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You could always try Fangs.

To me it's not that it is hard, it is that your page will never get cached properly by search engines if you AJAX'ify your pages. It also limits your target audience as, for example, mobile phones don't support AJAX. And it also has some accesibilty problems.

If none of these things bother you, then AJAX is fine, and I would recommend something like ICEfaces. Unfortunately I personally have not come across a project that doesn't need one of the three main concerns I listed above.

Simple problem solving may be the easiest way to stop spambots for most smaller sites. For a larger site a spammer is likely to make an effort to code specifically for that site. This makes problems like 2+2 too easy to solve. I wrote about accessibility issues with captchas a while ago and proposed a simple audio alternative invloving simple problem solving: http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2005/captcha/

http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?200 5/01/01/11-captcha

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.

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).

Guidelines exist for software as well but are rarely used for some reason. A few examples that would help all users:

• Apple Human Interface Guidelines
• Windows UX guidelines
• Authoring tools accessibility guidelines - a must if you are developing an open source content management system.

I believe that following these and other specifications would make life much better for all users. These guidelines will make sure your software works with most assistive technologies as well.

There are also a lot of open source developer tools to help you test your applications. E.g.:

• [shameless plug]Fangs - the Firefox screen reader emulator extension[/shameless plug].
• The W3C HTML validator

He says he can't use Firefox because of JAWS' inability to work well with anything but IE.

Has he tried Fangs, the aural extension for Firefox? Opera has aural support too.

More on AJAX and accessibility can be found here: AJAX and Accessibility.

I wrote an article (and some code) a while ago about a proposal for an accessible CAPTCHA that combines audio and visual information.