lynx-dev WSJ re: WWW accessability issues for blind browser users...

[William Fulmor]

I think this might be of interest...
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                The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
                                July 6, 1999
                                      
Dodge's E-conomy

Brace of New Federal Requirements
Could Help Out Disabled Web Users

   By JOHN DODGE 
   Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
   
   DOUG WAKEFIELD loves eBay, but he isn't a big fan of Omaha Steaks'
   flashy Web page. Oh, Mr. Wakefield likes the steaks just fine -- it's
   just that he's blind and www.omahasteaks.com is a nightmare for him to
   navigate.
   
   For obvious reasons, blind Web surfers much prefer what their sighted
   counterparts consider dull and boring -- purely textual sites. That's
   because text can be sent to a Braille display or a speech synthesizer
   so the visually impaired can understand it, but graphics don't
   register.
   
   By next summer, however, there's hope that the Web will look different
   to blind surfers and other disabled people thanks to a government
   effort. Next Aug. 7, suppliers will be barred from doing business with
   the federal government unless they follow electronic and
   information-technology accessibility guidelines for people with
   disabilities. The hope is that the guidelines' adoption by suppliers
   will help change Web habits so other sites follow suit. (And if that
   doesn't work, the fear of lawsuits may do the trick.)
   
                                                             Omaha Steaks
                                                  [1]www.omahasteaks.com1
                                                                         
                                                                     eBay
                                                         [2]www.ebay.com2
                                                                         
                                                        U.S. Access Board
                                                 [3]www.access-board.gov3
                                                                         
                                                                   EITAAC
                          [4]www.access-board.gov/ notices/eitaacmtg.htm4
                                                                         
                                      Trace Research & Development Center
                                                   [5]www.trace.wisc.edu5
                                                                         
   The initial guidelines were released to the public May 12 and are
   being firmed up by the U.S. Access Board for a public-comment period
   beginning in early November. By Feb. 7, they will be set in stone and
   companies will have six months to comply. The mandate arises out of
   the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, signed into law on August 7,
   1998 and containing amendments strengthening and updating Section 508
   the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
   
   That guidelines would impose, for instance, that all that all
   government suppliers "provide at least one mode that does not require
   user vision." One commonly accepted way to accomplish this is by
   providing tags with textual descriptions of graphics and photographs.
   That way, the 57-year-old Mr. Wakefield would know his mouse rests on
   a picture of steaks licked by barbecue flames at omahasteaks.com. Many
   sites do this today -- eBay and the Interactive Journal are just two
   examples -- but for such tags to be effective, they must be used
   consistently and offer rich descriptions. Unfortunately, that tends
   not to be the case.
   
   Economically, the disabled represent a powerful chunk of the U.S.
   population. The Census Bureau says one out of five Americans suffers
   from a disability and one out of 10 grapples with a serious disability
   -- on the order of 50 million and 25 million people respectively. With
   the over-65 population expected to increase to 20% of the U.S. total
   by 2030 from the low teens today, the number of disabled will increase
   substantially.
   
   Mr. Wakefield, blind since birth, is an accessibility specialist for
   the Access Board, a small independent federal agency charged with
   making government services, resources, jobs and facilities available
   to all U.S. citizens. Despite their hostility to each other in the
   marketplace, leading hardware and software companies such as IBM, Sun
   Microsystems and Microsoft put down their swords to serve together on
   the group's Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory
   Committee, or EITAAC, formed last fall to create a universal set of
   guidelines. (In truth, these rivals come together more frequently than
   you'd think, most often to wrestle with thorny technology issues such
   as standards.)
   
   "The incremental cost of adding accessibility features into new
   products is actually quite small." says Microsoft director of
   accessibility Greg Lowney, whose staff of 40 works full time to ensure
   universal access to the software giant's products. "Accessibility is
   in everyone's best interest. A person with disabilities affects five
   other people they interact with. It might be relative or a co-worker."
   
   IBM program manager for special needs John Steger is more blunt. "It's
   good business."
   
   Indeed, there is one very strong motivation for the private sector and
   governments to quickly follow the federal government's lead next year
   -- discrimination lawsuits. For instance, if a disabled person is kept
   out of a job because of poor Internet access, he or she would likely
   have a strong discrimination lawsuit, says Joe Tozzi, director of the
   technology center at the U.S. Education Department, which in early
   1997 came up with "Requirements for Accessible Software Design" for
   its contractors to follow.
   
    Most Web sites I frequent contain some tags, but their application is
       inconsistent: Standing items tend to have them, but time-sensitive
            content such as a news photograph either doesn't or just says
            "graphic" or the name of the subject. If you're wondering how
         compliant your site is insofar as tags are concerned, measure it
         against www.trace.wisc.edu. Just run your mouse pointer over the
   graphic and if there is a tag, it should automatically appear. Tell me
          what you find: [6]Share your results6 with John Dodge and other
                           Interactive Journal readers, or send e-mail to
                                          address@hidden
                                                                         
   Invariably, new guidelines invite more lawsuits, but that's the price
   of a better society. "It's kind of like consciousness raising -- all
   of us weren't as conscious 25 to 30 years ago as we are today about
   gender, racial and ethnic issues," says Mr. Tozzi. Resistance to the
   guidelines and bickering over their substance among the 27 EITAAC
   members has been almost nil, he adds.
   
   "I have not spoken to a software designer or developer that hasn't
   said, 'Had we thought about accessibility up front, it would have been
   an easy [problem] to address,' " says Mr. Tozzi.
   
   The people the guidelines are intended to help often respond with a
   resounding "huh?" when asked about them.
   
   "I don't know what you're talking about," said Rusty Perez, a
   30-year-old blind high-school teacher in Lakewood, Calif., when asked
   how the guidelines could help him. As Web-savvy as he is, he still has
   problems surfing the Net.
   
   Mr. Perez uses software that reorganizes the Web page into more
   logical form so the text can be read to him. But sometimes the logic
   of the page doesn't follow, or tags are absent. "Often I come across a
   link that is not labeled," he says. "Then I've got to sit there and
   wait 35 seconds while the reader goes 'http:// blah, blah, blah'
   before I hear the file name -- which may not be meaningful to me."
   
   Mr. Wakefield recalls the time he mistakenly ordered four copies of a
   software package from a Web site instead of the single copy he wanted.
   "You had to check the number of copies and I just totally missed it
   until I saw my bill," he says. "If you're blind, it was very hard to
   see. I thought I was being careful."
   
   The guidelines cover the full range of disabilities, including
   deafness and hearing loss; physical disabilities such as loss of
   strength, reach and manipulation; tremors and lack of sensation;
   speech and cognitive disabilities such as thinking, reading and
   remembering disorders; and other disabilities such as epilepsy and
   short stature.
   
   "This is almost as big as Y2K in terms of the amount of energy and
   time that will go into this," says Martin Bayne, a 46-year-old
   newsletter publisher in Clifton Park, N.Y., who suffers from
   Parkinson's disease. "This will be the first time sites will have been
   built from the ground up by both disabled and able-bodied Web
   designers with the scaffolding in full view every step of the way,"
   
   An egregious omission from any article on the topic of accessibility
   would be failure to mention The Trace Center at the University of
   Wisconsin-Madison, which has pioneered and catalyzed technology
   solutions for the disabled since 1971. It sat on the EITAAC, and
   influential business leaders such as Microsoft's Bill Gates
   characterize its director, Gregg C. Vanderheiden, as a pioneer in the
   field.

<snip other material>
   
   URL for this Article:
   http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB93094576360214979
   5.djm
   Hyperlinks in this Article:
   (1) http://www.omahasteaks.com/
   (2) http://www.ebay.com/
   (3) http://www.access-board.gov/
   (4) http://www.access-board.gov/notices/eitaacmtg.htm
   (5) http://www.trace.wisc.edu/
   (6) http://wellengaged.com/engaged/wsj.cgi?c=WSJ7&t=323
   (7) mailto:address@hidden
   (8) http://www.e-stamp.com/
   (9) http://www.stamps.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
      Copyright ? 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 
                                      
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                                  [BUTTON]

References

   1. http://www.omahasteaks.com/
   2. http://www.ebay.com/
   3. http://www.access-board.gov/
   4. http://www.access-board.gov/notices/eitaacmtg.htm
   5. http://www.trace.wisc.edu/
   6. http://wellengaged.com/engaged/wsj.cgi?c=WSJ7&t=323
   7. mailto:address@hidden
   8. http://www.e-stamp.com/
   9. http://www.stamps.com/