Slashdot Mirror
Do the Blind Deserve More Effort on the Web?
dratcw writes "An article was posted this week to ComputerWorld, detailing the frustrations faced by blind people struggling to use the Web. The piece shows how little progress has been made and the inadequacy of solutions such as Microsoft's Narrator screen reader. While the article generated many positive comments, one reader said the disabled should 'get a grip' and maintained they 'have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used.' Should Web sites and software makers do more, or does the reality of today's economics dictate that the blind/disabled will continue to struggle and learn to live with it?"
If we work on the broader problem then we get better web sites for everyone, especially the disabled, without even making any particular effort for them. For example:
- A link to download a file should just go to the file, not some clever javascript crap that tells you to please wait while you're redirected, your download should start in a few moments etc.
- Quit breaking stuff up into dozens of tiny bite sized pages. My scrollbar works just fine thank you very much, and it lets me scan all of the content in an instant instead of having to click through it all. Yes, I know that some people do this to goose their ad revenue, but you see it other places too.
- Don't use clever little graphics and pop-ups for every link, text works much better.
- I don't need links to "print this page" or "email it to a friend".
- You don't need to know what region of the world I'm in before I can download a damned printer driver.
- Don't use ridiculous URLs that query stuff from a CGI with a zillion arguments just to serve up a static page.
I could go on all day... fixing any of those design problems would automatically improve accessibility, not just for blind users but for mobile devices as well.
Thankfully we've mostly gotten rid of the horrible "splash pages", flash animations, and musical home pages. I'm sure in due time people will get their head around some of the other basic issues I've mentioned, but unfortunately people keep coming up with dumb new ideas much faster than that.
Next question.
The biggest thing web designers do that breaks the web for disabled people is not include the alt tag in an image. I mean how hard is that?
On the other hand, people should know that if their web page is not available to a group of people, then those people will not get the benefit of the web page. In addition, there is a market for folks to create (and sell, if they so choose) products that help people who have problems get around in society. Thus, wheelchairs and hearing aids and braille and such. It's always been this way.
To say that everyone must be included in the class of users makes no sense; do you have to make music accessible to the deaf, or visual art available to the blind? Of course not. Should you have to change your personal web page that you use to post pictures for your friends and family to make it more friendly to some disabled user you don't know? Of course not.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I've worked as a web developer for years and can honestly say that it isn't hard to make an accessable website/webapplication but it doesn't happen because no one is willing to pay for it. Even the fact that there are laws in place in some countries that require certain standards doesn't motivate (most) clients into paying the extra 5% to have an accessable website; on top of this it doesn't help that your (dishonest) VP of marketing just pulls a number out of the air when they go after a project and you are (typically) heavily underfunded for the work you have to do.
A lot of the web's content exploits the ability to see. Whole websites are geared to nothing more than pictures and manipulation of them.
How can rules be applied that would not be biased against the content choices of the providers? If a provider wanted to provide full length movies that they did not originate would it fall on them to provide versions that lend themselves to one disability or another or all?
The simple fact is, not all aspects of life are enjoyable by all people. The primary limiting factor is loss or serious reduction of one of the senses, eyesight and hearing are the two primary ones that seriously alter one's methods of participation in the world.
Second, the internet is NOT A RIGHT.
Third, it is not a right to impose on someone your needs. I am so tired of people decrying their right to my stuff or someone else's, to include money, time, and or property. The web isn't a right. As such you cannot impose your problems on people who use it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
At least in the US, it's the law that you have to use well-known and available methods to allow handicapped people into your place of business. For example, you don't have to provide access for someone in a ventilator, because that would be impractical, but you do have to provide access for someone in a wheelchair, because it's really not all that hard. The EXACT same principle should apply to the web. Providing access to the blind on the web is probably a lot easier than providing wheelchair access in a bricks-and-mortar store.
Can't you go blind having diabetes?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Sure free market but sometimes society, in general, needs a bit of a push in the right direction. I don't know about your part of the world but here public buildings need to be accessible to those in wheelchairs. I'm pretty certain the "free market economy" would not have driven that change without a push from regulations.
... but some kind of sites are going to have more challenges than others.
For example, I publish a few webcomics (at Ubersoft.net). A webcomic is an image file (in my case, pngs) which are flat-out useless to the blind. Now, there are specifications about how graphics should be used to make them useful to the blind (i.e., include a complete description of the graphic within the img tag -- using "alt" I think, though I'm not sure) but this seems counterproductive. Webcomics as a whole are somewhat useless to the blind because they are a visual medium. Granted, my art is lousy and static but it is still presented visually.
So how much trouble should I, a publisher of a medium that seems to fundamentally work against a blind man or woman's browsing experience, put into making my site accessible to them?
As it happens, I do try some, though I am unfamiliar with the latest accessibility guidelines. I use css and xhtml (as best I can) to tag the site properly and make it navigable to a screen reader. This is a bit challenging since the publishing system I'm using (Drupal) makes it difficult for me to sift through everything, but I'm making slow progress. I've also started transcribing my comic archives -- primarily to make them searchable by my site's search engine, but one of my readers pointed out that it also allows a blind visitor to actually read the dialog.
There are other types of sites -- political discussion sites, news sites, sites like Slashdot -- where accessibility would be far more useful. The web was originally primarily text, and on sites where the content is still primarily text there's no reason it can't be designed to make that text more easily accessible to the visually impaired.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
www.homestarrunner.com. That can stay.
Flash has it's uses, but it is strictly a visual format.
I will agree that when it's used as the primary display method for a business website it annoys me to no end.
I am legally blind... I'm 20/800 natively and 20/200 best correction from optic nerve problems and I use the computer all day long, in fact, I'm an IT professional!
I can say first hand that I would love to see better computer resources for the visually disabled, as well as for other disabilities! And, more so, better pricing on the resources that are available! For instance, a Zoomtext for Windows is almost a thousand bucks. Where the same features are built into the Mac!?!?!? But Apple charges $2,000 for their 30" display where a Dell is only $1,000!?!?!
I wouldn't dream of pushing my computer platform on anyone but Apple seems to have gotten the support for low vision working better than others. I run three monitors, 24L, 30C and 24R. The two side monitors run 1280x800 and the center runs 1440x900. Very low and disgusting resolutions by todays standards but it's what I need to be able to sit comfortably and still see the screens.
I think that in general, it's not so much of a software issue as it is hardware. Take low vision like mine for example... I'd love to have a wrap around display like you see in the movies, set on about an 8" or 10" stand so that I can get the monitor nice and close and still be able to move the keyboard out a distance far enough to type.
Regardless of weather you like flash or music on the home page or image files (I'm in IT geek, I hate them all) the users with poor vision should not be limited to what they can see or not see in the design of software/web pages. If there was adequate hardware support for this need, it will be a non-issue.
-brian -- Brian D. McGrew { brian at visionpro dot com } --- > But his grip on his santiy hovers somewhere bet
Try reading some HTML as text:
Greater than, quote, less than, semi-quote, have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, comma, as a diabetic, comma, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used, period, semi-quote, greater than, slash, quote, less than.
I got results like that when I tried to use a voice synthesizer to read HTML email. Note that it doesn't differentiate between reading the 'quote' inside the tags and the 'semi-quote' in the quoted text.
Good luck on trying to get everybody and his invisible pal to reformat all their web and email. Far more likely to succeed would be to entice browser and email client developers to produce smart HTML strippers (and Flash readers, etc.) to produce a text-only output for use in voice synthesizers, and/or develop voice synthesizer plug-ins that process the HTML etc. as proper inflections (for bold, underline, etc) or statements ("quote"/"unquote") to be spoken.
There's a relatively small but steady market for accessibility-related software. Much of what's produced is subsidized by tax money, of which there's a high user-per capita quotient. A developer might not sell as many of such programs, but with fewer users per dollar, that means less support downstream. And with only a few developers focusing on that market, they can each make some decent money. Of course open developers such as the Mozilla group could do the same, for the usual reasons.
To hook up with people in this area, visit with the accessibility people found at many public and university libraries (at some universities it's a separate department).
Another problem needing fixing is closed caption voice-to-text processing, to give the deaf (or the Deaf, the capitalization is an important distinction) the ability to watch the now ubiquitous videos on news site and such, without having to wear their eyes out trying to lipread the low rez/bandwidth video usually produced. Take in video, buffer for later use, read audio and produce closed captioning, and send output to a window with CC synced to and overlaying the previously buffered video.
Note to commercial developers: producing such things under tax-supported/non-profit/government agency label might not earn a lot of money, but what it does earn can be taken as tax-deductions, as can the "money" that goes into the inevitable (and admittedly high-per capita) support.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Most sites don't provide mobile pages and many that do create them just by using a different CSS file. That said, the blind probably do use mobile pages and RSS feeds to read content in lieu of poorly designed web pages. What money? The unemployment rate for the visually impaired is pretty high and many of the jobs they have do not pay well. Even so, some do pay, through the nose. JAWS, arguably the best screen reader product, costs almost 900 dollars. Even for that high price it can only really work well when site designers do follow the guidelines to make their sites accessible.Asshole.
...and to me, the response from the diabetic is cowardly at best. It shows a bitterness and a level of immaturity at accepting the diabetic diagnosis, and necessary lifestyle, for what it is.
Sure, you can take your twinkies and powdered donuts and shove them - I'll have the salad. I'm not happy with that, I'd rather have the sweets.
But the fact is, I'm stuck with this disease, but yet - I can choose to control it. Not perfectly, but surprisingly well with some discipline and strict adherence to medical advice and treatment. Hey, even then, it may just kill me a lot sooner than most, but it is what it is.
But you know what? Right now, in spite of some limits, and self-denial, my quality of life is every bit as good as any other sighted person in good health.
The blind, however, have little control over their condition, or their surroundings, or their interaction with the world. I see a moral imperitive to assist them if it is not overly burdonsome to do so. Web pages can be crafted in such a manner in most cases, except where the material is truly only visual (nekkid ladies)?
So hopefully I've helped to kill off that pathetic and selfish counterargument against access for the truely handicapped.
Sometimes it just has no excuse. E.g.,
1. government / local government pages. Even skipping past the issue that they should set an example by obeying the rules they voted into law... Exactly how do those depend ad revenue?
2. I go to some manufacturer's web page, to buy something or get some drivers like the GP, and... some are really a bad case of flash overdose, and some are full of ads too. Bonus points when occasionally it's not even to their own products. But anyway, WTF? I'm there either to buy something they make, or because I _have_ bought something they make. Why should I be bombarded with ads there? No, seriously.
And even skipping the banner ads, I've seen a couple where I had to go through loops and plough through pages after pages of marketing gibberish, just to get to the page with the prices. In at least one case I gave up because I just couldn't find the price list.
And a some have horrible colours, fonts and layouts too, and make wrong use of graphics at that, just because aparently someone thought it's all the rage to look like the funky marketing brochure. Thankfully that became a lot more rare over the years, but sadly it's still not dead, and it keeps coming back like a vampire.
This isn't just a case of "bad design" as in page layout and technologies used. It's outright stupid. It's not even just a case of letting the marketing drones in charge, it's letting the _stupid_ marketing drones in charge. If you want to sell me something, don't annoy me first and don't make it hard to get to (A) the specs, and (B) the prices and/or online shop pages. No, I'm not interested in how many decades of buzzwords you leverage, nor in your synergies, nor in how award-winning/industry-standard/customer-centric/buzzword-driven you are. I'm not there to play Bullshit Bingo, so just let me know (A) exactly what you sell, and (B) for what price.
At any rate, the couple of cents they might get in ads there, sorry, just aren't worth losing a potential sale over, no matter how I want to look at it. And it feels _petty_ that when I'm looking to buy something that costs hundreds of bucks, someone tries to shaft a few cents out of me with their maze of ads. It's like meeting their sales guy and seeing him trying to steal my office pens. It just doesn't make a good impression, ya know?
3. (Or 2B.) Some game publishers' pages. E.g., dunno, I want to know what their latest game is all about. Or I bought it and need a patch. Or whatever, really. And I'm forced to sit and twiddle thumbs while their flash loads, then have to read the information in a tiny window, with a tiny font, split into a gazillion tiny pages, and with a shitty colour scheme to boot.
I mean, wtf? Either I'm looking to buy their game, or I already blew some money on their game. And especially in the latter case, let's make one thing clear: the whole market for unfinished buggy games exist only because of the promise that they'll make up by offering a free patch later. I'm already annoyed by that deal, don't push it. Making me essentially pay for the patch by watching ads, or worse yet by putting it on some shitty site that makes me wait an hour for the download unless I pay to subscribe, is just adding insult to injury.
And let's make another thing clear: I _paid_ for that game. Don't make me go through a mandatory form that wants to know even my exact street number, telephone number, birth date, and size of condoms I use. I'm looking at you, EA. I already paid, ok? I'm not your data-mining guinea pig too.
Admittedly, probably the blind don't play first person shooters or console RPGs much, but I find it just as annoying as a guy who doesn't even need glasses yet.
4. But perhaps the best way to say it is that I have been before one of the guys who programmed those shitty sites, or helped fix their performance problems. I still have nightmares about some colour schemes like orange on orange-ish yellow, or cyan on bright blue, that I had to implement during the dotcom years. Or the clas
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We shouldn't forget the welcome side-effects of accessibility requirements; they can often offer positive benefits well beyond their original target audience.
Take the Americans with Disabilities Act. Among other things, stuff gets wheelchair accessible. Which also makes them stroller accessible! Traveling with a young kid in Europe is much, much harder than it is here, since all the work to make things work for wheelchairs also works with strollers. Moving equipment around on carts is also a lot easier.
We can get similar effects with metadata. In SIlverlight, we're doing a lot of work for it to support accessibility, both for screen readers and for captioning of audio assets. It turns out that infrastructure metadata is enormously useful for searchability and indexing. Getting a nicely transcribed text stream into media assets enables a whole lot of cool stuff, like being able to automatically build menus and transcripts. And being able to search for, and seek to, keywords.
My video compression blog
The thing about the changes needed for web accessibility is that it requires web pages that are more machine-parsable (since screen-readers need to parse web pages better than visual-oriented browsers, where the parsing can be all thrown off as long as the end display works out). So it surprises me to see so much opposition to web accessibility when web pages that are standards-compliant and more machine-parsable should be very desirable.
I, for one, would love to have more of my content in more structured, more standards-compliant formats like RSS and Atom. It would open up more possibilities for autonomous agents, richer interactive clients, less reliance on overwrought Javascript navigation, and would provide better accessibility for the blind at the same time.
A lot the same arguments crop up here whenever the subject of web accessibility arises. It's pretty obvious that playing on people's sense of ethics/compassion once again fails, so let's concentrate primarily on the economic arguments:
1. First of all, the "free market" argument doesn't hold water, since most industrialized nations have some sort of welfare system. Every time a disabled person has to get alternative accommodation because they were refused it in the public sphere, the workaround comes out of pockets of the taxpayers, disabled or not. A business owner may not have to pay for not making a site accessible, but everyone working there (a.k.a. Joe taxpayer) will pay in the long term.
2. Having multiple systems to accomplish the same goals is almost always more expensive than having a universally designed one. e.g. We are seeing this with public transportation in many cities - making conventional busses wheelchair-accessible is cheaper than subsidizing both a conventional transit system and an additional paratransit system.
3. By increasing disabled persons' participation in society, we can stimulate the economy. We are not talking small numbers of ppl (approx. 10-20% of citizens in wealthier nation have some sort of disability and the numbers are higher in less wealthy nations). Nor are we talking small dollar amounts ($3 trillion dollars worldwide). Just because businesses are unaware of these stats doesn't mean the numbers aren't there.
Other things to consider:
Disabled people aren't demanding absolutely everything on the planet be accessible, where do people get this idea? Stop vilifying them as such already. Accessibility is not about "special treatment", it is about undoing something that was done wrong in the first place. It's like saying the abolishment of slavery is giving "special treatment" to Blacks. The real drama queens are the ones claiming that accessibility is such a huge burden (and without any stats to back it up).
Access to the internet may not be a right, but more and more activities connected to our rights are accessed primarily by the internet. With rare exception, everyone becomes disabled at some point in their lives. Disability isn't merely a special interest group, it's everyone.
Furthermore, as has already been said many times in many ways, the measures to make websites accessible are fairly easy and straightforward - otherwise ur doin' it wrong.
I think a few of you need a lesson in the Social Model of Disability.
The thing is, that if one follows BlackTarw's advice, then they also make a site that will work for those of us who run addons like NoScript and FlashBlock. In a nutshell, the more accessible to the blind and sight-impaired, the better the chance that a security-conscious user will actually be able to use the site without having to open their browser up to attack.
Personally, I can't stand sites that *require* Flash and/or JavaScript in order to be usable.
The Digital Sorceress
Blindness and diabetes are 2 completely different things, blindness being a lot worse as diabetes.
with diabetes you've got a diet issue, with blindness you're actually missing one of your primary senses. That's quite a difference. A difference which goes waaaay beyond comparing apples with oranges.
With diabetes you've still got all your senses, with blindness you haven't.
With diabetes you can still eat (however limited in some cases), with blindness you don't see anything.
Granted, diabetes has as a consequence you are faster tired. But that still makes it a lot more bearable as blindness.
Oh, and one last thing... You aren't confronted with diabetes all day; with blindness, darkness is endless and lasts until it's fixed or until you die.