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A Lot More Needs To Be Done To Help Blind People Use The Internet<br>
Facebook’s new blind-friendly feature puts a small dent in a big
problem.<br>
Huffington Post – 04/06/2016 <br>
By Casey Williams<br>
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For the blind, navigating the digital world can be as tricky as moving
through the physical one. <br>
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Some companies have tried to make their sites easier for the world’s 39
million blind people to use. Facebook, for instance, just introduced a
new image-recognition feature that lets blind users “see” photos on the
site.<br>
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But blind advocates say fixes like Facebook’s don't solve the biggest
obstacles blind people face online. <br>
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“We think it’s pretty cool,” Mark Riccobono, the president of the
National Federation of the Blind, told The Huffington Post. “But we get
concerned about flashy technology.”<br>
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“For the average blind person, it’s not whether they know something is in
a photo or not that determines whether they can do online banking, pay
their bills or buy groceries,” said Riccobono, who is blind.<br>
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Even as the Internet becomes an increasingly necessary feature of modern
life, much of the web is difficult for blind people to use
effectively.<br>
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A range of technologies exist to help blind people navigate the web.
Braille keyboards and text-to-speech programs convert text to audio,
which allows blind people to consume information on the web aurally. The
devices can also transform speech into text, which allows blind people to
“type.” These devices often work well with thoughtfully designed
websites. But they hit snags when sites have elements that aren't clearly
labeled or are incompatible with keyboard shortcuts, which blind people
rely on. <br>
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“Websites that have been designed from the beginning with accessibility
in mind are easy for blind people to use they’re easy to navigate, you
can jump around pretty effectively and get information as effectively as
a sighted person,” Riccobono said. But, he said, many sites still have
“artificial barriers” that make performing basic online tasks difficult
for blind users.<br>
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One of the biggest barriers is unclear labeling. In order to describe
what’s on a given webpage, text-to-speech programs comb through the
source code for labels that describe the page’s elements. They then say
those labels aloud. If elements aren't clearly labeled in the source code
if a checkout button, say, is just labeled “image” it can make
navigating the page very frustrating for users who rely on spoken
descriptions to move around the site. <br>
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“If I go on an e-commerce website and put stuff in my cart, but get to
the payment screen and have trouble because the checkout button’s not
labeled that’s a high degree of frustration,” Riccobono said. <br>
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Web developers can use accessibility guidelines for blind users when
designing their websites. But even when they refer to those guidelines,
web companies don't always do a good job implementing them, Riccobono
said. <br>
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“If you don't test [your code] for accessibility, and a problem arises
and it’s not dealt with, then the code gets launched anyway,” he said.
Once finalized, it can be difficult to retrofit websites to improve
accessibility.<br>
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Blind advocates have urged the Obama administration to update the
Americans with Disabilities Act to include explicit standards for web
accessibility for blind users. While President Barack Obama initially
seemed amenable to the standards in 2010, he named them among “the most
important updates to the ADA since its original enactment” last year
his administration quietly postponed consideration of new web
accessibility standards until 2018.<br>
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For Riccobono, updating the ADA is a necessary step toward equal access
for the blind.<br>
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“We need to do in the digital world the same thing we've done in the
physical world,” he said. “The lack of standards makes it very difficult
for businesses to understand when they've met a high standard of
accessibility.”<br>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blind-people-internet-accessibility_us_57051a56e4b0537661883b1c">
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blind-people-internet-accessibility_us_57051a56e4b0537661883b1c</a>
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