Hi Tony,I must apologise. If you felt my negative comments were directed at you, then let me assure you I never meant them to come across that way.
The article, as I said, in my opinion is not a good one. Captchas, by their very nature, are a bad idea. As far as I know, there is no real way of having a fully accessible instance of one. If people such as web designers, project managers etc read such an article, they may think that having the additional audible clip is the accepted and fool-proof solution. It is not, and I don't think Captchas will ever be truly accessible.
My point was, and I do apologise if I didn't put it in the best way I could have, creating this bolt-on supposedly acceptable accessibility fix and sticking it on to a technology as a whole, i.e. Captchas, that will probably never be usable to many disabled people is not to be encouraged in the least. The whole area is bad news.
Given that you didn't initially comment in favour or against the article, I felt I had to. This was to eliminate any ambiguities as regards our position as a society which may arise, especially when someone searches our email archives.
This is not my list, this is our list. I'd urge you to continue to use it; I've told you before that you are a valued contributor.
To finish, I will say once more that I'm sorry if I offended you in any way. I feel strongly on this subject, as it effects us all as Internet Users. If my language was over the top, I do apologise.
Cheers, Tony----- Original Message ----- From: "tonysweeney" <tonysweeney1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 3:39 PM Subject: [vicsireland] Re: Javaa Scripts
I feel your reaction to be ____________way over the topSurely something is better than nothing till we get the inclusivity "designFor All" we all seek! Pity you couldn't have given a more reasoned response! I am not speaking for the article writer but his peace seemed reasonable enough under the circumstances. I doubt that anyone would be so stupid as to think that an article forwarded to your list would necessarily be the opinion of Vics!Surely all thoughts and opinions should be discussed with respect and in acivilized manner! Why do you not contact the editor and article writer giving your opinion there? You will have no worries about me forwarding articles to your list in the future because I won't be!_____ I am also seriously considering not renewing my membership when it is due around again. Disgusted. Tony Sweeney.----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Murray" <Tony.G.Murray@xxxxxx>To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 9:21 AM Subject: [vicsireland] Re: Javaa Scripts Hi,I don't think the below article is particularly helpful to anyone, and it'smessage is skewed in my opinion. To be honest, I'd prefer not to see this kind of stuff posted on our list, as I'd hate to think that VICS would support recommendations like the below."captchas can be made accessible by using audio clips in addition to imagesto verify users as human. Some sites, like LiveJournal.com, already do this." Yeah, Right! - What about deaf/blind people?- What about those using single channel soundcards? (Jaws won't speak whilethe audio clip is playing in this case) - What about people using magnification and who have no soundcard? (I bet those distorted images are pretty tough to make out for someone using something like Lunar) - What about someone who may have cognitive difficulties? - What about those with dexterity problems? - What about someone who just can't really type that quickly? Hardly 'design for all'. Captchas = bad. I don't know how you would make them truly accessible, but the below suggestion is fairly pathetic. There must be an alternative solution to the use of Captchas. Cheers, Tony----- Original Message ----- From: "tonysweeney" <tonysweeney1@xxxxxxxxxxx>To: "vics" <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 2:20 AM Subject: [vicsireland] Javaa ScriptsChicago Defender, IL, USA Friday, February 09, 2007 As Web evolves, blind left behind By Tim Spangler The last time Ray Campbell tried to buy Cubs tickets online, Tickets.comasked him to enter the text in a distorted image in order to prove that hewas not a robot programmed to automatically buy tickets for scalpers. . The only problem: Campbell couldn't read the text in the image. In fact, he couldn't see it at all - he's been blind his entire life."All I want to do is buy tickets and I can't do that, because there's thisverification and they have not provided an audio link to it," Campbell said. For America's nearly 2 million blind or visually impaired Internet users, problems like these can prevent them from taking advantage of all the Web has to offer. "The two challenges with Web accessibility are not just being able to access the site, but being able to use the site," said Leah Gerlach, director of counseling at the Diecke Center for Vision Rehabilitation in Wheaton. Gerlach said the growing use of multimedia video on Web sites creates a significant accessibility challenge, saying that Internet video can confuse the screen reading software that blind and visually impaired people use to browse the Internet. Blind Browsing Blind and visually impaired people use special software called screenreaders that "speak" to them in a synthetic voice what is happening on thescreen. When browsing a Web site, a screen reader examines a page's code and determines how the page is laid out and what links are on it, then reads the content of the page to a user. Screen readers rely on explanatory text, defined by webmasters, to interpret images. Because of this, the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets Internet standards, requires developers to define alternative text for every image on a page. Multimedia content, like Adobe Flash, is unintelligible to screen readers and is skipped entirely when the page is read. Sites that rely heavily on Flash should be sure to offer accessible, text-only versions of their pages. Screen reading software uses text-to-speech conversion, machines that translate on-screen text to Braille or a combination of both to present a Web page to a blind or visually impaired user. The challenges Campbell is a technician at the assistive technology help desk at the theChicago Lighthouse, an organization for the blind and visually impaired. Aformer software engineer at Lucent Technologies, he now takes calls from blind and visually impaired people across the U.S. and Canada and helps them solve computer problems and navigate Web sites. Campbell identified what he said are the Web's three major accessibility problems: graphics without descriptive text, required plug-in installations and visual registration tests, called captchas, an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart." Captchas are particularly troublesome when it comes to accessibility. Why captchas? Many major sites require users to verify that they are actually human - not automated robots. By presenting the browser with a captcha - an image of distorted text that is difficult for a computer to decode - and asking the user to enter the text they see in the image, robots can be blocked from the site while human users who can see the text are given access. Campbell said thatcaptchas can be made accessible by using audio clips in addition to imagesto verify users as human. Some sites, like LiveJournal.com, already do this. What works, what doesn't Blogging, a growing Internet phenomenon, is still largely text-based and tends to be more screen reader friendly than other applications. "My experience has taught me that [blogging] is pretty accessible," said Campbell, who keeps his own blog on LiveJournal. "Screen readers can handle a lot of the current techniques that are being used in Web design," Campbell said, as long as designers take extra care to make their sites accessible. These include avoiding the use of images to displaytext, providing audio narration for videos and offering text-only versionsof pages with multimedia content. As interactive, multimedia Web sites become more prevalent, blind and visually impaired users might find themselves behind the curve as designers forgo accessible pages for glitzy ones and screen reading software lags behind, said Leah Gerlach at the Diecke Center"We don't drive change. We have to follow it and keep up with it," Gerlach said. "We're always six months behind cutting edge because we have to be."Tim Spangler is a reporter for the Medill News Service. http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=8439****************************************************** This document is strictly confidential and is intended for use by the addressee unless otherwise indicated. This email has been scanned by an external email security system. 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