Blog accessibility

Someone wrote me that the blog comment box wasn't accessible. But it looks accessible to me. When you click the link you get an audio file of the text—or some other checksum text that also works.

Anyone want to weigh in?

I take it back ... it's been a long, long day over here ;) *shuffles off to drink more coffee and stops trying to be helpful* ;)

Hi Tim,

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines say:
"CAPTCHA: If the purpose of non-text content is to confirm that content is being accessed by a person rather than a computer, then text alternatives that identify and describe the purpose of the non-text content are provided, and alternative forms of CAPTCHA using output modes for different types of sensory perception are provided to accommodate different disabilities."

So you do comply to the web guidelines.

However, captcha always has some accessibility problems. Whenever you add a task that is too hard for computers to solve, you will inevitably also exclude humans who cannot perform the task, for example because they have cognitive or other disabilities.

The Captcha that blogger uses has a fallback option, which provides an audio alternative for people who are blind and can't see the letters. But the fallback requires Quicktime, a technology that isn't available on all browsers.

Even if it works, the audio alternative still isn't accessible for people who are deaf-blind.

If you want to be sure not to exclude anyone, drop the CAPTCHA. But that would probably result in having to pre-approve all comments since there will be a lot of spam otherwise, which would be a pain for you and the users. If you want to keep the CAPTCHA, the current combination of visual and audio is about as good as it gets.

In all seriousness, how to you use the internet if you are both deaf and blind?

You may be legally blind but have limited vision, such that you need to have the web pages zoomed incredibly large. I don't know if the CAPTCHA pictures can be resolved at that magnification. But I'm not sure that anything else would offer any better alternative.

That's true. There are surely also legally deaf people who are not completely so. Or even hard of hearing. The audio problem is like listening to one of those number stations—lots of static and random noise on top.

Tim, plenty of dead-blind people use braille monitors and typewriters.

http://www.deafblind.com/dbequipm.html

Thanks. That's excellent. I'd love to see if we have any hits. It looks like the market is split, though.

I think the internet is one of the best sources of information for people who are deaf-blind. They don't have to wait for new information to be translated into braille but can do it themselves.

Braille displays are used by people who are deaf-blind and also by a shrinking number of people with low or no vision. The last group is moving towards screen readers (browsers that automatically generate speech). Modern braille displays can render up to 80 characters. There are even dynamic braille displays with only one character that moves under your fingers but that's pretty tricky to get the speed right.

Both braille displays and screen readers basically need the same features from sites: clean markup that includes all the content in text.

Many of these types of assistive devices will not show up in the stats of the website, because they plug in to Internet Explorer or another browser to do part of the rendering.

>Many of these types of assistive devices will not show up in the stats of the website, because they plug in to Internet Explorer or another browser to do part of the rendering.

Interesting.

If you want to kind of see a Braille display in action, watch the movie Sneakers - David Strathairn plays a blind computer geek (Whistler) who uses a Braille display. I remember being fascinated with the dots on the display moving up and down.

I'm not too sure that braille displays are on the way out quite yet - I do work with blind journalists here in the UK where braille displays are absolutely necessary... why? Well screen readers are wonderful devices but braille users have the advantage when it comes to quickly being able to check their spelling!

Here's an authorisation idea which any screenreader would be happy with:

http://zoints.com/register.z

I doubt they are on the way out at all. Many people prefer a braille display over audio for reading (some people are audio learners, some learn best by other means (print or braille... ever heard the phrase it goes in one ear and out the other?). There are also various portable devices that use a braille display. It saves lugging around huge volumes of text. I've heard you can access the Internet with them as well. And as the above person mentioned, they are good for checking spelling.

Yeah, I was talking about devices for using the internet, not for computer use in general. Screen readers are more useful for reading than writing.