It would be nice if Firefox would give us a screen-reader simulation mode, right. They don’t need to do the whole screenreader software, but perhaps a sort of debugging mode, see what I mean?

Do a search for Fangs Screen Reader Emulator. It’s a plugin for Mozilla-based browsers that creates a text output mimicking what a screenreader would output.

Or do a search for WebbIE, a standalone app that can do the same thing.

I first checked out Zeldman.com and Mikeindustries.com, and boy what a disaster. First of all, the program read a whole bunch of garbage that left me entirely confused. I looked through the manual (itself, a beast) and the number of shortcuts and CTRL combinations made me nearly wet myself. Eventhough I could *SEE* exactly what was on the monitor, I still couldn’t figure out what or where the scary voice was reading.

I have since discovered that the program needs to be “configured” and I need to browse the web “in a certain way” for JAWS to function properly, but I think this is folly in and of itself. JAWS should just work right out of the box and websites should be clearly rendered verbally.

This would make it much more pleasant for people like myself, who need to use JAWS in order to test for Section 508 compliance. As of now I am damned to reading sites in print only mode (and even then sometimes doing something as simple as reading the previous or next paragraph is a challenge.)

So like, I design my page, do all my web standards and accessibility stuff, test it in FF, Safari, IE, etc. Then my final bit of testing would be to run it through the firefox JAWS simulator:

Screen goes blank, split in two. On the top, the text that the screenreader would be reading to the listener. On the bottom, source code with highlighting.

This sounds feasible, doesn’t it? Someone smarter than me should just make the firefox plugin. You could even throw in all the keyboard shortcuts and stuff of JAWS.

I imagine that the tricky part of the screen-reader, the part that costs 985 of the 1000 dollars, is the voice and reading and etc, right? So, a mocked up display of what would be reading should be simple enough to anyone who knows how JAWS works?

Or am I just naive? That would be a handy, handy tool. Or is there one?

I have seen many people who have lots of ways of using the internet so to simply say “sit down with a blind person” solves nothing.

For those of you who have never seen Adaptive Technology in use on the web (especially in person), I think that these videos will help give you some more insight. I hope they help others. I know they helped me.

These are definitely worth watching.

http://www.doit.wisc.edu/accessibility/video/

Good Article. I currently work for a Construction company that has to deal with ADA standards on a constant basis. After having completing a project having a handicap person roll up a ramp in a wheel chair is heart warming.

One of the problems with using lists and then styling then is that Jaws etc don’t fully understand the styling so the user get’s ‘bullet’ read out before each item (if it’s a long list it soon get’s frustrating)

You also shouldn’t just think of blind people as the only ones who need support – there are all kinds of visual, cognitive and motor difficulties around. One of the things that helps some people is alternate color schemes e.g. hi/low contrast e.g white or blue, and have come across situations where it makes it easier for people with things like dyslexia.

Lots of able people find things like Jaws really intimidating but if you watch an experienced user with it they really motor.

There are free trial copies of accessibility tools like Jaw, SuperNova etc available to download and try – give them a go there an interesting experience!

I for one am happy to be a webdesigner. I have been designing since I left high school which will make it 7 years and counting. However, I can always recall as a kid all this crap about improving the accessible design blah functions of this here device (x) or this here piece of software (x) when really I didn’t see anything out that helped but really just generalized idea’s and ideals that were suppose to be active by the year 2k and beyond again this was fueled by all your famous magazines, and other tech related shows we all have seen.

I for one wish I could have stuck it out to contine being a programmer but its not my forte even though I dabble in it. To me it seems that manufactor’s need to 1) Get a group started 2) get user opinions 3) develop core commitment to fixing the problem 4) Do user research / test and gather as much info as possible 5) Define a scope to go by 6) Implement 7) Test again and finally realease a set of software/hardware that work efficiently together to get the desired results.

Had I been born with genious of the developers of apple,mac,linux I would have already released my own OS, Browser, and UAC ( User Accessibility Core ) on my own. But alas, I only care about designing print/web data.

I do have something to point out. When I was a kid and was making crap pages for excite.com I recall dozens, hundreds of people running to make websites. I didn’t recall but only a few people at that time that were impared that even cared about the web. I didn’t know then to cater to the blind, death, diabled etc.

Funny, I went to our cpu lab and asked some of these people how do they use the computer when they have impairments. Some say well “if the gov. gives me my 10k grant money to get my new pc and screen reader software and magnification hardware I’ll make it,”. Some never were even that lucky some were lucky your school even cared about you.

I then thought about it but never realized how important it would be to me and others to get data accessible to other people. I currently read a book called ” Thinker Toys -A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90’s” by: Michael Michalko. Which all of you should read but it is dated but its a good book.

I think if we can definately get a want to develop the right core set of tools and software for accessiblity then we can but at who’s expense? BILL maybe? Laws of physics say to get energy something has to be given. Who’s gonna give this time for the good guys/gals?

If we can navigate through it and find the content we were looking for, chances are big that an experienced JAWS (or other screenreader) user will be able to use the site very well. They know their screenreader much better than we do, they can use it much faster and more efficiently, so if we can use a screenreader to access our site’s content, they definitely can.

It’s just one rule of thumb to go by, mind you, but at least it’s something.

Personally, I more or less did this a long time ago when I first tested my site using a screenreader. This was about 6 months ago, very shortly after actually launching my site. It was far from perfect, but it was a CSS-pure design. I didn’t turn off my monitor, because I was too fascinated by watching JAWS move the cursor around on my screen. However, the overall experience did make me feel like things were much better with this method.

Robin Christopherson’s presentation was an eye-opener to many people when it comes to true accessibility and the impact of inaccessible code to a blind web user. Along with Joe Clark, Ian Lloyd and Derek Featherstone’s presentations, it pointed out two very important things:

1) true accessibility is nearly impossible, as there are too many factors and complications that we simply cannot tend to effectively considering today’s technology
2) you can get very far nonetheless through some basic principles and best practices. CSS layouts do help with this

The subsidy idea for assistive technology producers is a great one. I’d much rather see governments spend their time and money on that than on legislating accessibility for websites.

Damn, Malarkey is gonna love me for saying that.

When will a designer take on the challenge of making a wheelchair that looks great? Instead, everywhere you look, they are made of harsh looking metals and awkward moving parts. It’s wonderful that people are trying to develop a…

As Mike Davidson did point out, the buzz over what accessibility is or isn’t has increased a lot over the last weeks.

Having been immersed in an Actionscript project for the better part of those days, I managed to miss the comments to the posts, and…

It would appear that the Disability Rights Commission might be taking its first small steps towards introducing definitive guidelines in regards to web accessibility.

Thankyou,

Jack A Dexter

In my Web Design classes I typically try to convey to my students the importance of standards and accessibility when creating a web site: Standards because without a unified format for creating web pages, the web becomes a cluttered, ugly…