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About this section

In this section wedescribe what it is like tobe blind on the Internet.First, we will offer somebasic information aboutwhy and how blindpeople use the Internet.Next, the concept ofaccessibility is explainedin more detail. Finally,you can see movie clipswhich illustrate how blindpeople interact withwebsites, and exploreinteractive examples ofcommon accessibilityproblems blind peopleface.

Blind people on the Internet

Globally there are millions of visually impaired people,constantly growing in numbers due to aging baby-boomers.

The Internet can be of great value to blind people as itempowers them to independently complete tasks whichthey would normally not be able to accomplish withouthelp from others (such as reading mail or managing bankaccounts).

Traditionally, blind people have been dependent onwritten information that has been translated into braille oraudio books, which often take time to be produced.Through the Internet, new information (such asnewspaper articles) is available immediately withoutdelay.

Assistive Technology

Assistive technology enables users to access websites.Two categories of assistive technology are used most byblind Internet users:

1. Screen readers are software that translates screencontents into synthetic speech.

2. Refreshable braille displays are hardware devicescontaining a strip of retractable braille pins, allowingbraille characters to be generated on the fly.

Links to assistive technology vendors can be found in the'resources' section.

Both categories provide a linear information stream (eitherspeech or braille), which means that the user can onlyfocus on one element at a time.

Example of a refreshablebraille display

'Feeling' through awebsite

What is Website Accessibility?

Whether or not a blind user can access awebsite in an effective, efficient andpleasant way is mostly dependent on thesite's level of accessibility.

A website is 'accessible' when its content

Is the Internet currentlyaccessible?

Web designers are still often unaware ofaccessibility guidelines or choose toignore them.

One of the major reasons for not following

Section 1: What is it like to be a blind Internet user

Information

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is available to everyone, regardless of anyvisual, auditory, cognitive or motorimpairment.

Guidelines have been specified to helpweb designers make accessible websites.The most widely used guidelines are theWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines(developed by the World Wide WebConsortium), and the 'section 508 of therehabilitation act' guidelines.

these guidelines is that the target group(impaired users) is often considered to betoo small for companies and designers toinvest the necessary time, money andeffort.

Accessibility guidelines are oftenvalidated through automated evaluationtools that help website designers locateaccessibility problems in their pages, butcommon sense is also needed to makethe website truly usable for blind people.For example, an image might be given atextual description which does not reallydescribes the actual function of theimage.

Basic steps to make a web page accessible

Web designers can easily increase the accessibility of their page by observing the followingrules (based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines):

Always provide a textual description for images, tables and embedded content (forinstance movies or applets).

Use correct markup to distinguish between page elements such as headings andparagraphs, so that screen readers can navigate effectively.

Provide 'skip links' which allow the user to skip directly to the main page content insteadof having to listen to the page menus, banners and other content preceding the maininformation.

Make sure that form elements have clearly associated labels as well as acomprehendible function.

Make sure the page can be navigated by keyboard alone, do not allow navigation byFlash movies or JavaScript code requiring mouse actions.

Make links self descriptive rather than context dependent. For example, instead oflinking only one word (as in the link "click 'here' to find out more about this book", usethe full context as in the link: "Click here to find out more about this book".

Movie clip 1: 'Introduction to thescreen reader' by UW-Madison

In the following movie, created by theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, a basicintroduction to screen readers is given. Ascreen reader user describes the basicinteractions, as well as the advantagesand disadvantages of screen reader use.

Movie clip 2: 'Keeping WebAccessibility in Mind' by webAIM

This movie clip describes the challengeswhich disabled people face when usingthe Internet, as well as reasons to makethe web accessible for differentdisabilities.

Movie clips

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View Quicktime version of movie clip 1.

View Realplayer version of movie clip1.

Visit original introduction page formovie clip 1 on the UW-Madisonwebsite.

view Windows Media version of movieclip 2 (fast connection).

view Quicktime version of movie clip 2(fast).

Visit original introduction page formovie clip 2 on the webAIM website(also contains smaller versions).

Example 1: A search banner on Amazon.com

The following screenshot shows a search bar on a major website called Amazon.com.Although sighted users will most likely have little problem understanding where to entertheir search query, the audio sample shows that the bar poses a greater challenge whenaccessed through a screen reader.

Play recorded screen reader output for the Amazon.com search bar (requires flash player 6or higher)

Stop all sound

The example illustrates that visual controls such as images can make a site more intuitiveto use for sighted users. However, without a clear textual description the function of thecontrol is unknown to a blind user. Also, while a sighted user may find it obvious to enter asearch query in the first textbox, the screen reader only states 'edit' without specifying whatthe textfield's purpose is.

Examples of accessibility issues

Example 2: images without a textual description on Asus.com

This screenshot contains a sample from a list of country names on www.asus.com. Theuser can select in which language the website should be viewed.

Play recorded screen reader output for the asus.com sample(requires flash player 6 or higher)

Stop all sound

Although the names are easy to read for a sighted user, it appearsthat most of them are incomprehensible when translated intospeech. The reason for this is that the names are actually images ofnames, while no textual alternative (through an ALT or TITLEattribute) has been provided.

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Example 3: table on TV guide.com

Tables are excellent for displaying relations, but are less intuitive when accessed as alinear information source. This example shows a TV Guide sample of listed televisionprograms, sorted by network and time of airing.

Play recorded screen reader output for the tv guide.com sample (requires flash player 6 orhigher)

Stop all sound

Although the original table contains more than 300 rows (one row for each TV channel),even this sample of three rows shows that it is difficult to comprehend at which specifictime each program airs. Whereas a sighted user might glance at the top row every nowand then to see which time belongs to each column, a blind user has to memorize thisinformation or navigate back to the first row to check the column names.

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