Thanks to Allison for locating this excellent article by Standards-schmandards thoroughly covering the provision of accessible visual verification, especially by means of an audio alternative. Examples and a link to some actual code are included.
Chatting with Adam Curry at the Expo
Shownotes
I took the opportunity to chat with Adam Curry at the expo about accessibility and he made some extremely positive comments on the Daily Source Code. Thanks, Adam. We’re looking forward to a brighter future of participation in all that Podshow has to offer the podcasting community.
Apologies for the windy weather audio artifacts in the introduction and conclusion of this episode of the podcast. I did try some new post-production techniques involving fading the segments at appropriate moments. Please provide feedback on my results.
Links:
- Daily Source Code #278
- Adam Curry pledges to insure that accessibility is a core value in the development of Podshow products and services.
- Allison and Ron of the NosillaCast
- Thanks for all you did to make the meeting with Adam Curry a reality!
- BayCHI with Steve Williams
- It was very enjoyable hanging out with Steve at the expo. He got to meet Allison and Ron right after my chat with Adam. Cool!
- Digital Mediacast Experiment
- Mentioned Michael Carrino when discussing how to podcast, etc.
- The Blind Scholar
- I’m working with Reagan D. Lynch on a new accessibility related project to be officially announced in approximately two weeks. NDA!
A Tribute to Chanel
Karen shares with us the news of her retired guide dog’s passing away yesterday along with a comforting story about animals who pass out of this world into the next. Condolences to Karen for her loss!
This morning I received some sad news from a close friend of ours. My
previous dog guide Chanel passed away yesterday. She was a black Lab age 10. Today, I am in mourning, grieving her loss. This tribute is for Chaneli whom will always have a special place in my heart. At a later date, Darrell and I will do a podcast about Channelli. For now, I am passing along this link which has a beautiful poem called The Rainbow Bridge about pets, guide dogs and other animals that we all have loved and whom passed on. I first saw this when Topper, my first Dog Guide, passed away 3 years ago. A friend whom I met on the internet (from my journaling mailing lists) shared it with me. Hope it helps those of you whom lost an animal close to you.
Visual Verification: Digging for Accessible Registration at Digg.com
Digg is an interactive technology news site where the users get to decide which stories do and don’t make the cut. The staff at Digg describe their service as follows:
Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories
for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.
Unfortunately, if you’re blind this is not the case. Though the site appears to be generally accessible, the blind are turned away at the registration desk due to another inaccessible implementation of visual verification. I contacted the company approximately four hours ago via their web site to request registration assistance. No response has yet been forthcoming. Anyone want to start a pool to see how long it takes for me to get registered with this site?
Visual Verification Lockout: Please Don’t GoDaddy!
Shownotes
- UltraHost
- Web hosting for the blind community and beyond!
- GoDaddy
- Does not allow blind people to order their services online. Please avoid doing business with the company until they fix this.
- TicketMaster
- Also does not allow blind people to order online. Even worse here as we are forced to miss out on all discounts and other special offers only provided via the Internet.
- Yahoo!
- Yahoo’s “accessible” visual verification is a blackhole since company representatives never actually call!
- Does not allow the blind to comment on most blogs, create new blogs, sign up for accounts or do anything else that requires passing the company’s completely inaccessible word verification!
- Natalie Brown
- Listen to my favorite POP/R&B musician sing Locked in the Shadows as you think about the implications of the first word of that song’s title with respect to inaccessible visual verification!
Increasing Accessibility: The ADMIT Approach
Shownotes
If you are a decision maker in a company that is being asked to become accessible to potential customers with disabilities, following the ADMIT approach will allow you to rise up from the cold, dark abyss of exclusion, inaccessibility and isolation into the bright, sunny promised land of inclusion, accessibility and participation. As always, all feedback is welcome.
- Admit the existence of the problem and the need to become accessible.
- Decide to take sincere actions to reasonably solve the problem.
- Make contact with the community of technology users with disabilities to help you implement, test and troubleshoot.
- Implement accessibility as a core value throughout your company, doing your best now and building it into all new products and services.
- Test accessible solutions on real people with disabilities.
AOL AIMs Higher by Providing Audio Challenge / Response During Signup
We have just discovered that AOL has recently made its signup process for the AIM service accessible by allowing the blind to use an audio based CAPTCHA (visual verification) system to hear the characters to be entered into the edit box in order to create an account. Congratulations AOL! Thanks for doing the right thing in this area. How are you doing on your visual verification accessibility, Google?
Welcome TWiT Listeners!
Huge welcome to everyone visiting Blind Access Journal after listening to me chat for a few minutes about accessibility on This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte live from the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. It was an incredible honor to be in the TWiT hotseat and the entire expo was fantastic!
Huge thanks go to Allison of the NosillaCast for this picture and a few others you will see in the near future.
Update on Google’s Censorship of Blind Bloggers
Approximately three days after being locked out of the ability to post new articles to his blog, Steve Bauer, the blind Blogger user featured in the original story, received a response indicating that his blog was manually reviewed and will no longer be classified as spam. He confirms he is now able to post. While solving the word verification scheme takes a sighted person a minute or two, it takes three days for Google to allow a blind person to accomplish the same thing! This is not accessibility and we in the blind community cannot accept this ongoing treatment by Google and other companies doing business on the Internet. The current state of the art in accessibility for visual verification is to provide audio playback of the characters to be entered. Let’s all, blind and sighted alike, absolutely insist on this accomodation.
Flight to the Podcasting Expo – A Long Sound Seeing Tour
Listen as I chat with a visually impaired business man, meet an attorney, hang out with one of the Podcast Outlaws and chat with Joe from Yahoo about the need for a real solution to their inaccessible visual verification, all while traveling from Phoenix to Ontario, California to attend the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. Enjoy. Feedback is welcome as always.