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Screen readers have contextual commands and may behave differently in real tables. For instance http://www.freedomscientific.c...

If the user is just having it read all the text on the screen it will probably be about the same, but if he's navigating within the page it will be different.

There is also a demo version of JAWS that works fine for testing purposes. It is what I used to test my sites. It is limited to working for 40 minutes before you have to reboot, which is a slight pain but is better than paying a lot of money for the product.

Check this out:

I just checked the facts now, and Ray Kurzweil (AI + future-tech guru/genius/entrepreneur/benefactor/cyborg ) has a whole company specializing in assistive reading technologies.

K–NFB Reading Technology

http://www.knfbreader.com/

The original OCR reader for blind people he developed is presented here:

http://www.knfbreader.com/products-classic.php

This product is no longer in development, because they have moved to using cell-phones (you just gotta love this cell-phone age we're in). BTW, don't waste your time looking at products made by people without the expertise in this field of AI and assistive technology. You need a real solution for a real problem...

For reading and using the computer, advanced software exists (Windows platform - don't let anyone make you waste your time with open source, it's not for grandpa - yet). If he can identify elements in the screen and is able to locate where text is, he can just use something like TextAloud.

As macular degeneration progresses, though, he will want to move into software specifically tailored for the blind. In fact, I would suggest getting acquainted with the following software before total blindness. JAWS is the major-league player in this category.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-page.asp

I wish all the best for your girlfriend's grandfather. Tell him he's not the only in that situation and that there are solutions out there.

I hope this helps.

May you score many Internet Points points with your future father-in-law, too ;-)

As for my braille display, I'm using the Focus 40 Blue, mainly because it was cheap (for the government agency who bought it for me), and it's made by the same company that produces my screen reader. It's currently in my office, where I do most of my programming work. Never heard of the show you referenced, sadly.

As for my braille display, I'm using the Focus 40 Blue, mainly because it was cheap (for the government agency who bought it for me), and it's made by the same company that produces my screen reader. It's currently in my office, where I do most of my programming work. Never heard of the show you referenced, sadly.

Google Docs has partially implemented WAI-ARIA roles. Google Reader has full support for it. I'm not blind, but as a curious web developer I have tested them with JAWS. I don't see where the problem seems to be. Modern screen readers work really well with modern browsers and web apps developed with the ARIA specification.

lets be intellectually honest here: anyone who doesn't browse the web is completely out of touch with the main thrust of anything and everything computer related in the last 15 years

He still browses the web - he just does it via a method that works:

1. even if he doesn't have a net connection when he wants to actually view the page (which might be later on in the day at a conference, or in a cafeteria) - the page is in his email, so he can download it now, and then view it later offline with his email program
2. without downloading all the associated crap that most pages are infested with
3. while providing him with a permanent copy of the stuff he's interested in

Other people also use other means to "browse" the web that don't involve conventional interactions with a web browser. Programs like JAWS (a screen reader for the blind) and blinux don't meet your metaphor for accesing the web - BFD, get over it.

Also, computing is much more than just the web. For many researchers, email is a LOT more convenient, and more important, than the web ever will be.

As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux? It seems to be that Linux and OS X are redundant, not to mention that most things you can run on OS X can be run on Windows as well... why buy the Apple hardware?

I dislike Windows, yet I need to test websites under IE.

The only reason I can think of is the image of the Mac, honestly ... granted, I don't use Macs much

I'm guessing you've hardly used a Mac at all. The difference is night and day. There really is no comparison. Let's try to make a comparison though.

Choose any PC to match up against a Mac Mini. Now, compare the screen reader options for the two: Mac comes with VoiceOver for free. The most popular screen reader for the PC costs more than the Mini itself. To you, that may not make much difference. To a web developer who needs to test accessibility of websites, or as a blind user, the Mac wins, hands down.

Like web browsing? Compare the default browsers for supported standards. That chart is for CSS selector support, but in pretty much any comparison, Safari on the Mac wins against IE.

Security: The Mac comes with a built in Keychain. It remembers my passwords for websites and system activities. It keeps those passwords locked up behind _one_ password. So it keeps my secrets safe for me. The PC does not have a keychain bundled.

The Mac comes with FileVault. Full encryption for each individual user's home folder. The PC does not have anything like FileVault bundled.

The Mac can do a randomized N-pass file wipe on trashed files. The PC does not bundle file wiping capability.

These are serious features that are seriously lacking in a typical PC. On Windows you would need to pay extra... a lot extra in some cases, to get features that are bundled on a Mac. On Linux, these features might be available, but you will likely need a considerably higher level of computer skill to install, maintain, and use them.

As such, I prefer a Mac. I get more features that I actually use with a Mac. I can easily maintain the system myself. I don't have to worry about computer viruses. The resale value of Apple is truly magnificent, making upgrades cheaper with Apple hardware than PCs. (When was the last time you saw a 2 year old consumer grade PC sell for $550?) And in a pinch, I can boot into Windows or Linux.

I'm sorry if you mistake that for vanity.

Gecko-1.9 actually has a propper accessibility implementation for *nix, see this page for the details on using firefox with Gnome/Orca.

Yes, I do use Linux for most of my daily work, and it's mostly okay, although for GUI things at the moment, windows still beats it hands down. See here and Here.

I am blind (you insensitive clod). And I'd wager I'm not the only slashdot reader who is. I mean, if the comments on Slashdot are to be believed, then the Slashdot editors alone must have a large fraction of blind members, not to mention all the Slashdot moderators....

Yet, I still don't really care about the article. Then again, I only skimmed through it, like any other card-carrying Slashdot member. But from what I can tell, it's a cross-platform API for adding accessibility to various programs....

I'd much rather use a seperate accessibility program that just works with all other programs, instead of trying to pick out a word processor and a browser that supports screen reading capabilities. Then I don't have to configure and set up each program I use for accessibility, nor do I have to worry about developers forgetting something (q.v: CAPCHAS)

So, the fact that [insert favorite software title here] supports accessibility doesn't really matter to me. When they have a OS independent, free, open source, and stable version of something like this, then I might pay attention.

-Aluion, Posting as anonymous because I've already moderated this discussion. Yes, I realise the irony.

If you actually were blind, your screen reader software (assuming it's Windows, it would probably be JAWS) would be handling the sound, not the website. While there are some places that use sound clips (like authentication pages that require you to read a garbled series of letters and numbers to register on forums), many sites depend on the user using third-party applications to access their site. In any case, since the website you're commenting on is a personal web page, and not a web presense for a business, it isn't the sort of site the ADA is being used on.

Extra Credit: I used JAWS on the site, and I could get around it just fine with the monitor shut off.

Myth of Hypocricy of a person commenting on screen reader accessibility while his website lacks embedded sound clips: Busted.

How is the web an inherently visual medium? It's based entirely on textual data, with support for graphics bolted on to make it prettier. The important things at the Target website are lists of store locations, operating hours, phone numbers, and that's what they were sued over. You don't need a picture to tell someone the address of your store. You don't need a picture to tell someone which brands of irons you carry and how much each model costs. You *should* add pictures of items to increase sales, since people generally like to see what they're buying, but blind people accept that limitation.

My wife runs an online business selling paintings. The graphics are not "bolted on to make it prettier"--they are the only possible representation of the product. What the hell else is she supposed to do? Have audio recordings telling people how exquisite each painting is?

This is, quite frankly, a perfectly sensible ruling and something web developers have been warning companies about for nearly a decade. This is not some crazy fringe group out to cause trouble,

I have to disagree. A good friend of my wife's is disabled, and knows what real discrimination is like. She recently had to threaten to sue the local transit company because their drivers repeatedly refused to let her on the bus with her service dog. That is discrimination, and that is what the ADA is supposed to stop. Sueing because a commercial website is inaccessible is just ridiculous. What if the site is inaccessible from Mac browsers? Can I sue on the grounds that being a Mac user is a disability? Should I have to buy a new computer just to view some website? No? So when did viewing websites become a right for anyone, disabled or not?

this is a problem we've all known about for years and years but too many people ignored because it was cheaper or easier to cross your fingers than follow sound advice (although ironically enough, a well-designed (and therefore accessible) site will be cheaper and easier in the long run because of easier maintenance and adaptability).

Do you know how much the web design budget is for my wife's business, and for many, many other small businesses? Zero dollars. We did it all ourselves. It's all valid HTML 4.01 with CSS, looks good on a wide range of browsers. It probably works with screen readers, but we haven't tested and, up until now, haven't cared because nobody who is visually impaired would be using the site. Any reasonable person would agree there's little point to making accessibility modifications to a visual art website.

The problem is that now, because of this ruling, my wife will be faced with two options:

1) Keep running the business in potential violation of the ADA and hope she doesn't get sued.
2) Close the business because she can't afford to pay for an accessibility audit of the website.

Testing the site ourselves isn't possible. Just buying one copy of JAWS (a popular screen reader) for testing purposes would cost $1500. A quick check suggests paying a consultant to do the audit would cost around the same.

Do you still think this ruling was a good idea, NMerriam? Should all mom-and-pop online businesses be closed down because of the ADA? Just think of the killing some unscrupulous lawyers could make off this. Just build a webcrawler that finds "unaccessible" websites, then sue the owners. Free money!

Actually, many modern screen readers have the capability of analyzing the HTML document and creating an alphabetical list of the links on the page that they can navigate.

Here's a list of Features and Enhancements for the latest versions of JAWS (a widely used screen reader). Reading through them will give you some idea of how screen readers operate. There's a lot more to it than you think.

Here's a clip from one of them:

HTML and the Internet
Improved Performance on the Web

With the new Internet and HTML support in JAWS 7.10, you will experience increased accuracy, improved navigation, and better text recognition when reading Web pages or other virtual documents.
Visible Focus Rectangle

When you press TAB or SHIFT+TAB to move to links and buttons in Internet Explorer and Firefox, the focus rectangle is now visible. This rectangle is useful to sighted users because it visually indicates the location of the cursor. The focus rectangle does not move when you use the arrow keys or Navigation Quick Keys to read.
Route the Virtual Cursor to the JAWS Cursor

You can now press INSERT+NUM PAD PLUS in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the Virtual Cursor to the mouse pointer. Using this command moves the Virtual Cursor to the current location of the mouse pointer and can help sighted users navigate Web pages. In addition, routing the JAWS Cursor to the Virtual Cursor (INSERT+NUM PAD MINUS) is much more accurate and moves the mouse pointer to the exact character the Virtual Cursor is located on.
Route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor

You can now press CTRL+INSERT+DELETE in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor. Using this command moves the PC Cursor (and the application focus) to the current location of the Virtual Cursor. Visually, the page will scroll so that the area containing the Virtual Cursor is visible on the screen. This command is the opposite of the Route Virtual to PC Cursor command (INSERT+DELETE).
One Setting for Controlling Page Refreshes

There is now only one setting for controlling page refreshes. Previously there were two settings, one for controlling page refreshes caused by the browser, and another for controlling refreshes caused by embedded ActiveX controls, such as Macromedia Flash. These have been consolidated into a single option for controlling both since it is often not apparent which is causing the page to refresh.
Improved Detection of Dynamic Page Updates

Previously, if script code was used on a page to control visibility without the user actually interacting with the page, JAWS would not detect the page update and would either show content that was not really there or not show content which was made visible. This should no longer occur.
Enhanced Screen Tracking

The screen no longer scrolls up or down erratically while you are using the Say All command or navigating by other means. The screen only moves when the content about to be read is not visible.
Document Presentation Mode Line Length

You can now define how long a single line will be when viewing an HTML page in Document Presentation Mode. This can help you read lengthy tables easier because all the content from each row in the table can fit on a single line. The increased line length stops JAWS from rendering rows across multiple lines. When you exit Document Presentation Mode, JAWS will render the page using the normal maximum line length.

The default line length in Document Presentation Mode is 400 characters, which is enough to fit most table rows on one line. To change the line length, open the Utilities menu and choose Configuration Manager. Then, open the Set Options menu and choose HTML Options. Enter a new line length in the Document Presentation Mode Maximum Line Length edit box located on the Text tab.

The w3c check is not an acurate measure on how thruly accessible the pages are

I now this because I have friends who are blind and frecuently use screen reader applications

If you really want to make sure your pages are accessible then download the trial version of Jaws for Windows wich is the defacto standard screen reader. This trial is limited to 40 minutes per session, but those 40 minutes should be enough to test your webpages.

As mentioned in posts above, make sure the content can be reaced quickly by readers.

Although just skimmed over in the precis, as no one else seems to have commented I will say the tablet would be quite handy in some school settings.

Right now our school employs a aide to copy graphical information onto paper with puff-ink or an embossing wheel. She traces the pictures and the ink expands and is "readable" by the visually impared kids we have, the wheel on the other hand leaves an impression in the paper that feels like braille.

Both these techniques lets them "see" the shape of squares, triangles, countries - even letters that you or I read. The biggest disadvantage is that the aide needs to be with the child as they learn to give a description of what is being seen. With this system and pre-prepared sheets the child can explore graphical images in their own way without another person being with them.

The web page is at http://www.touchgraphics.com/ttt.htm if anyone is interested in looking more.

By the way, for all the web developers out there, we find that many pages are not really accessable; tables for layout are generally a PITA to read, CSS works very nicely though.

Just like you create a web page then test it in Opera, FFx, Safari, Konqueror, Lynx and IE you should run it through a JAWS simulator. JAWS is the main Windows based text to speech screen reading tool many visually impared people use. JAWS Demo from Here FANGS is a firefox extension that simulates what a visually impared person will see if they are using JAWS (FANGS is easier than JAWS for sighted people to use as you don't need to learn a heap of key bindings). Please add it to your arsenal of testing tools.

I work for a large company as their usability expert and I shudder whenever I hear someone mentioned Nielsen's dogma. What he says is treated as absolute law by those who know nothing about design, accessibility and web technology in general. More often his words, which once he uttered with real conviction, are regurgitated over and over like some bizarre mantra.

This article was thankfully very short - but classic Nielsen shines through with his "design for the masses" approach to everything. Try to convince normal people that there will be no graphics and plain vanilla layouts for EVERYTHING. Yes I've attended the conferences and yes we've bought some Nielsen white papers, but his time is over. Time to wake up that the web is not run on Netscape Navigator 2 anymore and we can *gasp* put a well-designed bit of rich media on a page that _might_ not appear on JAWS.

There's the Fangs extension for Firefox (which doesn't actually speak). IBM Homepage Reader has a free evaluation download. JAWS screen reader has a demo version (if I remember correctly it expires after half an hour of use, then you have to reboot to use it again). Safari can be used as an aural browser. EMACSpeak can be used as an aural browser (in conjunction with EMACS-W3), and was the first (to my knowledge) to support aural CSS. However, it's only really any good if you have a hardware speech synthesiser - its software support depends on an old, obsolete library that is hard or impossible to get hold of these days. Opera has an aural mode.

Actually, that list surprises me somewhat. A couple of years ago, it was just JAWS, IBM, and EMACSpeak if you could get it to work. The past couple of years have really improved matters.

It depends on why you are testing really. If you are doing it for legal reasons, you're probably okay testing in just the aural browser that's most convenient for you. But if you are doing it for a genuine attempt at compatibility, you'll need to test in JAWS, it's the most popular by far.

It's quite a pain to use demo versions when you are only trying to make your websites more compatible with them. The best thing to do if you can't justify buying them is to develop a website so that it works without images, Javascript or CSS, and then test in the aural browsers, writing down everything that doesn't work quite right. Then fix up what you need to, and keep your notes to hand the next time you develop a site (i.e. write a "style guide" for your code).

Can a blind person install and configure windows, iis, SQL server, exchange, and active directory?

Once your favorite OSS tool is installed can a blind person use them?

>Can a blind person install and configure windows, iis, SQL server, exchange, and active directory?

Except for the OS install, the answer is yes. All of the text and other elements in an ordinary window are automatically hooked into the standard OS-wide accessibility API. Screen readers like JAWS can then pull out the text without any problem.

>It seems to me that you have to draw the line someplace. If somebody wants to put forth the effort then great but honestly why don't we concentrate on getting the documentation so that a reasonably intelligent non disabled person can use it first.

There are a couple of little things like the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 that you might want to consider. Similar requirements exist for state goverments as well as other national and provincial governments across the world.

Without support for accessibility at least as good as other commercial OSes and software, OSS is going to have a harder time getting a foothold in goverment and industry. Not supporting accessibility is not an option.

>Then we can worry about the blind.

Given the rise in age-related diseases that cause vision degeneration, I sincerely hope those words never come back to haunt you.

There are dozens of people working on screen readers for various linux GUIs. Just do a google search for "linux screen reader". But none of them are as full-featured as JAWS, and certainly none of them are taught to blind students in school so it is unlikely that they are much use to the general blind community at the moment.

All it would take is for some reputable Windows screen reader maker, like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro to come out with a version for KDE or something. Certainly those folks have the skills and knowledge of the blind community to do it right and be quickly adopted by blind users. Why doesn't some Linux group cozy up to one of those two companies, get the product developed, and put this issue behind them?

A blind friend of mine uses JAWS on his computer. He says he can't use Firefox because of JAWS' inability to work well with anything but IE.

This release, despite the whole digit change, doesn't change this. This is all the more ironic since Tiger now ships with an integrated spoken user interface! Blind folks, as a generalization, are at least as passionate about music and technology as the rest of us. This is a real shame.

Firefox already adheres to standards better than IE, has a more rubust, and secure environment, and arguably provides a superior user experience to IE, and yet IE lives on... So why would some (arguably nice) DHTML addons make a difference?

Many organisations are legally obliged to make their internal applications, including web applications, accessible to the disabled.

Two of the most popular applications that can read websites out to blind people, JAWS and IBM Homepage Reader, are both based on Internet Explorer.

This code will supposedly make it easier for web applications using DHTML to work in Firefox for disabled people.

• Crappy mouse-only interfaces
• Memorization. Using JAWS fluently requires that a blind person memorize dozens, if not hundreds, of keystrokes and interface layouts. Sighted users have tool tips and hot key indicators and a hundred other visual affordances to prod us along the path. If JAWS can provide an equivalent, I've yet to find it. Coming back to a program you haven't used in a year pretty much means starting from scratch with learning the interface.
• Portability. JAWS is insanely expensive and can't be installed on just any computer on the network. It tethers the user to one station.
• Compatability. The university uses Novell Netware in the boss's college. Since the log-in screen would load before JAWS, it's not accessible, which means that the boss can't use Novell. This in turn means that he can't use the public printers, the calendar tools, and other programs that are doled out through those gates. On the plus side, it means that he's the only guy in the college with administrator privileges and a more-or-less unencumbered net connection :)
• Flash and Java-based menus and advertisements online that break JAWS
• JAWS assumes a certain level of basic computer competence in its users. Its help menus will tell you everything you never wanted to know about setting the properties of a folder. But we forget that there are computing lessons even more basic like that. For example, the boss still doesn't really know why he would want to use folders, or what the difference is between the Word application and a Word document.
• Last and certainly not the least are the education gaps between the boss and his assistants. The boss's scholarly field is not technical in nature, and his students reflect that. I'm the first assistant he's had who understood keystrokes as a way of navigating interfaces; everyone else bogs down saying "Well normally, I would just click that. I don't know any way to do

• Crappy mouse-only interfaces
• Memorization. Using JAWS fluently requires that a blind person memorize dozens, if not hundreds, of keystrokes and interface layouts. Sighted users have tool tips and hot key indicators and a hundred other visual affordances to prod us along the path. If JAWS can provide an equivalent, I've yet to find it. Coming back to a program you haven't used in a year pretty much means starting from scratch with learning the interface.
• Portability. JAWS is insanely expensive and can't be installed on just any computer on the network. It tethers the user to one station.
• Compatability. The university uses Novell Netware in the boss's college. Since the log-in screen would load before JAWS, it's not accessible, which means that the boss can't use Novell. This in turn means that he can't use the public printers, the calendar tools, and other programs that are doled out through those gates. On the plus side, it means that he's the only guy in the college with administrator privileges and a more-or-less unencumbered net connection :)
• Flash and Java-based menus and advertisements online that break JAWS
• JAWS assumes a certain level of basic computer competence in its users. Its help menus will tell you everything you never wanted to know about setting the properties of a folder. But we forget that there are computing lessons even more basic like that. For example, the boss still doesn't really know why he would want to use folders, or what the difference is between the Word application and a Word document.
• Last and certainly not the least are the education gaps between the boss and his assistants. The boss's scholarly field is not technical in nature, and his students reflect that. I'm the first assistant he's had who understood keystrokes as a way of navigating interfaces; everyone else bogs down saying "Well normally, I would just click that. I don't know any way to do

Another note: a good Windows utility for completely blind users is Jaws. It is a speech software utility for Windows. (example: to navigate, the software verbally says: 'start', 'programs', accesories', etc. I saw a demonstraton of the software by a blind man, and he kicked ass (kinda like the hacker dude in Sneakers). Anyway, he could navigate way quicker using the keyboard than the typical sighted windows user could.

There are people who are blind what do they do ? Stare at the screen hoping there eye sight comes back?

Not a good over all solution, you need a seperate medium/channel to display such pictures.

Check out the product at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/softw are_open.asp/

Hi, I'm in college now, and I'm mostly blind. In high school, with maps, I either used a CCTV (the overhead visualiser?) or display sized maps, that a teacher would use at the front of the class room. Another good solution Tech wise, would be to scan a regular book size map in and use it as a PDF and be able to maginify it as much as you want. Unfortuanatly I'm not sure to the extent, but a solution for extreme situations such as being fully blind would be to print out the map, take a thing of elmers glue or puffy paint, and outline the maps, and have the text written in braille. Reading wise of just text, there are always text to speech engines for computers, the microsoft of the blind would be Freedom Scientific they make the application called JAWS currently at relese 5.1. Another good TTS would be WIndows Eyes by GW Micro currently at 4.5sp3. Magnification on a computer would be best done by Zoom Text, made by AI Squared. http://www.freedomscientific.com/ http://www.gwmicro.com/ http://www.aisquared.com/ Hope what I have said, was helpful and not to much best of luck to your son

I've been wondering something for a while... JAWS, one of the leading screen readers, costs $1100 for pro and $900 for standard. Is this a scam? Are they actually charging the blind this much? Does disability pick it up? I have this weird probably unjustified feeling that this company is making all of their money selling to government institutions that are being forced by regulations to buy their product.

That's no excuse! There's now a speaking version of Emacs for the blind.

And for Vi users, in both Linux and Windows, there's screen reading software like Jaws and Speakup.

Blind != cut off from the text-based world

> As far as the LCD screen is concerned - simply reduce its brightness.

Or install Jaws and turn it off altogether. Jaws doubles your battery life!

I don't even know if it's some sort of joke. Can you buy a braille screen?

Blind users tend to use one of two devices, either a screen reader (which will read the contents of the screen out loud and assist with navigation), or an RBD (Refreshable Braille Display), depending on personal preference.

The most popular screen reader is called JAWS, by the company Freedom Scientific.There is a Linux screen reader, which is open source, known as EmacSpeak

Here's a company that makes good Refreshable Braille Displays, for those who are interested.

Interestingly enough, Freedom Scientific, and others also make Audio-based and RBD-based PDA's.

Since Nethack is text-based, it's easy to make this game work with Assistive Technology (which is what all of these different technologies are known as), as text is extremely easy to present to someone in alternative formats (spoken, Brailled, enlarged, etc.). Highly visual games, however, require an extra level of accessibility.

Just a little FYI.

I so wanted to frag a blind friend of mine on a level playing field.
Well as level as it ever gets.
I would consider running AALIB but all it and a braille display do is make a vibrator and nothing would get done.

The point of web standards is not--I repeat not--to make your site look the same in all browsers, but that it should be readable or usable in all browsers. A fancy-schmancy table-based layout may look good in most modern browsers, but just try viewing your wonderful page in lynx, or using a screen reader like JAWS and you'll find your fancy table-based layout has been reduced to ashes.

Using web standards, we can design sites that look good and are still usable, all the way back to the first text-based browsers. Did you know that Netscape 1.0 did not even support tables? So, if there's some schlub out there using it (and if he is, please upgrade... this is 2003, for goodness' sake), your wonderful table-based design is worth squat to him. My site, on the other hand, designed with web standards, will look fine in his copy of Netscape 1.0, so if two similar sites were designed--one with web standards and the other without--who is more likely to keep those readers who are disabled or using old or out-of-date browsers?

One final note before I get off my soapbox. If you need proof that you can do more with standards than without, look at K10k. While it does still use tables, the site uses style sheets to do most of the work and as a result, the site looks great. CSS is the way of the future, whether you're designing with or without tables. You'd better get used to it.

I have a co-worker that is blind, and his biggest problem is getting lost. If the wrong key is pressed on accident, it sometimes takes several keypresses before he realizes that he's in the wrong spot and then has to figure out his way back to square one (and hope nothing has been messed up). Having everything said aloud would give him the ability to navigate as anyone else would have.

Basically this guy wants JAWS for his mother's cellphone. Which would be really usefull should anyone ever put something out like this.

While I don't have an answer for your exact question, I do have an alternative that might be an option. The Alva MPO is a phone/pda for the blind. You can navigate through it by either audio (JAWS like application) or through it's braille display. Takes input through an 8-key braille keyboard. I believe it is a WinCE device, though I'm not sure what version it is running.

Again, this is just a tad bit overkill if all she needs is a phone. However, if she's looking for something more than a phone, this might be an option.

Here's a fun exercise. Go download the JAWS screen reader free trial, install it and reboot with your monitor off.

Now try to connect to the internet. if you manage to get that far without your monitor on, try buying concert tickets, try accessing hotmail or yahoo, try looking up a book on amazon, try even typing a simple word document without being able to see the screen, based solely on audio input.

Come back and post how it was. I've done it before, it SUCKS! Pop up ads take control of your screen with no warning so you can't tell where the hell you are, developers don't do something as simple as using the [label][/label] tag on forms so you have no idea which textbox your cursor is in. It's terrible! So stop complaining that you're going to have to give up some small meaningless thing so other people can have the luxury of USING THEIR COMPUTER in a fraction of the capacity that us sighted people are able to. In other words, stop whining, you don't know how good you have it.

Check out http://www.freedomscientific.com - They do a lot of stuff, both HW and SW, for the blind. I believe they are also the people who make JAWS (a screen-reader program). It's a neat company - many of their employees (coders) are blind, as is their CEO, I believe.

Actually, before reading this article, I hadn't even thought about applying this type of technology to myself. Thanks for the eye opener MrIcee. But it is true. As we get older, this type of technology is going to become all to personal. I should really have considered it before, since I'm near sighted with over 13 points of loss so far. (If my glasses weren't this new carbon stuff, my glasses would be a little short of a 1/2 inch thick on the edges.)

Anyway, the first thing that came to mind was a vision of Sneakers, a movie from 1992, that included David Strathairn as Whistler, who was visually impaired. He read Playboy in Braille, and had a great box that let him read what was on the computer screen. It's not quite the same but I found something that can do the same thing. http://www.deafblind.com/display.html Unfortunately, these refreshable Braille displays are EXTREMELY expensive. I've been finding prices of about $5,000 to $12,000. They are also prone to breaking down.

By the way, does anyone know how hard it is to learn Braille? I've never tried. Is it something I should do now, while younger, or is it easy enough that I shouldn't worry until I go blind?

I also found a couple of solutions.. There is a company that sells both large print keyboards, http://hooleon.com/prod-vis.htm and Braile keyboards http://hooleon.com/prod-braille.htm. (Or you can get them both.)

I also found a couple of software packages that seem to be pretty common for reading text out loud off computer screens.

IBM Home Page Reader http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.html
pwWebSpeak http://www.soundlinks.com/pwgen.htm
Jaws http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws .asp

And last, but not least, since I am a bibliophile, I had to find some Braille e-books for download. http://library.utah.gov/web-braille.html But you have to be blind to sign up for the service.

My wife's phone, a Sanyo 4700, has something that's like speaking caller ID. It matches the caller ID with a phone book entry if possible, and speaks the name that you enter with the phonebook entry.

And if you think moveable nails are neat, you should see a whole refreshable braille display. I work with a guy that codes C all day long using one of these. It's truly amazing how people can adapt.

That said, shouldn't kids be learning how to read? There are a number of games that help kids develop reading skills, and it's certainly a very useful skill. Not all books are in electronic form, after all...

First, let me state that as an educational web software developer, accessiblility is half my job.

The problem with tools like Bobby is that they only address half the issue, things like ALT tags, commenting, etc. What Bobby does NOT do well is address "readability" issues. While implementing CSS, using ALT Tags, formatting forms, and commenting your pages are nice, a poor layout can make the page completely unreadable to a blind user. I couldn't tell you how many pages I've seen that "passed" their Bobby checks, but were totally unuseable by screen readers because of poor table and content layouts. Instead of using Bobby, try this one on your next page: Download a copy of JAWS or the IBM Homepage Reader, put on a blindfold, and try to surf your website by ear. If you have designed your website well, you should have no problems. If the reader makes no sense, then your site is NOT accessible...whether or not Bobby likes it.

OpenBook Ruby from Freedom Scientific has served us pretty well. It's a combo scanner/screen reader program. We have it set up for use on a public workstation and it's very accurate. We're still using the 4.0 version, but it appears to be up to version 6.0 now (with built in scan to MP3 conversion!)

OpenBook Ruby from Freedom Scientific has served us pretty well. It's a combo scanner/screen reader program. We have it set up for use on a public workstation and it's very accurate. We're still using the 4.0 version, but it appears to be up to version 6.0 now (with built in scan to MP3 conversion!)

OpenBook Ruby from Freedom Scientific has served us pretty well. It's a combo scanner/screen reader program. We have it set up for use on a public workstation and it's very accurate. We're still using the 4.0 version, but it appears to be up to version 6.0 now (with built in scan to MP3 conversion!)

She will be able to write complete arrangements and do sequencing and other stuff without her sight. I think thats pretty rad!

Actually, Job Access For Windows (JAWS) is made for blind people to access common computer applications, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook Express, Eudora, and so on. The problem doesn't come with the browser itself, but rather the coding habits of the page designer. Screen Reading programs cannot interpret Shockwave or Flash with much success (requires specific code in the document), many proprietary HTML tags that are specific to IE cause problems if the page is viewed with other browsers.

As for suing for compatibility, there is already a class-action lawsuit against AOL in the works (no link, heard it from someone who specializes in teaching blind people how to use computers). We specifically tell visually impaired users to not use America Online. JAWS has problems reading multiple windows, and the few times it changes emphasis, the user often has no audible indicator of what's going on. America ONline is well aware of the problem, and while the adaptive software developers try to keep up with the changes, accessibility online is something that is difficult to enforce, especially for companies who host outside the country.

Finally, there is an attitude amongst several developers that I have talked to that there are not enough bind people to justify making accomodations. "If they want to read it, they'll get someone to read it to them." Sadly, that's a quote from a website designer from a few months ago. Slapping lawsuits on people who don't comply won't solve the problem. If you want the Internet to be fully accessible, make some changes to how Internet content is created. Even if you just find a way to tell them, it is a start.

IMO, Voice "Web" and "Portals" will never take off the way the article says. Portals have already been proven to suck in the normal web.

Where voice shines (and where Tellme is going) is in replacing the crappy IVR (touch tone) phone systems in which we are all so familiar. Imagine, instead of "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that, ..., press 9 for the other thing", you have, "Please say what you want, or help for a list of choices."

I've been designing voice systems like that for 2 years, and let me tell you that, although "dictation" recognition has a long way to go, recognition with a fixed set of a few phrases already works very well, even over the phone. Well designed grammars with even 100 or 200 possible phrases get very good recognition, no training required.

It's just a voice-response system, basically, with their own customized back end.

It is not designed to be anything more. It seems to me that everyone hopes that we'll all be able to surf the web with our voice, but the truth is it is really not practical. If you really want it, go buy a screen reader like JAWS (which is designed for the blind). VUI (Voice User Interface) and web site/GUI design are incapable of converging completely, simply because web sites are designed to use things like color and layout to ease navigation, and VUI's have to use a very linear interface. Technologies like SALT hope to combine the two, but it will never magically convert the web to voice without having some kind of backend conversion.

now with jaws , this is no longer true. blind users love windows.

A license for the version of Jaws that works with most PCs sold today (i.e. PCs running Windows operating systems that use an NT-style kernel) costs $1,200 US per seat. That's more than the cost of the PC itself. The ADA makes exceptions in cases where accommodation of a sufficiently disabled employee would place an undue burden on an employer.