The majority of popular touchscreen phones include two built-in accessibility features for people with visual impairments: a screen magnifier and a screen reader. They also offer a simpler version of the software, that can be used by kids, elderly and disabled. But, are there phones that are directly designed only for visually impaired?
BlindShell Smartphone:
My intention is not to advertise on this blog, but I would like to present a great solution that I recently came across. I visited Blinden- und Sehbehinderteenverband Steiermarkt, where they friendly showed me the products they offer. Among other I had a chance to get hands on the BlindShell Smartphone. The phone is available in multiple languages and can be used solely via finger gestures. For the ones that are not completely blind the phone has a very simple interface, with large white font on black background. A person navigates with one or double click. For the ones that are more experienced users and are more technology savvy, there are many more advanced features. Even a web browser is already integrated.
Since I said that I do not want to use my blog as a promotion tool, I will not mention the price, but I need to say, that the smartphone is definitely affordable.
You can get more information on their website: https://www.blindshell.com/
Friday, March 10, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
WA Law Requirements in Austria
In Austria they are aware of the extreme importance of web accessibility
and they adopted a web accessibility law, not only for the public sector but
also private providers that started running on 1. 1. 2016.
On the following links there are more information about the law requirements. All websites are in German only:
Digitales Österreich: https://www.digitales.oesterreich.gv.at/barrierefreies-web-zugang-fur-alle
WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/Service/Unternehmensfuehrung--Finanzierung-und-Foerderungen/Unternehmensfuehrung/Strategie--Organisation-und-Marketing/Barrierefreiheit---Info-der-Wirtschaftskammern.html
Document from WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/service/t/Barrierefreie-Websites_Inhaltliche-Umsetzung_2015-06.pdf (From june 2015, but still worth reading)
On the following links there are more information about the law requirements. All websites are in German only:
Digitales Österreich: https://www.digitales.oesterreich.gv.at/barrierefreies-web-zugang-fur-alle
WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/Service/Unternehmensfuehrung--Finanzierung-und-Foerderungen/Unternehmensfuehrung/Strategie--Organisation-und-Marketing/Barrierefreiheit---Info-der-Wirtschaftskammern.html
Document from WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/service/t/Barrierefreie-Websites_Inhaltliche-Umsetzung_2015-06.pdf (From june 2015, but still worth reading)
Accessibility (outside of web) as a necessity
When thinking
about web accessibility specific it is always good to acquire a broader
understanding of the accessibility in general.
In Oxford
Dictionary the noun "accessibility" has following meanings:
1.1) The
quality of being easy to obtain or use.
1.2) The
quality of being easily understood or appreciated.
1.3) The
quality of being easily reached, entered, or used by people who have a
disability.
What many do
not understand is, that accessibility should not be an option, but necessity.
In Universal Declaration of Human Rights is written that all human beings are
born equal in rights. However a right to access something is often neglected.
People with
disabilities, regardless of the severity of dissability, should be viewed as an
equal part of the society. Everyone deserves to be as independent as possible.
Especially those who are taking part in design of any kinds should always keep
that fact in mind. With making any kinds of products, buildings, services, etc.
accessible, people with dissabilities are offered this independence.
Nowadays it is
quite clear and commonly understood worldwide, that buildings need to be accessible for
people on wheelchairs. Almost every bigger store has a parking specially
reserved for the disabled. Other groups of people with disabilities are still
being considerably neglected.
Did you ever
wonder how a bling person can use an ATM machine to withdraw money, how a blind
person can use an elevator or how it is possible to order a ticket at a ticket
machine? Those are just some of the daily struggles that people without
dissabilities can not even imagine. There are slowly more and more products in
the public space which are designed in a way that also a blind users can
operate them, but they should become self-evident in the near future. Below are
some good practice examples.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Elevator_panel_with_Braille.jpg)
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Websites worth reading
In this blog post I present some of the websites that are worth reading if you want to get closer to the topic of web accessibility.
W3C - Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
(only in German) Barrierefreiheit im Internet ... einfach erklärt: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/start/willkommen.html
Website by Luke McGrath, an accessibility consultant and writer: https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/
Accessible Culture: http://accessibleculture.org/
We are Colorblind: http://wearecolorblind.com/
International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (you can download publications from ICCHP 2016 for free): http://www.icchp.org/
European Comission: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/standards/accessibility/index_en.htm
W3C - Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
(only in German) Barrierefreiheit im Internet ... einfach erklärt: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/start/willkommen.html
Website by Luke McGrath, an accessibility consultant and writer: https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/
Accessible Culture: http://accessibleculture.org/
We are Colorblind: http://wearecolorblind.com/
International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (you can download publications from ICCHP 2016 for free): http://www.icchp.org/
European Comission: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/standards/accessibility/index_en.htm
Monday, January 23, 2017
Web Design for the Color Blind
Even though the colour blind people are not actually blind we can
classify them into a group of vision impaired people. There are different types
of colour blindness but in general those people are facing the inability or
decreased ability to see colour or perceive colour differences under normal lighting
conditions. This might lead to limited or incorrect perception of websites. The
requirements for colour-blind-friendly websites are part of the “Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0” and point out the importance of colour blindness
in the context of web design.
8% of the male population and 0,5% of the female population are colour-blind.
Unfortunately most of the websites do not take this into consideration and do
not think about colour blindness when designing their websites. It is really
important that at least the most crucial information on the website is designed
in colour-blind-friendly way. This can easily be tested using colour contrast
checkers, many of which are available for free. It is evident from the fact
that there are simulations of two colour blindness types available in Photoshop
that colour blindness is also becoming important part of a designer's work.
There are many different forms or types of colour blindness, some of
them are quite common and some are rare, but we still have to consider all of
them if we want to create accessible and well preserved design. An important
facts is, that more than 99% of all colour-blind people can see colour. The
assumption of seeing only black and white, which comes out of its name is
therefore completely wrong. Colour-blind people are not actually colour blind
but just colour deficient. The deficiency is different in each of the types
which make colour-blind people part of different user (sub-) groups. Within all
the different forms there are however also varieties in the severity of colour
blindness. Usually the severity is divided into four categories: absolute,
strong, moderate and slightly severity. Slight colour blindness may barely vary
from the normal vision.
One of the color blindness simulator pages :http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
Great sources to learn about color blindness are:
Very interesting for designers (print or web), is the following link: https://designshack.net/articles/accessibility/tips-for-designing-for-colorblind-users/
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Assistive Technologies
In this blog post I am going to present most common assistive technologies that are being commonly used by disabled.Below there are descriptions of the selected assistive technologies, which
are copied from Berkeley: https://webaccess.berkeley.edu/resources/assistive-technology
Commonly used by the blind computer users is also Braille Display, which is electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters. It can be used alone or in combination with screen reader. There is a website in German language, that describes different assistive technologies and their use in detail, among everything else that there is to know about web accessibility. It is one of the best websites about web accessibility that I found so far: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/verstehen/hilfsmittel
- Screen
readers: Software
used by blind or visually impaired people to read the content of the
computer screen. Examples include JAWS for Windows, NVDA, or Voiceover for
Mac.
- Screen
magnification software: Allow users to control the size of text and
or graphics on the screen. Unlike using a zoom feature, these applications
allow the user to have the ability to see the enlarged text in relation to
the rest of the screen. This is done by emulating a handheld magnifier
over the screen.
- Text
readers: Software
used by people with various forms of learning disabilities that affect
their ability to read text. This software will read text with a
synthesized voice and may have a highlighter to emphasize the word being
spoken. These applications do not read things such as menus or types of
elements - they only read the text.
- Speech
input software: Provides
people with difficulty in typing an alternate way to type text and also
control the computer. Users can give the system some limited commands to
perform mouse actions. Users can tell the system to click a link or a
button or use a menu item. Examples would be Dragon Naturally Speaking for
Windows or Mac. Please note both Windows and Mac have some speech
recognition utilities, but they cannot be used to browse the web.
- Alternative
input devices: Some
users may not be able to use a mouse or keyboard to work on a computer.
These people can use various forms of devices, such as:
- Head
pointers: A
stick or object mounted directly on the user’s head that can be used to
push keys on the keyboard. This device is used by individuals who have no
use of their hands.
- Motion
tracking or eye tracking: This can include devices that watch a
target or even the eyes of the user to interpret where the user wants to
place the mouse pointer and moves it for the user.
- Single
switch entry devices: These kinds of devices can be used with other alternative input
devices or by themselves. These are typically used with on-screen
keyboards. The on-screen keyboard has a cursor move across the keys, and
when the key the user wants is in focus, the user will click the switch.
This can also work on a webpage: the cursor can move through the webpage,
and if the user wants a to click on a link or button when that link or
button is in focus, the user can activate the switch.
Commonly used by the blind computer users is also Braille Display, which is electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters. It can be used alone or in combination with screen reader. There is a website in German language, that describes different assistive technologies and their use in detail, among everything else that there is to know about web accessibility. It is one of the best websites about web accessibility that I found so far: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/verstehen/hilfsmittel
Why (not) developing accessible websites?
After listening to many web
accesibility lectures or presentations and reading a lot of articles and posts
I got an idea about the issues with accessible web development. There are a lot
of missunderstandings that not only clients who want a website but also web designers
and developers believe into. They simply do not see the benefit that they
could get with an accessible website or they simply do not acknowledge the need
for it at all. Following I will describe the most common misunderstandings for
both clients and developers.
1.) Not understanding the term "Web Accessibility"
There are a lot of people who never heard the term »Web
Accessibility«. I was listening to one of the presentations at ICCHP 2016,
where they presented some answers to a question, what do you think web
accessibility means. There were a lot of people who simply thought that »accessibility«
reffers to a certain website being »online« and ready for viewing, which means
they think that a website is not accesible if for example they loose internet
connection or a server breaks down.
Web accessibility refers to the
inclusive practice of removing barriers for people with disabilities. Making
website accessible means, to make it accessible for people with dissabilities.
2.) There are not many disabled
The United Nations Convention on the
rights of persons with disabilities states that "persons with disabilities include those who
have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in
interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective
participation in society on an equal basis with others"(http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/health/disability)
At the EU level, about 28% of women aged 16 and over declare an
activity limitation compared to 23% of men of the same age group (http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1569&context=gladnetcollect).With the population aging, the group of disabled people is
becoming larger and larger.
3.) People with disabilities cannot use a computer
With the help of Assistive Technologies that provide greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that
they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing,
disabled can use a computer without problems, if the softwares are compatible
with them. Therefore they can also browse the web without problems, if the
websites are accessible.
A lot of disabled use computers frequently in
their daily life, some of them even professionaly.
(Aditional reading: http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter03.html)
4.) It would not bring profit
Not only disabled gain from accessible websites. Usually the
complete UX is improved, which means that everyone benefits from it. Not only
that accessible websites are easier to interact with, they are also better
optimized for the search engines. That means that people would like the page
more and the page would be easier to find, which of course leads to more profit.
5.) Making website accessible is too complicated
Making a website accessible in the present day is relatively easy,
since the guidelines for accessibility are described so well. If accessibility
is kept in mind from the start it is easy to just add essential elements to
code. Developers do not need any complicated knowledge, but just have to follow
descriptions in the WCAG guidelines.
6. ) It is expensive to make website accessible
Making a website accessible is not particularly expensive,
especially if the accesibility is kept in mind right from the start of
development. There is not much additional code that has to be written, so the
costs should not be significally higher.
7.) It is time consuming to make website accessible
Making a website accesible would not add a considerable amount of time
to the development process. If developers think about accessibility from the
first day they start with the development it would be just a few additional
lines of code combined, which would not delay the developing process in any
aspect.
8.) It will decrease the loading speed
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (Example of use)
There are a lot of Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools, or Web Accessibility Checkers as also often called, available online. The majority are completely free and very simple to use. User only has to input an URL address and wait for couple of minutes to get results, which are often very well described. That way it is easy to improve accessibility of the tested webpage or website.
One of the checkers is developed directly by W3C: http://validator.w3.org/
Some Accessibility Checkers offer HTML Editors, where user has to input his HTML code, which gets checked.
All checkers work on a principe of checking if the code is matching with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
Here is quite a detailed list of available web accessibility checkers; https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
In an example below I used AChecker to check the oficial website of FH Joanneum. (http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php)
I also checked the website with EIII checkers that I mentioned in my post about benchmarking. (http://checkers.eiii.eu/)
One of the checkers is developed directly by W3C: http://validator.w3.org/
Some Accessibility Checkers offer HTML Editors, where user has to input his HTML code, which gets checked.
All checkers work on a principe of checking if the code is matching with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
Here is quite a detailed list of available web accessibility checkers; https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
In an example below I used AChecker to check the oficial website of FH Joanneum. (http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php)
I also checked the website with EIII checkers that I mentioned in my post about benchmarking. (http://checkers.eiii.eu/)
Web Acessibility Benchmarking
Unfortunately there are not many sistematic web accessibility analysis that have been done over the past few years.
European Internet Inclusion Initiative has done some of them, mostly in year 2015. The scores are based on tests carried out automatically with the use of EIII checkers, that they developed. You can check the benchmarking results on the following link.
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/benchmarking/previous/
The most interesting research was the one where 1065 European Websites were checked:
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/benchmarking/testrunresults/a6bc0b1d-598d-4c00-af2c-a0a073124c64
European Internet Inclusion Initiative has done some of them, mostly in year 2015. The scores are based on tests carried out automatically with the use of EIII checkers, that they developed. You can check the benchmarking results on the following link.
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/benchmarking/previous/
The most interesting research was the one where 1065 European Websites were checked:
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/benchmarking/testrunresults/a6bc0b1d-598d-4c00-af2c-a0a073124c64
Friday, January 20, 2017
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) is an international community with a mission to lead the Web
to its full potential, which among other means making it possible-to-use for
everyone. W3C develops many technical specifications and guidelines. One of
them is the document “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0”.
WCAG 2.0 covers a
wide range of recommendations for making Web content accessible for disabled,
including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning
disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities,
photosensitivity and combinations of these. The creators of WCAG 2.0 believe
following their guidelines also often makes any Web content more usable to all
users and not only users with disabilities.
WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
are divided into 4 categories, which are: perceivable, operable, understandable
and robust. All of the information on
the Web Information must be presentable in ways they users can perceive, all functionalities
must be available from a keyboard (not only by clicking), all of the
information, the operation of the user interface must be understandable and the
content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide
variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. Each of this 4 principles
also has subcategories (guidelines), which are well explained. For each guideline
there is a document that shows us how to meet the requirements of the guideline
and a document for understanding the guideline.
The complete document with guidelines is available here: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Diversity of Web Users
Already the creator of the web, Tim Berners-Lee,
has said that the power of the web in its universality, which means that the
web should be accessible to all, regardless of their disability. Nowadays, when
the use of the Internet not only for leisure, but also in professional life has
become almost commonplace, the accessibility has even greater importance. Due
to inaccessible websites the disabled are partially or completely unable to
receive online information, resulting in an extremely low potential for
inclusion in the information society.
Currently there are about 80 million somehow
disabled people in the EU. This figure is rapidly rising due to the aging of
the population. Also the elderly with a high degree of visual impairment or
hearing impairment are counted among the disabled.
There are different types of disabilities, which are very well described in the official page of W3C: https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/diversity#diversity
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
About the Blog
I am an Interaction Design student from FH Joanneum in Graz. As a part of our study duties we have to make a blog, where we present a topic we would like to research and further explore.
Since two years ago, when I visited a class about Web Accessibility, I am higly interested in this important, yet often neglected topic.
Making websites accessible is nowadays quite an easy task, since there are already well described guidelines, which simply have to be followed. Despite that fact, there are still way too many websites that are completly inaccessible for people with dissabilities. I often questioned myself, why is inaccessibility so common and came do a conclusion, that the awareness is clearly insufficient.
In this blog I want to take a look at the situation in Austria in comparison to Slovenia, where I originally come from. I want to see what the most common problems are. I assume that the situation in Austria should be slightly better, since Austria adopted a web accessibility law, not only for the
public sector but also private providers that came into effect on 1. 1. 2016.
In Slovenia, such law is still awaited.
On the other hand I also want to point out the importance of web accesibility and explain what makes it so crucial. My ultimate wish would be to raise awarness among people, to improve web accessibility even slightly or to at least make people understand its importance.
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