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A quick search on Google or any other search engine reveals dozens of sites discussing accessibility on the web. Making web pages and related content accessible to a diverse audience has been a wide spread topic for years, and has even prompted the government to issue regulations for government controlled websites. In spite of this, many minority groups often run into difficulties accessing specific pages. From my own experience, it seems many outside of the government agencies know very little about web accessibility or even the need for making sites accessible. For this project, I hope to tackle one specific angle of this difficulty, that is, some of the challenges faced by those of us using text to speech technology due to visual impairment. While there are many very detailed guides to accessibility for blind audiences, I will touch on only the most common and frustrating elements from my own web browsing experience.
While most website difficulties can be worked around, the popular Captcha has become a true thorn in the side for anyone who does not have enough vision to interpret the graphics. This is because the captcha graphics are designed to evade detection by computers, thus preventing bots from signing up hundreds of bogus accounts on forums, shopping sites or any other site where users create accounts and profiles. However, this also prevents text to speech software from detecting and interpretting the graphics, effectively stonewalling the blind user from taking advantage of whatever the site may offer.
Fortunately, there are a few solutions to this problem. The most effective and least frustrating solution once it is in place, is to provide an audio alternative to the visual graphic. This solution occurs on sites such as Live Journal and PayPal. Other sites such as YahooGroups have yet to offer this solution, and many blind users are choosing to move to other competitive services instead of dealing with the hassle of finding sighted assistance every time they need to do something on the site that would require getting past Captcha. Other companies have chosen not to provide an audio alternative, but do provide a phone number or email address and will set up the account for the user. while this eventually does solve the problem, it is frustrating and time consuming for both the user and the website maintainers.
An important note, however, is that many of the audio solutions are very distorted in order to prevent speech recognition from interpretting the audio. This can seriously affect people with hearing loss, and for those who may be deaf-blind even the audio solution is no solution at all. For real accessibility, the best option is to avoid captcha altogether and find another way to filter out unwanted accounts.
Many times when visiting a site, there are images which are set up to be links on a page. However due to how these links are designed, either using a special script or simply through HTML without proper tagging, the links make no sense using text to speech software. A good rule to avoid this kind of confusion is to always have any images tagged somehow with text, especially for links or images with important information contained in them. If the images are contained in standard links, the alt tags work wonderfully for this.
Most webpages contain some kind of graphic images somewhere on the page. Often these images are simply visual, logos or pictures related to the content. In these cases, though it's certainly helpful to know what is being shown by the use of alt tags or some other method, it doesn't affect the usability of the site. On the other hand, some graphical images contain important information that if not given elsewhere, is completely invisible to a blind visitor. A perfect example of this came up in one of my classes with Kaplan University. On the project page, the images showing HTML code were simply that, images. When reading the page with text to speech software it said something like the following.
Graphic Code
In this example, there is an alt tag or some other kind of label that indicates that the graphic represents code, but it is impossible to access what the code actually is. Since this is important information, it would be much better if either the code was displayed in a textual manner rather than through a graphic, or if a link was provided to a separate page that would display the text. The important thing is that the information is available in some form rather than through a picture.
this is one of the most difficult areas to discuss, because it can vary so much from one site to another. Flash, java script, and other embedded content can add a lot of useful and accessible features to a website. It can also create an accessibility nightmare, and I've seen sites that are made completely impossible to use due to heavy use of such content. To use Kaplan as an example again, the seminar feature uses all flash. In these seminars, the text typed shows up as text, so it is readable. However it does not speak automatically, so if it scrolls too quickly it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the conversation. On the other hand, many of the buttons on the seminar have no labels except for numbers, making them basically useless. I have yet to determine how to send private messages, for example. The whiteboard is also completely unusable, therefore if a class were to heavily rely on this feature I as a blind student would be at a serious disadvantage. With content such as this, as far as I know, the best way to determine accessibility is through trial, error, and experimentation or testing.
I should note here that while I have used Kaplan as examples, these are only isolated situations which I have run across. I have had conversations with faculty at Kaplan University, and they are extremely interested in accessibility and making improvements where necessary. In no way should these examples be taken as lack of concern on their part, in fact my experience so far is proving to be exactly the opposite.
While formatting rarely makes or breaks accessibility in the sense of whether or not a site can technically be used, it can make a world of difference in ease of use and navigation. The basic rule of thumb here is to use HTML elements as intended, not as substitutes for other visual display features. Most text to speech programs will notify users of headings, tables, lists and block quotes, as well as allow the user to jump to those specific elements. Here are a few tips.
Freedom Scientific is one of the top leaders in assistive technology. their website contains a lot of good information about web accessibility, as well as a link to download a demo of their text to speech software.
The website Growing Strong is a good example of an accessible, yet useful, site.