Category: Accessibility

I am sure that a campaign to eliminate the use of the term “a11y” is a campaign I’d lose, were I even to try and start it, but after reading the term “A11y” so many times in the accessibility world, I just have to say that I still think it is not the best way to represent accessibility to the broader community. I’m someone who’s been in and around the accessibility business for more than 25 years now and when this term first started cropping up a few years ago, I had to ask what it meant. For those who are curious, the 11 in the a11y is meant to signify the 11 letters between the letters a and y in the word accessibility It is my understanding that this shorthand originated in the twitter world, where there is the 140 character limit.

I understand the practical desire to save characters and all but for me there is just something off-putting about this shorthand. Unless you are in the accessibility world, I daresay you have no idea what a11y means even today. I also understand each community develops jargon and terminology but part of the accessibility message is about reaching out to those who don’t understand what’s involved in the space. That may be the technical of how to do accessibility. It may be raising awareness that people with disabilities are not defined by our disabilities. I just find the term accessibility more welcoming.

I’m also a sports fan and I don’t see the football community adopting the term ff6l or the baseball community using b6l to represent football and baseball respectively as examples.

I recognize others may have different opinions and this short commentary likely falls in the category of the proverbial tree falling in the forest and that old question about it making sound if no one hears but at least here accessibility is likely to be the term I continue to use.

What’s your opinion? If you use the term a11y to represent accessibility, why do you do so? Do you think people outside the accessibility world understand what the term means?

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.

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.

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.

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.