[vicsireland] Fw: [techlunch] FW: Accessibility article from the Wall Street Journal
- From: "Gerry Ellis" <gerry.ellis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "VICS" <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:29:30 +0100
Hi,
I thought this might be of interest to many on this list.
take care,
Gerry Ellis
t/a Feel The BenefIT
Tel (+353-1) 282-7791
Mob (085) 716-8665
email gerry.ellis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you don't know where you're going,
How will you know when you get there?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Macarty, Jay {PBSG}" <Jay.Macarty@xxxxxxxx>
To: <programming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 9:01 PM
Subject: FW: [techlunch] FW: Accessibility article from the Wall Street Journal
> Thought this was interesting since we often use Google to track down
> things. I tried the new "accessible" tool at
> http://labs.google.com/accessible
>
> It is supposed to rank the results by accessibility. That is, the most
> accessible websites are listed first in the results page. Haven't played
> with it enough to see if that is actually the case but wanted to pass
> this along.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Pound [mailto:ppound@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 2:08 PM
> To: Techlunch
> Subject: [techlunch] FW: Accessibility article from the Wall Street
> Journal
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Murphy, Terry [mailto:Terry.Murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 1:58 PM
> To: Pat Pound
> Subject: Accessibility article from the Wall Street Journal
>
>
>
> Web Sites Improve Service for Blind People
>
> Google, AOL, Yahoo Retool Pages, Boosting Compatibility With
> Screen-Reading Aids
>
>
> By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
> July 20, 2006; Page D1
>
> Major Internet companies are moving to better meet the needs of the
> hundreds of thousands of blind people who regularly browse the Web.
>
> Blind Internet users generally use software that reads a description of
> a site's features aloud, sometimes in conjunction with some hardware
> that displays portions of the site in Braille. But navigating
> increasingly feature-heavy Web sites, whose messy and complex
> programming can be difficult for the software to translate, poses
> problems. Aiming to increase use of their popular products even more
> widely, Internet companies are now launching new -- and tidying up old
> -- services for easier use by the blind.
>
>
> Google <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=goog>
> Inc. will today launch Google Accessible Search, a search tool that
> ranks results based on the simplicity of the site's page layout. Pages
> with a large number of headings and that lack extraneous images and text
> -- factors that make the page easier to read with a screen reader --
> will rank higher, saving blind Internet users the time of navigating to
> results they won't be able to comprehend. The search tool is at
> labs.google.com/accessible.
>
> AOL, a unit of Time Warner
> <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=twx> Inc., will
> soon update AOL Web mail to make it more screen-reader friendly. The
> revisions, which will be under way by the end of the year, will
> eliminate the need for users with screen readers to switch to a separate
> text-only page. While designing its new homepage, Yahoo
> <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=yhoo> Inc.
> considered ways to make it more accessible to blind users. For example,
> carving the site into a greater number of headings like "Entertainment"
> and "Sports" makes it easier for a visually impaired browser to navigate
> the site because the headings serve as built-in hooks.
>
> The new products and heightened awareness already appear to be making a
> difference. Eric Brinkman, 19 years old, says he used to have to
> reformat nearly every page he arrived at so that it could work with his
> screen reader. Now, he finds that extra step unnecessary, and has also
> uncovered new tricks and shortcut keys for navigating around sites like
> Wikipedia.org, Google.com and Amazon.com, where he likes to shop for
> CDs. "I have become very dependent on computers," says Mr. Brinkman of
> Niantic, Conn., who spends several hours a day online and has been
> legally blind since birth.
>
> New tools for developers also are likely to drive further improvements
> across a broad range of sites. Microsoft
> <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=msft> Corp. has
> recently released UI Automation, new developer technologies that will
> make it easier for screen readers to translate robust Web applications.
> The technologies will be officially released with the company's Vista
> operating system, and will allow screen readers to convey information to
> users such as how many new messages are in their in-boxes without
> reading off each message individually and to find all the links on the
> page quickly and alert the browser to which ones they have already
> visited.
>
> There are roughly 10 million blind or visually impaired Americans,
> according to the American Foundation for the Blind, a New-York based
> advocacy group. The group estimates that roughly 1.5 million people who
> have difficulty seeing print even with glasses have access to the
> Internet but only about 200,000 who cannot see print at all have access.
> The numbers are expected to grow as technology improves and Internet
> companies offer new services.
>
> Those with mild vision impairments can often be helped by simply
> magnifying their screen display. Blind Web users have descriptions of
> what appears on the screen read back to them aloud and move from heading
> to heading with keyboard shortcut keys and arrows. A blind person who
> visited Yahoo.com, for example, would hear the different headings like
> "News" or "Movies" spoken and could transition to the next heading by
> hitting the "H" key. Such assistive technology can be pricey. A popular
> variety, Freedom Scientific Inc.'s JAWS for Windows, costs around
> $1,000. Another tool, a refreshable Braille display that translates a
> description of what is on the screen into Braille on a device that
> resembles a keyboard, can run from $1,400 to $7,000.
>
> "The biggest frustrations are these sites with some 500 different links
> and lots of graphics," says Dena Shumila, 32 years old, who is blind and
> runs her own consulting firm in Minneapolis. She says that when people
> don't properly label their links and buttons, she is stuck listening to
> generic commands like "nav bar link one" and "nav bar link two." "Then
> you don't have a clue what is going on," she says.
>
> Unless accompanied by alternative text, code embedded beneath a graphic,
> photos and video are incomprehensible to a screen reader and its user.
> Kathy Brack, a 55-year-old blind Internet user, was recently shopping
> online at LLBean.com for a bathrobe and slippers but got stuck when she
> couldn't get any verbal information on the products. To ensure that she
> had landed on the style and color she wanted, Ms. Brack, of Raleigh,
> N.C., had to ask someone to describe them. "Online shopping sites are
> terribly inaccessible," she says. "I often have no idea what the product
> looks like."
>
> The new Web services coincide with a push to revise federal Web
> accessibility standards and renewed legal efforts to get accessibility
> guidelines more widely adopted.
>
> Currently, no federal law requires all Web sites to be accessible to the
> blind or to those with other physical disabilities. The guidelines that
> apply to technology procured by a federal agency including Web sites
> under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act are about to undergo
> revision by a federal advisory committee. The committee is likely to
> look into issues like establishing new guidelines for Internet-based
> phone applications, multimedia and Webcasts. Many states have also
> adopted these guidelines.
>
> To date, advocacy groups have hit roadblocks in pressing accessibility
> guidelines on the private sector. In 2002, Access Now Inc., a
> Florida-based advocacy group for the disabled, sued Southwest Airlines
> in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on the
> grounds that a blind person could not purchase a ticket on the site. The
> plaintiffs alleged that the airline therefore violated Title III of the
> Americans with Disabilities Act, which states that disabled individuals
> must enjoy equal access to goods and services in places of public
> accommodation. The judge ruled that the case against Southwest be
> dismissed, deciding that Southwest.com was not a place of public
> accommodation because Web sites aren't covered in the statute's 12
> public accommodations categories.
>
> Meanwhile, Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind is suing
> Target <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=TGT>
> Corp. over the inaccessibility of its Web site to blind Internet users.
> The suit, originally filed in Northern California's Alameda County
> Superior Court, argues that Target's Web site is a service of Target's
> stores, which are public accommodations and therefore that the Americans
> with Disabilities Act, as well as two other California state laws,
> apply. The company says the lawsuit is "without merit" and that the
> company's Web site complies with all applicable laws.
>
> A hearing on two motions -- the defendant is moving to dismiss the case
> and the plaintiffs are moving for a preliminary injunction -- will take
> place in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
> California.
>
> Christina Maloof
>
> DADS Web Office
>
> 512-438-4248
>
>
>
>
>
>
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