Is the web accessible to the handicapped? That's the topic being discussed at Access Camp San Antonio 2009 today at the San Antonio Community College.
Right now, I am listening to Donald Wilcox, an advocate for web access and the handicapped. From listening to his talk, I found it interesting that he has problem with font discernment. For some people who simple color blind issues, certain colors make its hard for people to read a web site.
The problem with most web site developers is that they don't take a proactive approach to this topic. That's because most people who work on web sites aren't vision or hearing impaired.
One would think that the "gov" would make sure that their web site would address this. Naturally, I asked him and other people at the Access Camp San Antonio about the whitehouse.gov or recovery.gov, thinking that this web site would be friendly to the vision impaired.
Here, Donald notes that the fonts and the color contrast overrule the requirements of those small percentage of the vision impaired. The video of Obama doesn't have a caption or a text of his message for the hearing impaired. Donald said that if you use the Firefox web development tools and the World Wide Web Consortium can provide everyone with the basics for disability web site accessibility.
I am hoping that if you read this that you will retransmit it to others. I am lucky now. I don't have the disabilities of others, so it's easy for me to surf the web. Yet, every American should have full access to information, especially in the government web sector.
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1 comment:
I know that there are quite a few websites that is not accessible for me. Although I find that the whitehouse.gov isn't one of them. But then my needs are different then others.
What I find is that many web designers ignore a simple unchecked in the design in which it ignores formatting per say. So those with their computer settings at extremely high levels for fonts that the sites wouldn't have things overlapping. All it takes is to unchecked one thing to fix this problem.
However it's not only the vision that has issues there are many people with learning disabilities that the colouration of their website makes it none accessible. For instance red lettering that doesn't have blue background makes it hard to read, which I was just reciently told this.
Graphic captacha that a screen reader cannot read or close captions for the hearing. Even video without words in text could be hard depending on the programme to find the buttons.
Lots of variables in which most people do not take the time to think about it.
Unfortunately some forums or blogs people use the basic settings or styles cannot be changed to fix this issue. On the forum I belong to we try to make it as accessable as possible while we are able to give members choices of the styles that works for them.
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