Category: Accessibility

Much has been written about the accessibility challenges posed by CAPTCHA systems on the internet. Today the most common solution to address accessibility for individuals who are blind is to have some sort of audio replacement for the typical visual verification of characters in an image. Shortcomings of this solution aside, this is the system that Ticketmaster uses when you attempt to purchase tickets.

 

Recently I tried to buy tickets to a Seattle Mariners game and was confronted with the latest audio offered by Ticketmaster. The web site allows you to download the audio offered as an MP3 and I challenge anyone to actually decipher any words from this jumble of audio. To my ears this is utterly incomprehensible.

 

I understand the need to mask the audio to some degree but at some point the system still needs to be usable. This simply is not.

 

I hope MLB and Ticketmaster along with those pursuing accessibility improvements from MLB will take note of this problem and push for a change here.

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While it is old news now, about a month ago Adobe updated their accessible version of Digital Editions. You can read full details in a blog post from Adobe. According to Adobe, the main improvement is the ability to read continuously with a screen reader with this update.

 

I have had no success at getting this update to work on multiple computers with JAWS or NVDA. I’ve left comments with Adobe and exchanged email. Because of these problems, I’m not able to update my initial impressions of this application. I had hoped to provide an update as part of mentioning this update, which is why it has taken me a month to share news of the update here.

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In my blog post on libraries, OverDrive and Amazon, I mentioned trying the Kindle reading apps on various platforms and not having success. I’ve now learned that Amazon offers a Windows version of the Kindle app that does support some level of accessibility.

Amazon’s main Kindle for PC page makes no reference to this accessible option so I’m not sure how customers are supposed to know about it. I’ll ignore the absolute failure of web accessibility on Amazon’s page listing other free Kindle apps for now except to say if you can solve the puzzle and find “iphone” in the long string of gibberish of “ariel/KCP-NEW-right-nav-iphone-static._V196674716_” you could determine Amazon offers a Kindle app for the iPhone. This is just one example but I find no reference to this accessible Kindle app on the full apps page either.

You can find info on the accessible Kindle for PC at http://www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility. With this app installed, a screen reader is used to speak application controls, such as buttons, book titles and such. A built-in speech synthesizer is used to read the book text. According to the web page, there are no restrictions on this version of the Kindle app reading books with synthetic speech. I believe other Kindle apps and the physical Kindle have this ability restricted in some cases based on publisher or author selections about who has the rights to audio presentation of a book. According to Amazon’s web pages, this accessible Kindle app is restricted to U.S. customers.

Having tried the accessible Kindle app, I still believe libraries should demand more complete accessibility from Amazon and OverDrive before going forward with any programs around purchasing Kindle books for library use. This app only addresses one platform and fails to meet what I’d consider basic expectations to consider the app offering what’s needed from an accessible reading application, especially one that is going to replace a full screen reader when it comes to the actual book text and take responsibility for content presentation.

First off there appears to be no support for braille. This is common for full screen readers when the user has a braille display connected to the computer. Just as individuals who read the printed word do not necessarily want a book read aloud, people who use screen readers want to have that same choice to read the book text directly. Braille permits this opportunity.

Second, the text reading commands detailed in the application shortcuts list are very limited. The user is given the ability to read only at the sentence level, advance to the next or previous sentence, start reading at the beginning of the page, or stop and start reading at the current location. This is simply not enough detail to read text effectively. Commands for reading in much greater detail, such as character by character, word by word and more are necessary. This level of reading ability is a basic for any full screen reader and again Amazon has opted for an approach where the user’s screen reader is not given direct access to the book text. Imagine wanting to know how to spell a favorite character’s name or other information from a book you are reading. This is why full screen readers have this level of text reading functionality.

While Amazon, at least on the Windows platform, was a bit further along in thinking about accessibility than I was aware of, in my view this app still falls short of the basic bar for what’s needed to be considered accessible. I have not even addressed other features of the main Kindle app on Windows, such as a dictionary, that it seems are not supported in this accessible version.

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Earlier I wrote about my hope to see improved accessibility from CBS College Sports All Access. As of that writing I was told the accessibility fixes were expected on November 10. That day came and went with no update.

 

I received a brief update today from the people I’ve been exchanging e-mail with at the University of Wisconsin about the accessibility issues.

 

we received this info from cbs last Thursday. There was a setback in producing the ADA accessibility components for the Silverlight media player. CBS is saying end of November now.

 

I’m communicating with the University of Wisconsin folks because it is my belief that they are ultimately responsible for ensuring the accessibility of their online offerings. Obviously they’d be better off if they’d chosen a mechanism that was directly accessible and I’m disappointed they didn’t do a better job when choosing the CBS product at the outset.

 

The lack of accessibility in the online sports broadcasts is a bit ironic, given the same university of Wisconsin is referenced in an article talking about universities that have said no to Amazon’s Kindle over a lack of accessibility.

 

As I mentioned earlier, folks from the UW and CBS have been both polite and good about finding alternatives that allow for access to the online broadcasts while the accessibility issues are resolved. This by no means excuses the lack of direct accessibility but is a far cry better than frequently happens during these sorts of issues. As I’m sure anyone in the accessibility arena knows, it is just as likely that I could have been left out in the cold here.

 

Still, we are now two months beyond the initial promised accessibility resolution so the old “just a bit longer” is starting to wear a bit thin.

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Kindle for PC, software that’s supposed to allow you to read the more than 360,000 books Amazon touts as being available for the Kindle is now available from the online retail giant. Disappointing, albeit not surprising, accessibility seems to be lacking.

 

Trying the application with JAWS,
Window-Eyes, NVDA and even Narrator produced nothing meaningful. JAWS was silent as I tabbed around beyond announcing a title of the opening screen telling me to register the software. Using any method of access there was nothing else perceivable to me from the application. Window-Eyes only announced “custom control” as I tabbed around. NVDA simply said “pane”. Narrator announced a few more window names when I did a full screen read with crl+shift+space but this was still of no meaningful value as tabbing or trying any other interaction still produced silence.

 

Hunting around on Amazon’s web site I found no mention of accessibility for the software. Again disappointing but not surprising I suppose.

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Working from home today I had an experience that is really a microcosm of today’s computing accessibility experiences. I’ve often thought I should take the time to do a kind of day in the life of accessibility as it were but given that I haven’t yet, 15 minutes or so will have to do. Given that I work for Microsoft and the Internet Explorer team, I’m going to toss in the disclaimer that these comments reflect my personal opinions.

I have a notebook computer that has some sort of a problem that crops up from time to time where some of the drivers necessary for speech and keyboard functionality do not load correctly at boot. I’m working with the manufacturer to understand the nature of the problem and get it fixed. When the problem happens it is pretty frustrating because it means I’m not able to use the machine until I find some sighted assistance. It is odd because if I boot the machine into Windows Safe Mode, sign in and then boot back into windows normally, everything works correctly. But booting into Safe mode and such requires sighted assistance.

Part of me finds the problem interesting in that solving the mysteries of computing like this is sometimes like being a detective tasked to solve a vexing puzzle. Still this afternoon my goal wasn’t to play riddle solver but rather to finish some work so I was a bit annoyed that the problem happened today.

I’m fortunate that I have a brother who’s often willing to answer questions or otherwise lend a hand for situations like this where he’s able. That said, assisting from 2,000 miles away isn’t the most practical thing when it requires looking at a physical computer screen.

But then again, we do live in the era of webcams, internet and what seems like 24X7 connectedness. So I figure I’ll dust off this old webcam I received when I signed up for my first high speed DSL account many years ago. I’ve used it with success for situations like this before.

Bummer dude, plugging the camera into another machine running Windows 7 gives me the sad sound that device installation failed. No drivers. But wait! There is a friendly message popping up that points to a driver download from Logitech’s web site. Happy times are here again or so I think.

I find some text on the web page that tells me to select my operating system. I hunt and hunt around for some sort of way to actually make this selection. Those familiar with web accessibility can likely guess where this is heading because I’m never able to make the actual selection.

When I run into these kinds of problems, it is back to the detective role to figure out what’s going on and where accessibility could be improved on the page in question. This is where I’ve really come to enjoy the ease that one of the features we built into IE8 has brought to such investigations. Specifically the IE8 Developer Tools have made hunting through the source code of problem web pages a much smoother experience for me.

Simply press F12 and the developer toolbar appears. I’m not going to go into all the different features available but will say that the page source is presented in a very screen reader and keyboard friendly treeview control. Better yet, a search box let’s you enter text and the tree is scrolled and expanded to the location where the search hit is located. I’ve found it makes locating the accessibility issues much faster than hunting through loads of extraneous info in full page source in a program like Notepad.

In just a couple minutes I found the issue with Logitech’s page and sent a note to the company. Who knows if it will actually make a difference. I did say after all that this was to be about 15 minutes of accessibility and well I think we all know web accessibility is more like a marathon or dare I say triathlon since those seem to be all the rage these days.

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A press release from the U.S. government talks about an updated and revamped one-stop shop for federal info on disabilities.

 

 

WASHINGTON — In conjunction with the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. Department of Labor has re-named and re-launched DisabilityInfo.gov as Disability.gov. Available at http://www.disability.gov, the site offers comprehensive information about programs and services to better serve more than 50 million Americans with disabilities, their family members, veterans, employers, educators, caregivers and anyone interested in disability-related information.

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