Category: Accessibility

The NYT has this article on the most current legal action over online accessibility. This time around it is the NFB against Target, with the case claiming Target’s web site is not accessible. As the article points out, this is really just the latest in a series of legal actions to apply some sort of accessibility standard to the web. The typical question in these cases boils down to whether the web can be considered…

Technically I suppose this isn’t around the corner but in driving home from the airport recently we noticed a construction sign on a road near our house indicating lane closures that were about to start.  The road in question is Old Redmond Road in the city of Redmond and is the road where I catch a bus for work.  There’s also the typical suburban strip mall down a few blocks from where we live on…

One feature in the JAWS screen reader is known as “custom label assign”. This is particularly helpful on web sites that fail to label graphics or other items that should contain alternative text or other such labels. This can turn the gibberish of /../images/33342.;gif into something more meaningful. In the case of www.nfl.com, many of the team logos are not labeled correctly. I’ve created a custom label file that gives these items correct names. You…

An early morning dental appointment had me catching a cab to return to work. Getting out of the cab I noticed a sign on the door with the large raised letters giving the taxi ID and such. A couple seconds more exploration showed this was reproduced in braille. Walking into work I had to stop by the ATM. I grabbed an earphone I carry with a portable radio (old school I know because it isn’t…

It has been more than a year since people from Washington and several other western states have been able to obtain free copies of their credit reports. Over the past year, citizens of the rest of the nation have had the same access made available in a staged process. As a recent article in the Seattle times points out, the process hasn’t been perfect but according to the article things should be getting easier. I…

A comment about braille signs on hotel room doors caught my attention in this article. Far too often folks slap a few braille and large print signs on doors and think they’ve done all they need to in order to make something accessible. This article is worth reading because it makes the point that accessibility is really about going beyond basic compliance to whatever accessibility standard you are using.

Call this a self-serving blog post since the position is working on my team, but we have an opening for someone to come lead accessibility testing for Internet Explorer. The link has the full job details and I’m happy to answer any questions on the position.

I noticed an article talking about how Brazil was going to start production of braille writers in the country. Likely you can pick any population demographic and see the striking difference between the haves and have-nots on the planet. Each time I read one of these articles about an accessibility technology being built or used in a place that hasn’t had it in the past, I’m thankful for the education and experiences I’ve had. I…

Bob Regan of Macromedia has a great post talking about Flash accessibility and a newly relaunched J.K. Rowlin site that is a model for Flash accessibility. How nice to see accessibility of such a high profile web site being taken seriously. Harry Potter books are not on the top of my reading list but having played with the site a bit I’m really impressed to see how well the Flash works with several screen readers.…

I moderate two e-mail lists related to different aspects of disability. WebWatch, which has been around in one form or another for 10 years, deals with web use for people with disabilities. Disability-news is a place to share news coverage about disability. Both lists can now be found on the AccessPlace home page.