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Giving the Blind Better Web Access
crimeandpunishment writes "Decades ago, the breakthrough for the disabled was making buildings wheelchair accessible. Today, it's making their world Web-accessible. Disabled groups are hailing new legislation Congress has sent to the President. Among other things, the measure will give the blind greater Internet access through smart phones, and require devices like iPhones and Blackberrys to be hearing-aid compatible. 'It breaks down barriers for all of us,' says Mark Richert of the American Foundation for the Blind."
Will we all be stuck with text only websites, which is what Section 508 virtually sets up as the ideal.
No. It's called graceful degradation. You can have all the fancy shit you want but your webpage should be a coded in a way that if certain features aren't available that it gracefully degrades into a simpler form.
It also has provisions for CC or subtitles for the HOH/deaf. This has me hoping. Despite the fact that most of the players support CC, the online video/movies seem to ignore it. It strikes me as odd that every DVD has either CC or Subtitles (they have to by law), but only 18 movies in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy catetory at the itunes store have CC.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
How would it put up barriers for anyone creating web content? All blind people need is for the webpage to be correctly coded according to the HTML specs and not have the important content in a fancy JavaScript that alters the DOM after the page has loaded (although web readers can usually put up with it). It would break down barriers not only for blind people but also for computers and browser makers as well as the general public, open source operating systems (no more IE-only websites) etc. etc.
As for devices, Apple's Mac OS X is compatible with most screen readers and braille keyboards, even the iPhone has some fancy accessibility built-in, Apple does a really good job at making it accessible from the get-go. Even Windows and most Linux distro's have accessibility built-in although a lot of applications could use some shining up in that area (hot keys being one of them and again, not putting main content in obscure places).
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