things, that do meet W3C guidelines, and work with text readers.
And the biggest ‘blind’ internet user, who sees only text, and not this tricky stuff, is something called Google. So the stuff a site does with these tricky methods won’t get into Google, and so eventually that site will fall to a competitor who does follow W3C rules.
Access for the disabled is a big deal for State Universities. We hired a Grad Student (she was only a semester from graduating) to design & write our web site. Then it had to be submitted to another person on campus that ran the audit to confirm it met the laws standards.
From what I understand, the reader software that the blind use requires those strict formatting standards. Otherwise the software fails and the disabled person can’t access the site.
Er;;. oy vsm nr [tryyu foggovi;y sd upi ,ohjy o,shimr/ Niy eoyj yjr idr pf jr;[gi; [tphts,d smf yjsy rcyts omyioyobr sno;oyu pmr frbrlp[d sgyrt nromh n;onf gpt s ejo;r. upi vsm rbrmyis;;y nrvp,r wioyr sfr[t sy oy.
While it’s true search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN use text for a lot, it isn’t what it used to be. Flash sites can get properly indexed by Google and others, by using Google Site maps and other such devices.
You can use text browsers like Lynx to see what text only readers can see and it’s amazing how awful most sites are.
Is Lynx still the standard browser for the blind?
AFAIK, blind users use the same browsers that sighted users do. Lynx can be used to test a page, but most blind users would use Internet Explorer.
There are screen readers like JAWS that will read the text in the page. ADA compliance is simply a matter of designing the page to accommodate that. There are some basic rules:
- Links must say what they are. Thus no “Click Here.” Instead, use a title that describes what the link will go to. See** Duckster’**s post to see how this should be done.
- All images must have alt titles.
- Avoid tables. If you must use them, the text must read naturally down the first column to the bottom and then to the second column.
- It’s acceptable to have a separate accessible page. One neat trick is to put a single one-pixel image at the top of the page with an alt tag of “Accessible view” and a link to the accessible page. Regular users won’t notice it, but screen readers will read it as the first thing on the page.
How would you detect that? The one guide dog school’s home page used to be dumb, you had to select text or graphics before it did anything. Now it just comes up with graphics complete with a flash video.
But bad webpage designers who use tricks like this, and are too lazy to put ALT tags, etc. – do you think they are likely to bother with “oogle Site maps and other such devices”?
Small update: I recently came across this article that was posted on Slashdot that highlights one person who is working on the problem.
No, it’s not. A properly designed web page within a properly designed web site meets standards-compliance, accessibility and usability from the onset. IMHO most web designers only address the eye-candy visual design with little to no comprehension of what must be under the hood before cutting code. You don’t accommodate. You incorporate. Call it semantics if you wish. In this case, accommodate is reactive. After the fact. Incorporate is proactive. Before the fact. Too many web designers don’t understand this, and/or are too scared to stand up to their clients and insist on being proactive.
Also, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not address electronic communications. It’s an unfortunate, but all too common a mistake. At the time ADA was written (1990) electronic accessibility did not exist. It was written to address real life, bricks and mortar disability issues. That is still its primary focus. Web accessibility is governed under W3C WCAG recommendations and 508 (or more accurately Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended.) ADA and 508. Different laws. Different audiences. Different requirements.
Enlightened State Attorneys General, especially former NY AG Eliot Spitzer (before he was governor, and other things) managed to tie real life, bricks and mortar disability to electronic disability. Other state AGs are following suit. It appears DOJ is making the same inference, and realizing the possibility that 50 different state interpretations are bad for interstate commerce. So the DOJ is bringing ADA into the 21st century because electronic commence is now so engrained in society as physical bricks/mortar commerce that ADA will be changed to incorporate the industry WCAG/federal government electronic 508 requirements. (Not sure how foreign entities with foreign web sites desiring to do e-business in the US will be subject to these changes. DOJ may require compliance, or have foreign commerce sites blocked at gateways. Not sure if DOJ is specifically addressing this.)
Ensuring electronic accessibility is not difficult to accomplish. The standards are in place. The technical requirements are in place. The law (in the US and elsewhere) is in place, and in the US, will be greatly expanded. The difficulty is in the perception of cost to retrofit, and build anew. The truly disabled are the the corporate decision makers with short-term profits on their minds, who think disabled users are irrelevant to their bottom line.
The 2000 US Census asked Americans to self-identify if they were disabled. Almost 20 percent. That’s one out of every five claiming some sort of disability - about 56 million people out of 281 million plus. Electronic disability was not in the picture because the census did not address it. It was not an “active disability issue” at the time of the Census. (Section 508 would not take effect until June 2001. While WCAG 1.0 dates from 1999, electronic commerce and the web was still too fresh to be noticed.)
The 2010 US Census reveals 308 million. Using the same 20 percent, that’s 61 million disabled. An important change, though. The Internet. The web. E-commerce. A sizable portion of that 61 million with visual, dexterity and mobility disabilities are now being disenfranchised with inaccessible web sites. Our knowledge of cognitive disabilities and human aging now really changes the numbers. The last raw numbers I crunched finds upwards of 150 million Americans are electronically disabled. About half the US population. Short-term corporate thinking still hasn’t caught this. The Department of Justice has, though.
My federal employer lost a sex discrimination suit several years ago. The damages were in excess of $30 million. Your tax dollars. The case involved only two people, who made it a class action suit. The projected number I heard if we lose an electronic accessibility suit under 508 could be as high as $3 billion. Your tax dollars. Just one agency. DOJ is not asleep on this possibility, government-wide. And since the US Government is the largest purchaser in the world of IT products and services, IT accessibility for private and corporate will change. It’s a matter of being proactive, or paying it out by getting dragged kicking and screaming into accessibility. Seems to be a corporate career-ender if you bet the wrong number.
It’s not just a few blind people desiring to use the Internet. It’s visually impaired, hearing impaired, dexterity and mobility impairments, cognitive disabilities, and photo-sensitivity, who are and are not connected to the Internet. Computers, ATM machines, Internet-connected televisions and gaming devices, debit card terminals in stores and restaurants, electronic document production, smartphone users, electronic voting machines, medicine and health-care …
Accessible web pages are a piece of cake. It’s gonna be fun watching so many eat it, too. Off with their heads!!!
Disclaimer: Electronic accessibility/disability is one of my primary job roles.
It is interesting that little was done with the revision of the ADA that went into effect about a year ago.
I’m on the Megabus riding from Kansas City to Chicago, and my seat-mate is a blind guy, traveling to check out various places to do his Masters. We got to talking about various things, and I mentioned the Dope. How accessible is the Straight Dope? Anyone use it with a screen reader?
Surprisingly, the creators of vBulletin have a number of accessibility features built into this message board software. However, there are a number of critical errors that would make a proper rendering in assistive technology tool difficult.
Short answer: it fails accessibility.
Do you have a Mac, or access to one? If so, press command-F5 to try the Voiceover accessibility feature. Command-F5 again to turn it off.