Archive for the ‘Accessibility’ Category

Have You Upgraded Your Browser Lately? ::: An IEUC Website Progress Report

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

We are hammering away behind the scenes on a major retooling of our website’s design and source code to embrace HTML 5 and CSS 3. There has been a lot of innovation in the browser space and we are doing our best to take advantage of it. As a result, we won’t be able to maintain our current level of support for older versions of Internet Explorer, but we really aren’t doing anyone any favors by helping them delay an upgrade to a more capable browser. As always, even if a page doesn’t look particularly aesthetic in an old browser, you should still be able to read its content. But seriously, why make yourself suffer? Upgrade to a current browser release now, so you’ll be able to fully enjoy our new site when we roll it out later this Summer!

Remember, current versions of the major browsers are all free and fast downloads for anyone with internet connectivity. For Mac Users, the latest incarnations of Safari, Chrome, and Firefox will serve you well. On Windows you can look forward to an impressive Internet Explorer 9 as well as Chrome and Firefox. Firefox and/or Chrome should already be pre-installed on current Linux distributions. Modern cell phones and tablets generally have mechanisms in place to keep their browsers updated and any new device is apt to provide strong support for emerging web standards.

Keeping any of these programs updated couldn’t be more painless or important since they are all undergoing very rapid evolution at this time. Each new release is adding new features that will noticeably improve your browsing experience as more sites like this one roll out HTML 5 & CSS 3 based designs.

Of course if you are dealing with a school, library, or corporate setting where you can’t just install it yourself, remind the IT Powers That Be, that running older browsers exposes their organizations to countless security vulnerabilities and reduces your productivity and access to important websites!

If you are a Screen Reader User, the situation is slightly more volatile, since HTML 5 support may take some time to arrive. We are doing our best to use the new features in a manner that won’t compromise your experience, but it is vital that you contact the developers of your Screen Reader of choice to let them know that support for HTML 5 features like its outline model are important to you.

Remember, your Assistive Technology Vendor is the one in the best position to improve your web surfing experience. It makes no sense to force web developers to delay rolling out support for improved standards that benefit everyone’s usability when a software upgrade on your part can yield a superior web surfing experience to that produced by millions of ill informed attempts to tweak web sites for compatibility with obsolete assistive technologies.

In many respects, today’s Web Browsers have become just as important a computing platform as the operating systems they run under. Beyond surfing the web, you can now find plugins that extend their capabilities to everything from helping you follow Twitter and Tweak to your friends, to managing the sea of academic citations that go into a Ph.D. Dissertation, to taking some of the pain out of developing web content of your own, to helping you blow off steam with cleaver in-browser puzzle games.

By allocating a few minutes each week to making sure your web browsers are up to date, you’ll be doing your part to make the World Wide Web work smoothly and securely while unlocking countless new possibilities!

Upgrade now and surf safely, the Web awaits!

Posted in Accessibility, Consumer Advocacy, Technology, Webmaster's Log | No Comments »

Pre-Election Jitters — The Case for Mechanical Voting Machines

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Make no mistake, we love computers, especially where they are employed to give a measure of independence to people with disabilities.

They are remarkably fluid and can have their behavior changed on the fly possibly without leaving any forensic evidence of their previous configuration.

This makes us apprehensive of the potential for computerized election machines to be tampered with in ways that defy subsequent investigation. Indeed we are deeply troubled by radio reports that some of the new touch screen devices may be pre-selecting candidates of one party rather than presenting voters with a blank slate.

Equally troubling are reports of erroneous instructions on how to use the new voting machines and human factors issues that could lead voters to hit ‘enter’ after accidentally entering an over-vote, which would have the effect of disenfranchising them! Likewise, on other machines, there is a simple counter that indicates that some mark was scanned without any feedback for the voter to know that all of his or her ballot selections were picked up in the vote.

Moreover, given the ease with which a technically competent criminally minded election worker might be able to tamper with tomorrow’s election, we urge you to exercise extreme caution in using whatever configuration of voting device you are confronted with. Also, bring a camera or cell phone in with you if it is permitted so you can snap a photo to create a record of any screen layout that you think might have been tampered with and immediately raise the alarm with election officials.

Beyond the sheer cost of replacing our old fashioned voting machines with these new computerized systems — for non-disabled voters — their user interfaces are unduly complicated. Filling in little bubbles with markers will take much longer, be harder for our seniors, and be more stressful for all compared to the ease of pulling a physical lever in older voting machines. Moreover, those older mechanical systems were infinitely more tamper resistant than anything driven by a computer chip.

For those with disabilities we really like the new multi-modal systems and it makes perfect sense to have one of them at each polling place. But for the rest of us, lever based systems with their mechanical interlock to prevent over voting and the direct one-to-one correspondence between lever positions and reliably recorded votes have yet to be matched by the newer designs.

Newer is not always better and adding a computer to the mix doesn’t necessarily make for a better solution.

Posted in Accessibility, Security, Technology | No Comments »

Accessible Mobile Phone Options for People Who Are Blind, Deaf-Blind, or Have Low Vision

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010
As is often the case for ordinary citizens who don’t spend their days trolling the Federal Register for notices of pending rule making, we are very late to the party in reporting that the time for input to the Federal Communications Commission on possible government action to make mobile phones accessible to disabled consumers is nearly closed.

Indeed there are only two days left for End Users to register comments on this issue which was presented as follows:

In this document, the Commission, via the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (“the Bureaus”), seeks input from all stakeholders in order to be fully informed on issues raised by consumers and to determine the appropriate next steps to achieve telecommunications access. The Bureaus seek input on the following issues: The wireless phone features and functions in the current marketplace that are not accessible for people who are blind, have vision loss, or are deaf-blind and the extent to which gaps in accessibility are preventing wireless communication access by these populations; the cost and feasibility of technical solutions to achieve wireless accessibility for these populations; reasons why there are not a greater number of wireless phones—particularly among less expensive or moderately-priced handset models—that are accessible to people who are blind or have vision loss; technical obstacles, if any, to making wireless technologies compatible with Braille displays, as well as the cost and feasibility of technical solutions to achieve other forms of compatibility with wireless products and services for people who are deaf-blind; recommendations on the most effective and efficient technical policy solutions for addressing the needs of consumers with vision disabilities, including those who are deaf-blind; and recommendations on actions that the Bureaus or the Commission should take to address the current lack of access. For example, is additional guidance needed on specific access features that should be included in wireless products? Should the Bureaus or the Commission facilitate a dialogue among stakeholders in order to reach a specific agreement to address the accessibility concerns outlined herein?

Naturally, the notion that mobile devices need to be fully accessible by those who are both deaf and blind probably strikes fear in the hearts of device developers given the tremendous design constraints any such mandate would entail. Whether we like it or not, current devices are designed around touch sensitive flat panels without any tactile controls beyond volume and power on/off. Voice input is a viable way to let the deaf-blind dial, but without dedicated hardware, it is hard to imagine that capability getting them very far. Moreover, even voice dialing will break down in extremely noisy environments and won’t do a thing for the deaf-blind-mute who are every bit as deserving of accommodation as the merely deaf-blind.

What we don’t want is to see is some naive attempt to limit technology development to a one-size-fits-all solution or to demand that vendors create in-house solutions for every conceivable permutation of disabilities as a pre-requisite to marketing products to the general public, since such moves would likely hobble innovation by driving good companies out or the market and driving up prices to the point than ever greater numbers of the poor, whether disabled or not, would no longer be able to afford them. An equally unpalatable solution would be yet another tax imposed on phone use to redistribute wealth to the users and developers of accessibility devices.

From both a technological and economic perspective, about the best we can hope to achieve through regulation would be a requirement that handset manufactures provide some sort of well documented I/O Port and/or wireless access interface and software API by which any user authorized accessibility device could assume control of the phone to place and receive calls. Then we could give a sizable tax break to companies building on those hooks and let the free market find the best forms of accommodation. Phone carriers could also help set up a non-profit entity to carry out pre-competitive accessibility research and channel voluntary public donations to subsidize phone purchases and use by the disabled.

That said, the last thing we at the Institute would want to do is to get into proposing legislative fixes since we represent many with varying views. If you want yours to be considered by the FCC, you only have two days left to act by submitting a formal comment.

Posted in Accessibility | No Comments »

Site of the Day — Ajaxian

Monday, January 11th, 2010

If you develop websites or would like to see what technologies go into them, Ajaxian is the site for you.

Here you can find up to the minute reports of all the major javascript based libraries and related tools that you can use to take a site to the next level. You’ll also find discussions of hot web accessibility topics like yesterday’s revelation that many screenreader users have javascript enabled — a situation not contemplated by most site designers.

You can also sign up for newsletters, grab podcasts, and find out about the latest conferences and job offers.

The site also features rich indexing by topic in the left sidebar, making it is easy to go back in time and bring yourself up to speed in any area of interest.

Posted in Accessibility, Technology, Webmaster's Log | No Comments »