Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Group That Makes Tech Work For the Disabled

Posted by Soulskill on from the adapted-for-use dept.

jfruh writes "When the iPhone was first released in 2007, the blind community assessed it and determined it was essentially useless for them. Today it's the number one phone used by blind people, largely because of the efforts of the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). NCAM is part of WGBH, Boston's public television station, which broadcast the first captioned TV show in 1972. Since then NCAM has been a lifeline that makes sure that people with disabilities aren't left out of the technological revolution."

7 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. "essentially useless" by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every device whose primary interface is graphical will be "essentially useless" to a blind person. Fucking duh! It's not just the iPhone, it's every touchscreen device made. The story of accessibility tech for people in IT is simple: Separate the interface from the control logic.

    No, really, that's it. That's all you really have to do to make accessibility possible. You gotta keep 'em separated. Do that, and as long as your documentation isn't horrible, it won't be hard for someone to come in and develop an interface for the disabled. HTML separates content from formatting -- good idea. But then corporations came along and screwed that all to hell, with javascript, proprietary plugins, etc., and now large sections of the web are uninhabitable by people with disabilities because they didn't follow Rule #1: Keep them separate.

    As far as making a touch interface useful to the blind... hepatic feedback and auditory tones to indicate where there hands are or what function is being called before committing the action. -_- But if you don't get it right in version 1, don't feel bad -- the government has screwed up far worse than you ever will. Despite color blindness affecting 5% or more of the population, our traffic signals are still red/yellow/green... whereas other countries have realized that red/yellow/blue works just as well and color-blind people aren't having to guess what color the lights are. Positioning isn't always reliable, and people get distracted -- multiple cues are better.

    So in summary, separate layout from content, and don't be like the government. :)

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:"essentially useless" by HaZardman27 · · Score: 2

      How can separating interface from logic be bad? Not doing so is just a great way to make your code inflexible. If you ever decide to turn something into a service, create a new GUI, add a CLI, etc., by following your way of engineering you'd have to rewrite the whole damned thing.

      --
      Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
    2. Re:"essentially useless" by LostOne · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just pointing out that green is not the problem for me (red/green colour blind) because the green traffic lights have a markedly different lightness. Green traffic lights look white to me and red ones don't. Rather, I can't tell the red and amber lights apart because the lightness of red and amber is too close. But don't let that confuse you too much. You have noticed that the lights are always in the same order, right? Guess why.

      --

      If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
    3. Re:"essentially useless" by oodaloop · · Score: 2

      You gotta keep 'em separated.

      Heeey, heeey, come out and play!

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    4. Re:"essentially useless" by aristotle-dude · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Every device whose primary interface is graphical will be "essentially useless" to a blind person. Fucking duh! It's not just the iPhone, it's every touchscreen device made.

      You are right, the iPhone and other devices are completely useless to a blind person.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  2. A little anecdote from some times ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some two or three years ago I was using an XMPP/Jabber client for Android and helping with various small issues now and then, most of all translation.

    One day there was a new bug report in the issue tracker, good explanation of the problem (text flow was not easily readable by screen reader), log files, and even a patch (quite some verbose Java code) to fix this while at the same time not really affecting the user interface.

    Oh, did I forgot to mention that he was totally blind and using a screen reader on his Android to be able to also chat with other persons on XMPP/Jabber?
    I was so amazed by the motivation, energy and overall quality of work from this determined person.

    This may be a personal experience and can't be generalized - but still. Keep up the good work and remember to write your layout (may it be websites or whatever you put out there for a larger audience) in a way that the actual content can be easily separated from the presentation.

  3. Blind leading the blind? by sureshot007 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, if a blind person can tell the difference between an iPhone and a Galaxy S3, doesn't that automatically negate any infringement claims?