accessibility

Appeals court rules paper money unfair to blind – May. 20, 2008

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Federal appeals court says Treasury Department is violating the law by keeping dollars the same size and feel.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a 2006 district court ruling that could force the United States to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values. Suggested solutions include making bills different sizes, including raised markings or using foil printing which is a method of hot stamping that is tactically discernable.

Judge Judith Rogers, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, wrote that the Treasury Department’s failure to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to the visually impaired violates the Rehabilitation Act’s guarantee of “meaningful access.” The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was originally designed to extend civil rights to disabled individuals and provide them a full opportunity to participate in American society.

Rogers also wrote that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has not met his burden to show why changing the money would impose an undue burden. “A large majority of other currency systems have accommodated the visually impaired, and the Secretary does not explain why U.S. currency should be any different,” Rogers wrote in her ruling. The euro, for example, is one currency designed to be more readily identifiable. Each banknote has a predominant color and large numbers to make them easier to see. Also, the larger the denomination of the euro, the larger the banknote.

“We are very pleased with the ruling,” said a spokeswoman for the American Council of the Blind. “We are hopeful that the Treasury Department will now get busy and come up with a plan to make paper money more readily identifiable for the visually impaired people all over the world.” The Treasury Department was not immediately available for comment.

The suit was originally filed in 2002 by the American Council of the Blind and two individuals with visual impairments, Patrick Sheehan and Otis Stephens. The appeals court ruled 2-1, with Judge A. Raymond Randolph dissenting. Judge Thomas Griffith joined Rogers in voting to uphold the lower court ruling. 

Source: Appeals court rules paper money unfair to blind – May. 20, 2008

Visual Verification: Audio CAPTCHA Broken, How Will Web Site Operators Respond?

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In the article Google’s Audio CAPTCHA Cracked, PC Magazine is reporting impending security challenges for a technology on which we depend in order to reasonably accomodate our need for equal access and participation on the Internet. While companies obviously work to improve the security and usability of visual CAPTCHA, what action will they take toward the blind and visually impaired? Will they improve audio CAPTCHA or will they restore the dreaded “No Blind People Allowed” signs that still bar us from admission to many web sites? How much more difficult has it now become to convince others to unlock their doors to us? As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Computerworld Article: Blind users still struggle with ‘maddening’ computing obstacles

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We have reproduced this recently published, well-researched Computerworld article entitled Blind users still struggle with ‘maddening’ computing obstacles in a simple, text format for easier reading by all blind and visually impaired Internet users. The original source of this article may be rather challenging to read for many from an accessibility perspective.

Anyone who is able to reasonably access the original article by way of the link above will find some of the comments disturbing, to say the least. If at all possible, you are urged to add a comment of your own supporting the fact that accessibility is quite simply “the right thing to do” in all cases where it represents a “reasonable accomodation” that makes the difference between our exclusion or our full participation in society.

April 16, 2008 (Computerworld) Put your graphical user interface to this test: Adjust the contrast on your display until the screen is completely black. Now, perform basic e-mail, word processing and Web-browsing tasks. What? Having a problem?

Welcome to the world of the 1.3 million Americans who are blind. For them, the world of personal computers, office automation and the Internet offers mixed blessings. That world wasn’t designed for them, but with the right assistive technology, they can take part in it. When everything works well, they have access to an ocean of information vastly greater than anything previously available to the blind. But pitfalls and maddening frustrations are a constant reality.

Screen readers

Blind computer users mainly rely upon screen-reader software, which describes the activity on the screen and reads the text in the various windows, explained Gayle Yarnell, owner of Adaptive Technology Consulting Inc. in Amesbury, Mass. Yarnell is blind.

It can take a while to wade through a strange site — it can be maddening. Jay Leventhal, editor of AccessWorld Magazine

Screen readers cost between $500 and $1,000, although there are also freeware screen readers, she noted. (Windows XP and Vista come with a screen reader called Narrator, but even Microsoft Corp. says it’s not powerful enough for serious use.)

The screen reader’s output can be sent to the computer’s speakers as a synthesized voice or to a Braille display. The latter uses tiny push pins to create a pattern of raised dots that can be read by a moving finger. A unit with an 80-character line (enough for one full line of text) costs about $10,000, and Yarnell said that most blind people use a 40-character unit, which costs closer to $5,000. Braille displays are better than speech for editing because individual characters can be isolated, she noted, and they are a necessity for the deaf-blind.
She also said that it lets her silently read e-mail while talking to someone else.

Although major operating systems usually have built-in screen readers for accessibility by the blind, they are rudimentary at best. In fact, after starting Narrator, the screen reader that comes with Windows XP and Vista, Microsoft’s introductory screen says, “Most users with visual impairments will need a
screen reader with higher functionality for daily use.” Here’s an example what a blind user would hear upon opening up Computerworld’s Web site with Narrator activated in Windows XP, the operating system most in use today.

But knowing what the screen is saying is just the beginning — the blind user then has to issue commands using keyboard shortcuts, because the mouse cursor is useless. Using shortcuts involves a lot of memorization, but at least the option is always available — or at least it used to be. “Starting with Version 3.1, Microsoft tried to make sure there was a keystroke to do everything in Windows,” noted Dave Porter, an accessibility consultant and head of Comp-Unique Inc. in Chicago. “But with Vista, we seem to have lost that thread.” The main problem is that, with Vista, the effect of a keystroke depends on the situation about a third of the time. Also, there are things that simply can’t be done with keystrokes, said Porter, who is blind. “It’s not so much that the keyboard shortcuts are different but that the user interface has changed,” said Rob Sinclair, director of accessibility at Microsoft.
“We have gotten away from a lot of menus and created a more simplified experience. No one would argue that there is no learning curve, but we have seen value and heard great feedback from those who have taken the time to learn the new version. “There are some amazingly powerful features in Vista for those with disabilities, like a Start function that begins with a search field,” Sinclair added. “You can type in the name of an application, or a command, or search for a keyword in a document or an e-mail. You can launch any application with a few
keystrokes, easier than using menus.” He also noted that the latest version of Microsoft Office still supports the old shortcuts.

Beyond Windows

Speaking of user applications, compatibility with a screen reader can be a crap shoot, and some commercial software packages include custom controls that screen readers can’t recognize, said Dan Weirich, co-founder of GW Micro Inc., a screen-reader vendor in Fort Wayne, Ind. “In the days of DOS, there was a fixed number of characters across the screen, so identifying the information in the different parts of the screen was relatively simple,” he said. “Finding the boundaries of the information is harder now, since there is no native indicator as to what is inside each window when you scrape the screen.” He said his software comes with scores of preconfigured settings for various software packages, but no tweaking is required to run with the most commonly used applications.

Finding ways for a screen reader to process new display technologies — especially on the Web — is a constant struggle, Weirich added. “Different standards come along that are difficult to handle, and then there is a breakthrough and we have a fix, and it works. That is ongoing.” He also said that Microsoft worked with screen-reader vendors so that Vista versions were available the day Vista hit the shelves — whereas there was a delay of six to nine months after the release of Windows XP.

Beyond packaged software lies the world of in-house applications, where things can really go haywire for the blind user. “We often find that screen readers don’t work with in-house applications — it’s too easy to break the interface,” said Curtis Chong, president of the computer science division of the National Federation of the Blind and an official at the Iowa Department for the Blind in Des Moines. “It can be as simple as an application that puts up a lot of windows on the screen which are not windows from the viewpoint of the operating system. The screen reader will see one huge blob of information and read across the window boundaries,” said Chong, who is blind. He said this can cause problems for job applicants, for example. “You can have the best paper credentials in the world, and pass the HR screening test, and be the person they want — and then the question comes up of, ‘What e-mail program can you use? What word processor can you use?’ Your answers can cause the job to evaporate,” Chong said.

Porter was actually nostalgic for the 1990s. “It was all DOS and mainframe interfaces. If you knew how to handle DOS and word processing, you could probably get a job. We could train people to do a specific job, and it worked, and the employer got a loyal employee determined to keep that job and fight to keep up with changing technology. These days, they want a jack of many trades — computer skills, plus phone skills, Internet surfing, marketing, people skills and the ability to travel.”

The Web

Of course, these days, many computers are used principally to access the Internet — and there is no telling what a blind person will encounter there. “It can take a while to wade through a strange site — it can be maddening,” complained Jay Leventhal, who is blind and serves as editor of AccessWorld Magazine, produced by the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. “Sometimes you find what you want to buy, but then you can’t find the submit button. It seems to literally not be there. A skilled [blind] user can navigate a majority of the sites on the Web these days, but you have to master certain tricks, like jumping from header to header in order to skip over a lot of junk, and use the search function to get the information you want. An average user can struggle for a long time looking for something and will even struggle on a familiar site.”

Best Practices

Here are a few official HTML guidelines:

  • A text equivalent for every nontext element shall be provided.

  • Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation.

  • Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.

  • Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet.

A major sin among Web sites is a failure to use the HTML ALT attribute, which can be used to attach a descriptive label to a nontext item. If an image, for example, has an ALT label, the screen reader will read it. Otherwise it is forced to read the file name, which often amounts to useless gibberish.

There are accepted guidelines for designing accessible Web sites, especially the guidelines derived from Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended. Cyndi Rowland, director of WebAIM, an accessibility organization at Utah State University in Logan, noted that the guidelines are mandatory for federal Web sites and for organizations doing business with the U.S. government. A number of states have also adopted the guidelines. Her organization has a checklist of 16 requirements derived from Section 508, including use of the ALT description for images and image-map hot spots. Among other things, they state that frames should be given descriptive titles and that data tables should have row and column headers. There is a separate list of 12 requirements for applets.

One percent compliance

Rowland noted that in 1999, her organization surveyed 100 higher-education Web sites. Twenty-three percent of the opening pages were compliant, but compliance dropped to 3% for pages one link away and fell below 1% for pages two links away. Meanwhile, a recent survey of random university Web pages found only 1% compliance. “In almost 10 years, there has been almost no improvement,” she said. Leventhal said it’s fairly obvious when Section 508 guidelines have been followed. “You will find an invisible link — which the screen reader can see — that lets you skip the junk and jump to the main content. For some reason, many Web sites have large groups of repetitive links that you’ll want to jump over. Meanwhile, not using the ALT tag is like not using punctuation. It’s maddening.”

Such frustration can produce lawsuits, and the National Federation of the Blind is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit against Target Corp. because the Target site proved to be inaccessible for blind users. Chong said the basic problem was a “next” button that was coded in such a way that it was invisible to screen readers, leaving blind users stranded. The problem has been fixed, but the lawsuit continues because Target hasn’t committed to accessibility, Chong said. Rowland noted that similar lawsuits in the past never produced any legal precedents because they were settled out of court, so this one will be watched closely. The federation’s lawyer, Dan Goldstein, said the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in March 2009. He wouldn’t comment on the possibility of a settlement, and Target didn’t respond to requests for a comment.

But what literally frightens blind users is the rise of so-called CAPTCHA technology for Web site security. (CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test.”) To deny access to bots, the user must input a password that is displayed in a moderately distorted image that a machine can’t read. Of course, the screen readers can’t read it either. “Many blind people are aware that they can’t use particular sites, but they don’t know why,” Leventhal said. He said his own site simply asks a question whose answer would be known to human beings, such as, “What color is the sky?” Some sites have an optional button to play an audio file that reads the password. However, this still leaves out the deaf-blind.

Beyond computers, sources complained of cell phones so complicated that they, too, need expensive screen readers. Many have small, flat buttons that are useless to the blind, culminating in the iPhone with no buttons. The iPod and its imitators don’t have buttons either, and even kitchen appliances today often have digital readouts that are useless to the blind. But Rowland noted that such considerations need to be weighed against the vast increase in electronic information during the past several years, at least part of which is accessible to the blind. “You can’t say that cup is half full, but there is something in it,” she said.

Visual Verification: EarthLink Implements Audio CAPTCHA for spamBlocker, Tears Down "No Blind People Allowed" Sign

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One of my tasks as ACB Radio’s volunteer webmaster is to send responses to feedback from listeners. After sending a note to an EarthLink customer this morning, I promptly received one of the company’s dreaded invitations to add my e-mail address to the customer’s approved senders list, so that my response and all future correspondence could be delivered successfully. In the past, these messages linked to a request form containing an inaccessible CAPTCHA (visual verification) that did not permit blind and visually impaired people to add themselves to the approved senders list of any EarthLink customer. The result was that some e-mail senders were not permitted to communicate with EarthLink customers with spamBlocker configured at its maximum level of protection, simply due to their physical lack of eye sight. On July 18, 2006, I wrote an article entitled Visual Verification Accessibility: Nobody Home at Earthlink covering exactly this issue.

This morning, I noticed an important difference in the request form linked from the invitation. An audio CAPTCHA has been included, now affording blind and visually impaired users the opportunity to request communication with all the company’s customers, regardless of spamBlocker settings. It turns out that, according to an update announcement posted to the company’s Web Mail Blog, the audio CAPTCHA was added on November 3, 2006. I am glad to see this issue finally resolved after almost three years of inaccessibility, and appreciate EarthLink’s reasonable audio playback CAPTCHA implementation.

Concerted, Multidisciplinary, Organized and Systematic Approach to Accessibility Evangelism Needed

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I’ve been thinking long and hard about accessibility evangelism in general as of late. Although a few positive differences have been made along the way, the overall results of our efforts here at Blind Access Journal have represented significantly less than the proverbial drop in the bucket. Once in awhile, an online petition is initiated, a company voluntarily decides to make its products and services more accessible or an organization files a lawsuit in an attempt to compel a company to become more accessible based on existing, vaguely defined legislation. Despite continuous, ongoing technological innovation for the sighted, we blind and visually impaired people are being left further and further behind, both by a mainstream technology industry that largely ignores us and an assistive technology industry that can’t or simply won’t innovate to the level that is really needed in order for us to participate in society on anything approaching parity with our sighted peers. Unfortunately, a few dedicated souls in the online, connected blind community can’t reverse these disturbing trends alone. Successful accessibility evangelism that results in our being afforded the opportunity to fully participate in the information age is going to take a concerted, multidisciplinary, organized and systematic approach directed by an organization with a positive track record of acting in the best interests of the blind and visually impaired.

At the Blind Access Journal, I can count on the fingers of my two hands the number of people who have provided us with anything approaching a significant amount of assistance with any of the accessibility evangelism we have undertaken. As this continues to be the state of affairs, we at the Journal become discouraged, decreasing our inspiration to do our critical work. Any accessibility evangelism efforts must involve a consistently concerted effort on the part of at least tens or hundreds of members of the blind community and those who care about what happens to us. Until the amount of participation in accessibility evangelism increases by leaps and bounds over its current levels, no major steps forward can be taken. The following represent examples of steps one could take to further the cause of equal accessibility for the blind:

  • When you see an accessibility issue, send an e-mail to the company asking for its resolution in a reasonable way that permits our participation.

  • Promptly sign online petitions, write letters and take other steps requested of you by accessibility evangelists.

  • Send an e-mail to us or to others you believe to be effective accessibility evangelists asking what you can do to help further the cause of equal access.

  • If you are a blogger or podcaster, whether blind or sighted, discuss accessibility and ask your audience to take positive action.

The blind community is small, yet there are at least tens of thousands of us already connected to the Internet. If a company’s representatives hear from only one or two people asking for an accessibility accomodation, those requests are likely to go largely ignored in most cases; however, if they hear from even a couple of hundred people asking about the same issue, that’s bound to be sufficient to garner some serious attention. This is especially true if many such requests can get escalated up the company’s or organizations management chain of command. If these requests can be made by a large number of people in an organized, systematic manner, the impact could be even greater.

In order to be most effective, I have come to the conclusion that accessibility evangelism needs to be done in such a way as to coordinate the efforts of individuals in an organized, systematic manner. The employees and management of companies and organizations will become confused if many individuals make complex requests for wildly differing forms of accessibility accomodations. It is obvious that such confusion and complexity would turn anyone off to the possibility of working with us to meet our needs in a reasonable way that allows us to participate while minimizing the economic and time impact to their business operations. Both the individual and the organizational components of such evangelism are critical. The following are examples of steps that could be taken to make accessibility evangelism a more organized, systematic enterprise:

  • House an accessibility evangelism department or team within the umbrella of an organization that truly cares about what happens to blind and visually impaired people. Examples of such organizations might be the Accessibility Is a Right Foundation, The American Foundation for the Blind or Benetech.

  • Devise an accessibility help desk blind and visually impaired people may contact when access barriers are encountered, assign the access issue a case number and work the problem toward an acceptable resolution as would any other technical support help desk operation in the world.

  • Create a knowledge base featuring assistive technology and mainstream solutions to accessibility barriers.

  • Establish sound policies and procedures for handling accessibility advocacy projects from the initial request for help, through appropriate escalation steps to final disposition.

  • Using information from the help desk in accordance with policies and procedures, initiate private and public advocacy campaigns in both the blind community and the sighted world at large to encourage positive resolution to those barriers that seem particularly intractible.

Such a mammoth project clearly requires coordination and support by a team of core individuals who are able to direct and encourage the advocacy efforts of the entire blind community. This core group should represent a multidisciplinary cabal of men and women from a widely diverse field of interests and professions. Experts in communications, marketing, public relations and sales could make requests of companies and organizations to improve accessibility and relate positively with the entire blind community to encourage their proactive participation in the accessibility evangelism process. Computer programmers and other technology experts could devise solutions to access barriers and educate other programmers on all the cost effective ways to go about resolving the issues effectively. Journalists could objectively report on the current state of accessibility issues and write opinion pieces covering all the ways the barriers may be effectively reduced or eliminated. As a last resort, lawyers and political scientists could address accessibility issues from a legal and political point of view, attempting to achieve structured settlements, filing lawsuits and encouraging the passage of additional, relevant legislation as needed. It takes significant depth to properly address these critical issues in ways that can result in successful outcomes.

It is our human nature to take the path of least resistance. We are often finding excuses for doing nothing about the issues that impact us. We believe “someone else” will take care of the problem on our behalf. This is an incredibly destructive fallacy for our community. There are far too few someone elses available to do this critical work. A truly effective accessibility evangelism effort must be concerted, involving effort expended by a large number of members of the blind community as well as those in the sighted world who care about what happens to us. In order to achieve any lasting impact, accessibility evangelism ultimately must be housed within a recognized organization and be comprised of a team effort with a dedicated core group of multidisciplinary professionals who will utilize a solid set of policies and procedures to direct the efforts of a much larger group of volunteers and the entire blind community. If we really desire the accessibility we must have in order to participate in society on an equal footing with the sighted, it is time for us to get serious by combining individual and organizational resources into an accessibility evangelism project that can take the needs of the blind community and educate the rest of the world in ways that turn problems into effective solutions.

Why Not Enjoy a Little Fresh Air?

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On January 31, 2008, the Accessibility Is a Right (AIR) Foundation was launched. The foundation’s first initiative is to provide a free screen reader to all blind computer users, or those who would like to be able to access computers, around the world. The blind still suffer at least a 75 percent unemployment rate in the United States and the other developed nations, and it is much higher in the rest of the world. Though initiatives do exist to get computers and even Internet connectivity into the hands of the less fortunate, these well-intentioned efforts almost always leave blind people behind. The result is that, though many blind people may be able to acquire a computer, it would be totally useless to do so without the needed access technology to read the information displayed on the screen. In the vast majority of cases, the less fortunate members of the blind community are not even able to afford $1,000, $600 or even $24 per month for the privilege of using a computer. This statement is not intended as one of complaint regarding the plight of a miserable, poor, small minority, but simply one of fact for tens of millions of blind people living outside the confines of the United States, United Kingdom, Western Europe and Japan.

The current assistive technology industry is based almost exclusively on the status of people with disabilities in the developed world. Blind and visually impaired people here in the United States have a number of ways to obtain expensive assistive technology products costing thousands of dollars. If they are children, parents and the school system work together to ensure the necessary hardware and software is made available. If they are working toward a career goal, Vocational Rehabilitation agencies may purchase all or most of the equipment. If they are employed, they may be able to afford some of the costs outright, arrange a payment plan with the assistive technology company directly or even purchase it on credit. Finally, in some cases, service organizations such as Lions International may step in to cover the costs. The availability of all these pools of funding helps to set the price of assistive technology. Companies in the field determine their research and development, overhead and other costs, then make wise business decisions concerning the price they can charge according to the basic economic principles of supply and demand.

With a 75 percent unemployment rate in the developed nations, most blind people simply can’t or won’t make their own assistive technology purchasing decisions. This means the “demand” for such technology is not ultimately coming from the blind consumers who will use it, but from schools, Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies and others. The result is that most of our current crop of assistive technology companies charge the prices they can get in the developed world, while they listen to those who “demand” the technology by spending the money. The people who spend the lion’s share of the money on assistive technology are not those who use it on a daily basis. The incentive on the part of businesses in this field is, thus, to listen to the stated needs of agencies, schools and other organizations rather than to the individual when determining the capabilities, enhancements, pricing and all other attributes of their product offerings.

Outside the nations known as the “developed” world, the situation remains bleak for the blind. In addition to barriers imposed by poor social attitudes regarding the capabilities of blind people, there is almost no access at all to the expensive assistive technology we enjoy here in the USA. While sighted people in these nations also don’t tend to own computers, they are often able to visit Internet cafes, libraries and other public places where computer and Internet access is made available at a reasonable price or no charge at all. Sadly, with very few notable exceptions, these public computers do not feature the necessary access technology to permit use by a blind person. Once again, blind people are left behind with respect to their sighted peers.

The AIR Foundation is here to change this bleak state of affairs for the blind all around the world. Serotek has donated the company’s System Access To Go (SAToGo) screen reader to the foundation for the purpose of making it available to the blind completely free of charge in as many languages as possible. Now, any blind person who can get their hands on a computer with Internet access running either the Windows Vista or Windows XP operating system can also read the screen using a free screen reader provided by the AIR Foundation. A blind person visiting an Internet cafe, public library or any other public computer access facility can now use that computer right alongside their sighted peers, without the need to have a specialized piece of software installed. Any blind person who needs to access web sites, exchange e-mail, write letters, work with the computer’s operating system or perform other common computing tasks will substantially benefit from the free screen reader offered by the AIR Foundation in partnership with Serotek. The foundation is also working with companies such as Lenovo to make the free screen reader available in mainstream computers right out of the box.

Will System Access To Go replace all other screen readers? Certainly not. Many blind people will continue to need the configurability, scripting and other advanced features found in JAWS or Window-Eyes to access complex educational software and the applications used in today’s busy modern workplaces. We can only hope that innovations such as the AIR Foundation and solutions such as Serotek’s Remote Incident Manager will serve to turn the blindness assistive technology industry upside-down, breaking the stranglehold of the agencies and organizations who often want to make our technology decisions for us, making accessibility available to the less fortunate, and compelling the currently entrenched players in the field to stand up and really listen to the needs and desires of those in the blind community who use their technology on a daily basis.

I Have a Dream, Too…

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On this day commemorating Martin Luther King’s birthday, I thought I would try my hand at penning an I Have a Dream speech of my own. I will recite this speech for the first time on the Desert Cafe show coming up at 22:00 UTC on ACB Radio Interactive today.

I have a dream that…

  • We will be considered first as fully living and breathing human beings and citizens of our nations of birth, afforded the same rights and obligations as all others irrespective of our disability.

  • We will understand our own value to society, and will learn to take the initiative, becoming more assertive as a blind community so as to stand up for our rights to accessibility and equal participation.

  • We will ask for and insist not on hand outs but only on the hand ups we require in order to be productive and self-supporting.

  • All blind and visually impaired people will do their best to take their own initiative, volunteering and working to improve their own lives rather than unproductively sitting at home collecting government checks and other public assistance benefits.

I have a dream that…

  • We will be granted the opportunity to rise or fall, succeed or fail based on our aptitude, the quality of our character and the merits of our actions, rather than negative assumptions and stereotypes or the inaccessibility of a piece of technology.

  • The Internet will represent the same opportunities to learn, grow and participate for us as it already does for sighted people all over the world.

  • Segregation and “no blind people allowed” signs such as those presented by inaccessible, visual only CAPTCHAs and other visual multifactor authentication systems will be torn down and replaced with inclusive solutions that deliver security and accessibility for all, regardless of sensory ability.

  • Our ability to enjoy our lives, learn and work will be dictated by our own characteristics, rather than by the actions of others, inaccessibility of technology or misconceptions surrounding our presumed inabilities.

  • Agencies, assistive technology companies, consumer groups and nonprofit organizations in the blindness field will work always for the best interests of blind people, avoiding, at all costs, any and all undue influences that may interfere with that goal.

  • Blind and visually impaired people world wide will stand up and advocate for the accessibility of technology and transportation alternatives we must have in order to succeed and survive!

We can make this dream come true only with constant, collective action on the part of members of the connected online blind community and those friends and relatives who care about us. I implore all of you who hear or read this speech to please do everything you can to make a difference by expanding and participating in all positive efforts to evangelize accessibility!

How Do We Effectively Educate the Public and Combat False Assumptions About Accessibility?

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I just finished reading Independent Street : Is Your Web Site Blind-Friendly? How to Avoid a Lawsuit by Wendy Bounds. While Wendy provided a good overview of the issues surrounding the law and the need for web site accessibility, I found many of the comments to be rather shocking! How do we effectively carry out the monumental task of educating the public at large and those who could become part of the accessible solution of the future? How can we show the world that accessibility is a good idea and that, in most cases, becoming accessible doesn’t have to represent a huge expense? Just as most of us recognize the inherent human rights of other populations, such as African-Americans and women, we must recognize that accessibility is a right and a necessity in order for those of us with disabilities to be participating, productive members of society. I have just posted my own comment to this article and ask that each and every one of you who read Blind Access Journal please do likewise. It may also be helpful to check out Mike Calvo’s excellent response to the article and many of its associated comments. We must all do our part to get out the good word about accessibility.

Newsgator Asked to Make FeedDemon Stand-Alone RSS Reader Accessible

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Now that Newsgator has freely opened virtually all its software and web-based RSS aggregation services to everyone, a number of us decided to check out the new offerings for their accessibility to the blind and visually impaired. While we found that the Newsgator Online web-based RSS reader (the company’s answer to Bloglines) is wonderfully accessible and the Newsgator Inbox application remains available to us, it seems FeedDemon continues to lie just outside our reach. The potential for accessibility of this stand-alone RSS reader for Windows is clear to see; we all just need to come out in numbers asking Newsgator to make a few modifications which would result in the program’s usability with our assistive technology.

We are asking all blind and visually impaired people who avail themselves of one or more Newsgator services to utilize the Customer Feedback option in their accounts, send e-mail to Newsgator’s technical support team and, if it is possible to work around the inaccessible CAPTCHA, post a supportive note on this thread on the Newsgator Forum. As we are aware right now, two blind people have written to Newsgator asking for this accessibility. It is quite likely going to take a great deal more communication in order to make FeedDemon accessibility happen. I urge all of you to compose and send your notes to Newsgator as soon as possible.

January 13, 2008

Dear FeedDemon Developer Team,

I am writing to ask that Newsgator make the FeedDemon RSS reader application accessible to the assistive technologies on which blind and visually impaired people rely. FeedDemon is already widely recognized as the best desktop RSS reading client for the sighted; please make it so for the blind and visually impaired, too. We would like to be able to avail ourselves of all that FeedDemon has to offer, right alongside our sighted peers. We’re already using Newsgator Inbox, Newsgator Online and possibly other services; please add the demon to the list of those we are able to access.

I believe making FeedDemon more accessible would be rather inexpensive, and it would certainly serve to further increase its reach in the technology industry. For instance, educational institutions and government agencies now use blogs, podcasts and other RSS content on an increasingly frequent basis. Were FeedDemon made accessible, it could be used as the RSS reader of choice by these agencies, as it would be Section 508 compliant.

I have tried FeedDemon on for size, despite numerous reports of its inaccessibility. I believe there are a small number of changes that would move us in the right direction:

  1. Make the program’s pull down menu bar keyboard accessible.

  2. Enable the use of arrow key and tab keyboard navigation in the keyboard shortcuts and all FeedDemon options.

  3. Create a quick, keyboard accessible way to move between the list of feeds and the newspaper view for a particular feed.

I and many others in the blind community stand ready, willing and able to assist your developers in the task of making the application more accessible. Your confirmation and willingness to help is anticipated, and I thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

Darrell Shandrow

Accessibility Evangelist