Today is World Usability Day, and I am at Michigan State University which is hosting conferences. I’m here with Davin Granroth, and he’s showing me some of the ropes on usability. So far today I’ve seen exactly how hard it is for visually impaired people to use the web. So many websites are made so poorly(even 508 aside) that screen readers really have a hard time making any sense of the data that’s on there. Think of some sites that you thought were really terrible to look at(*cough*myspace*cough*) and then think about writing software that can read those out loud for people that cannot see…good luck!
So you might be wondering, “Is there ANY good news??”
The Good:
Yes there is. Technology has come a long way and so has the internet, which has allowed visually impaired people access to a lot more of the web than in the past. There are also a lot more people that actually care about making their websites accessible.
The Bad:
This technology comes at quite a high price. Some of the gizmos that were shown had a price tag of over $6000 once you buy the software that goes with them. Even screen reading software is quite pricey, reaching up past the $1000 mark. Even spending a lot of money on the latest and greatest screen readers and gizmos will still only get you as far as the markup on the page will let you.
Flash objects, buttons without the proper attributes filled out, images with no text describing what’s on them and CAPTCHAS are all semi-evil for accessibility right now. Things are getting better but there is a along way to go.
I think anyone that develops on the web should, before they write any code, watch a visually impaired person surf the web. This will change your outlook on how you develop, I promise!
