Do You See What I See?
by Denny Lancaster

Designing an Accessible Web Site

Now with the trickle of data from a 1999 Bureau of the Census which surveyed measures of "functional limitation in seeing," two levels of severity have emerged: people with more severe impairments who were unable to see words and letters and print and who were less likely to use the internet and regular computers and those with less severe limitations and were more likely to use the Internet and computers on a regular basis. While more than seven million American's fall into both categories, the magnitude of the problem of "seeing" may be explained in the number of households owning computers with no limitations in "seeing" of which 56% own computers and only 35% used the Internet.

You who are without disABILITIES are allowed, to have more information and more connected to the world around them and in contact with people of similar interests through the use of computers and access to the Internet. However, the potential impact is even greater for individuals with disABILITIES as our world is rapidly converting to a digitalized format. Closing the digital divide for people with disABILITIES requires web builders to understand restraints on "seeing" while using computers and the Internet.

While reading guidelines and creating a web page, the process of making your pages accessible will be more comprehensible if you understand how people with visual impairments are likely to visit your site. What technology is in use and how it works has been a significant part of making guidelines that meet the needs of both web page developers and web page users.

Impairments to Web Browsing and Viewing

Vision

Not all users with visual impairments use speech to access your web site. Some use a screen magnification program. Other users with enough sight to read much of the text on the screen without additional equipment or software often adjust the colors and sizes of text and icons in order to make them more visible.
Vision impairments include but are not limited to Mascular Degeneration, blindness, cataracts and Diabetic Retinopathy. For a detailed list of "seeing" problems, which may affect your web site, visitors go to the Karolinska Institute.

Comprehension

Dyslexia is now firmly established as a congenital and developmental condition. Its cause has not been fully confirmed but the effect is to create neurological anomalies in the brain. About 60% of dyslexic people have phonological difficulties, that is, they find it difficult to sort out the sounds with words. This means that they have problems with reading, writing and spelling. Many dyslexic people enjoy lateral thinking abilities and need to be identified and taught, to enable them to release their talents in wide ranging careers. Perhaps your web site creation once "enabled" may provide such an opportunity for their empowerment.

Aphasia is most often the result of stroke or head injury, but can also occur in other neurological disorders, such as brain tumor or Alzheimer disease.

Carpal tunnel syndrome

When the median nerve located in the wrist is compressed and pressure is most noticeable when the wrist is fully extended or flexed. Some believe that carpal tunnel syndrome is related to computer use, although there is no proven connection. But having to use a mouse on a continuous basis can prove to be painful.

Technology Address Impairments
(The Enlightened and Informed Web Author)

So you followed the WAI guidelines and you hope your site is accessible using some of the most elementary and easiest to understand aspects of a site that contribute to accessibility to users of assistive technology and those who do not use any assistance, but are thankful for your enlightenment and what has been accomplished to make your web site more accessible. Now you are a "teckie."

Because you labeled everything on your web site with Alt-text and gave a reason for the pictures, your image maps have Alt-text for each "click able" region and those spacer graphics and other ones which not meaningful is where you put space between the quotes of the Alt-text so users did not have their train of thought disrupted by irrelevant information.

You also labeled the structure of your web site and placed title references for additional and meaningful information, because your visitors with disABILITIES would not get lost, even though some consider these text labels unappealing.

Bless you for not putting your pages in columns, for you must have read that a text reader reads right to left, top to bottom, and as for frames, you left them by the wayside because they were a road block to accessibility.
Then last but not least you understand that "older" technology usually means six months to a year old and you knew that users of assistive technology do not yet support the newer versions, so even the most web-savvy and cutting-edge users will not be able to access some of the on-the-edge exciting features you thought about using.
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Assistive Technology

Screen Readers

Screen readers are used primarily by the visually impaired who have some physical disABILITY that prevents them from seeing the information on the screen, which could be total blindness, Mascular Degeneration or a host of other eye ailments.

Screen readers can also be useful for people who can see, but do not necessarily comprehend visual information well. One such disABILITY is dyslexia. Another such disABILITY is aphasia. In addition, people can listen and read simultaneous, and the dual modes of input can help people who have difficulty comprehending written language alone. As with any assistive technology, screen readers can benefit many more people than the audience it was originally intended for. Potential users for screen readers include students of pronunciation, people learning languages with orthography different from their native language and people learning to read.

A screen reader is a memory resident program that uses a text to speech synthesizer to relay information about what is appearing on the screen. Currently, most Windows screen readers use system hooks to gain access to keyboard input and menu and dialog box messages. It will call the Windows API to determine some information about the current status. It monitors some API functions to catch changes to the cursor, focus, and other elements on the screen. Finally it creates an of-screen model that contains information about each point on the screen (like character, font, font size, class and so forth). The user can then use a keystroke to access this information when he or she wants to find out about an element of the screen (like the current title in the title bar).

All screen readers are not created equal, differ significantly in price, but all have common features and readability, so they also differ to the extent that browsers, operating systems, windows interfaces or other hardware and software products differ and or have difficulty in communicating and or use.

The WAI and W3C standards recognized the differences among existing screen readers and those yet to be developed when recommending and adopting standards, which if we build into our web site creations will for the most part be backward and forward compatible.

Some of the standards we can adopt are detailed below, which do not cover all of the opportunities available, but pray fully give us all examples and information to consider.

Image with Text-Link

This page is a HTML example, which produces a floated positioned image link, in addition to a D-link or in-line text link within running text. The example works by including, within the single anchor link element, the desired link text and an IMG specifying an ALIGN attribute of LEFT or RIGHT. Among the benefits such as having separate links to the same destination from the image, and from the in-line text, is a navigational scheme for an image whose specific purpose is to offer an alternative link to a resource, which is linked from the running text. The image is meant to be visually apparent to those who are browsing in graphical mode, but would represent distraction to a text-only reader.

(Note... The web accessibility logo has a black square background with shading with the a blue globe in the center. The globe has a few latitude and longitude lines on it with a yellow key hole in the center of the globe. The globe also has shading effects.)

• The image can be made to disappear entirely, by using ALT="" for regular text readers. Since the image is not standing alone within an A element, and its disappearance is not hindering a text-mode reader of any content-based functionality, the example passes both the letter and the spirit of accessibility checks and it is functionally equivalent to the second example in the WAI techniques section 6.1.1.
  
  At time of this update in December 2003, this page passes validation at Bobby. On these grounds, although it is functionally equivalent to an actual recommendation in the WAI guidelines, its use will not be needed in the long term. As far as HTML is concerned, the construction is only a single link, not two; those client agents, which produce a menu of links on the page, will only list the item once, not twice. By contrast, the provision of D-link, then an adjacent but separate link to the same URL. Would not only count as two links, and also not be valid, about two links separated by nothing more than white space (currently rated as a priority-3 fault). However, the example in this paragraph does pass the priority 3 Bobby checkpoints.
   
• The technique falls-back in grace for a client agent not honoring the IMGALIGN attribute.

ALT="" can be used to make the image disappear for regular text-mode readers, some text-mode browsers offer the reader the option to insist on having links for images (example the "*" key command in Lynx). By furnishing both TITLE and LONGDESC attributes for those who can use them, we are preparing for the day when acceptance is more commonplace. Support for these in mainstream browser/versions is not universal.

A problem needing an answer is how to offer a D-link in such a situation: You might think of putting the image and its D-link into a floated TABLE, but this would not be legal within the scope of an enclosing anchor link.

Labeling Form Input Fields

Do you dislike a form, which has the input fields, filled in, which must be written over and often wonder why?

When form fields are not labeled explicitly, screen readers will skip over the text on your form when users try to enter data. For example, a screen reader will simply say, "Edit" or "Edit box" forcing the user to guess what information is being requested. Screen readers will not speak any text on a form that is not placed inside a tag such as a link, label, button, or legend.

Another advantage of using the <label> tag is that you can have more control over how field labels appear, using style sheets. The key to accessible forms is to ensure that people using screen readers and other assistive technology has access to all the information necessary to complete electronic forms online. The <label> element and its attribute were added to HTML specifically to support accessible labeling of form controls, including input fields.

Have you gone to a form creation web site which says they create compliant forms, only to find out this is not so, when you run a Bobby validation online?

Form Validation

A-Prompt . . . Accessibility Prompt is a software tool designed to help Web authors improve the usability of Web pages created in HTML format. A-Prompt first evaluates an HTML Web page to identify barriers to accessibility by people with disabilities. A-Prompt then provides the Web author with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs. The tool's evaluation and repair checklist is based on accessibility guidelines created and maintained by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium.

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Denny Lancaster
Senior partner, tax attorney specializing in international finance, who learned ASL and old English signing at age 6, and have used these skills with YMCA groups in camp settings on a continuous basis to help our “special children.” Administer a private foundation, which builds free enabled computers for deaf and blind persons throughout the state of Alabama . . . Still learning HTML and having fun with Lancasters Laughing Place.