The Idea Place Posts

Back in college I took a public opinion research course. One of the tasks in that class was the design and completion of a fairly substantial public opinion survey. Part of that involved completion of a minimum of 20 one-hour telephone surveys. I mention that as background because from time to time when callers ring today, I remember what it was like to need to get enough surveys and will take the time to answer all the questions of whatever individual happens to be calling.

 

This evening one of the questions basically said something like, “To the extent the following statements are correct, how serious of a concern would you have about voting for the given candidate?” Then were the expected choices such as very serious, somewhat serious and such.

 

Straight forward enough, mention what might I guess be perceived as the given candidate’s negatives and see how big of a deal they are.

 

The candidates in question are running someplace in Washington state for state representative. I can honestly say I had never heard of either individual and right now haven’t studied a thing about the given election.

 

Earlier in the survey it came out that one of the individuals was “sight impaired”. This was talking about the individual and said something about having worked hard from an early age or some such wording. It was the survey reader who used the term sight impaired here.

 

Anyway, when it came to rattling off the negatives for the individual one of the statements went something like, “The candidate is disabled, not a home owner and doesn’t pay property tax.”

 

Ironically, a negative for the other guy was something about having failed to pay some tax and ending up with a lean on some property.

 

I mention all of this just because it was kind of well, I’m not sure how to classify it, to hear disability tossed out in this context. Oh I fully understand the various reasons why disability was mentioned but I really hope one day we get beyond this kind of garbage.

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With the loss of the Milwaukee Brewers to the eventual World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship series now behind me, I used a rainy Saturday afternoon to update my MLB At Bat app on the iPhone. It is never too early to dream of sunny Arizona skies and spring training 2012. A pleasant surprise greeted me when I launched the update.

 

One of the accessibility issues I detailed in this app dealt with player statistics reading simply as commas with VoiceOver. I’m please to find that this issue has been corrected and now the statistics are available as well structured HTML tables that work with VoiceOver reading commands. Thanks to the development team for this improvement.

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Today I had the opportunity to answer some of my questions about how Amazon’s Kindle eBook lending program done in partnership with OverDrive and libraries would work. The program announced several months ago entered a beta stage with at least two libraries offering Kindle ebooks to library users. I have accounts with both the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library and opted to try some books from King County’s library. For the Kindle reader I used Amazon’s Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin.

 

If you have used other book formats for materials made available through a libraries OverDrive services, obtaining Kindle ebooks is just an extension of the same service. Search for the titles you want, add them to an electronic book bag and then check out. At that point a link named Get for Kindle will appear. Following the link opens a new browser window or tab, depending on browser configuration, to the eBook in Amazon’s Kindle store.

 

You are then subjected to whatever accessibility experiences Amazon offers. For example a button to send the book to the Kindle device of your choosing uses a graphic without alternative text so ends up being read as some variation of “get-library-book-lg-pri._V152369908_.gif” if you are browsing with a screen reader. There are several other instances of missing alternative text on the pages as well. A combo box allows you to choose between Kindle devices you have registered with Amazon in terms of where to send the book.

 

I’m not a regular user of Amazon’s Kindle pages yet so will qualify my experiences with that background. That said from what I can tell it is important that you pick the device at this stage of the process. Amazon has a Kindle management page as well where you can manage all your Kindle materials, including books obtained from libraries but that page seems to suffer from some serious accessibility problems. Each title listed on the management page has a graphic named action that opens options for the title such as selecting where you want to send the book. However, success at interacting with this graphic is highly dependent on how the screen reader or other assistive technology you are browsing with handles graphics with OnClick attributes. There are better practices Amazon could be using here for web accessibility.

 

Once you’ve indicated where to send the book, sync content on the device and your library book will be available. I do not have a physical Kindle and the iPhone Kindle software does not seem to support VoiceOver. So my reading was limited to the accessible version of the Windows Kindle software. This is as I described previously a less than desirable reading experience. Further, given the number of portable reading options available, sitting at a PC is not the way I want to do most of my reading.

 

The King County Library currently offers more than 13,000 books in the Kindle lending program. I do not know if all books are also offered for Adobe’s Digital Editions but of the roughly 30 titles I looked at, all offered both kindle and Adobe editions of the books. You can learn more about Adobe’s efforts on an accessible Digital Editions in an earlier blog post.

 

My overall opinion here is mixed. While I’m pleased to see that the Kindle book lending program does not seem to detract from whatever level of accessibility exists in Kindle Ebooks, it is my hope that as libraries expand offerings in this program, the hard questions will get asked of OverDrive and Amazon about when we will see improved accessibility. Platforms where some accessibility exists have ample room for improvement and there are clearly platforms where Amazon has done nothing to offer an accessible Kindle experience that libraries are now supporting by joining this program. I understand the challenges faced by libraries and recognize the multiple priorities they are working to satisfy. Still, as I mentioned earlier, how we spend public money on technology and the accessibility implications of that spending are public policy questions worth asking.

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Yesterday I reported accessibility problems with the NFL’s Audio Pass service. While the majority of the Flash content remains inaccessible, the NFL has updated the table displaying games to provide links for launching home and away feeds for each game. This brings accessibility back to the level it was last year. This is a positive step but I’d still like to see the NFL fix the Flash content to support accessibility.

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It is I suppose not surprising but still disappointing how frequently leading web destinations fail to pay attention to accessibility. After renewing my subscription to the NFL’s Audio Pass service to listen to NFL games I thought I’d listen to a little preseason action from the Packers yesterday. I’m sure anyone familiar with accessibility can guess the rest of the story. I’ll share the abridged version this time.

 

Using multiple screen readers I tried launching the audio for the game I wanted by choosing a Listen button from a page of games. That opened a new page filled with multiple nameless Flash controls. Audio did start but it was for the home team’s radio broadcast for the game in question. The lack of accessibility for this part of the NFL’s web site isn’t new, as disappointing as that is. Flash has had the potential to be accessible for years and it is unfortunate that the NFL shows such little care for fans who use screen readers that the NFL fails to take advantage of this accessibility support.

 

In previous years, the NFL at least had an option that indicated it was for low bandwidth users. That option allowed you to select home and away broadcasts for each game. That option is gone, with the end result being as far as I can tell that if you use a screen reader you are no longer able to select the audio feed you want.

 

A phone call to NFL Audio Pass support this morning confirms that the NFL is aware of the accessibility problems. I was told that a site redesign was done and that the low bandwidth option was eliminated. I asked about screen readers and was told again that the NFL was aware of the problem and that it was a top priority. I asked for a date when this issue might be corrected and the top priority line was repeated.

 

There’s no real ending to this story. E-mail’s been sent and I’ll do the usual round of contacting, advocating and communicating. I guess I just won’t do a lot of listening, listening that is to the broadcasts I want. We’ll see when the NFL gets around to perhaps adding back the option that allows you to select the audio feed you want in an accessible fashion or better yet making the rest of the Audio Pass experience accessible.

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I’ve written more than once about frustrations with books from libraries and other sources that require Adobe’s Digital Editions to access the content. Today Adobe announced an update with some level of accessibility support in a 1.8 preview to this product. The announcement says in part:

 

Digital Editions 1.8 has enhanced keyboard support, provides additional text magnification, support for high-contrast mode color-switching, and interoperability with the UIAutomation accessibility API to allow screen readers to read eBooks.

 

Take note though for screen readers in particular, Adobe indicates that as of now only Freedom Scientific’s JAWS on Windows and VoiceOver on the Macintosh are supported. Adobe indicates they are working with other companies in the industry to add support.

 

After trying this preview with JAWS on Windows with both a Welcome document included with the software and with a range of books from my local library I have a mixed impression. You can access the text of the books. That said, I’m not sure I’d agree with Adobe’s comment in the announcement that I should be able to read books successfully just yet. Hopefully this experience is improved.

 

In the welcome document, for example, all the text from what would seem to be a table of contents on page 1 is run together on a single line. Further, items that are indicated as links do not seem to have any method for link activation. Moving to page 2 in the same document, I’m greeted by the word “link”, repeated at least 20 times, again all on a single line.

 

Trying more complex documents such as software development manuals, recipe books, poetry and other material where format is important, more often than not, any meaningful formatting wasn’t present. At best tabular data had line endings so each cell of a table was a unique line. In many other cases, text was run together, much like the first page of the welcome document.

 

Reading books that contained little formatting, such as a novel, I was successful in reading text. However, it was easy to crash Digital Editions on demand by simply using a JAWS command to read by paragraph. The key combination is ctrl+down arrow and pressing it caused Digital Editions to crash instantly and disappear from memory. In the software testing world, we’d call this bug a 100% repro.

 

In the announcement talking about this preview of Digital Editions 1.8, Adobe does request feedback. I’d encourage readers to try this preview and give Adobe all the feedback you can. Adobe is also holding a drawing where multiple gift cards to online booksellers will be awarded. Card winners will be announced on July 25, at noon eastern U.S. time.

 

Updated Information as of 7/21/2011

 

Adobe replied on their blog linked here and on Twitter indicating that ctrl+F7 on Windows will present a dialog of links from a page. This key is also listed in the welcome document but see my earlier comments about tabular data not always being presented in a reading friendly fashion. This does work in the books I tried. I would expect to be able to open the links from the content too, much like you can when reading web pages. Link lists are handy but links taken out of context do not always make sense.

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Several years ago I had the good fortune to take a trip to London. I recall how exciting it was to be able to walk around the city using an electronic copy of a travel guide I had downloaded while on my trip from my local library back in Washington State. For someone who has tried probably every method of accessing books around, this was an exciting time. True, the books were in the PDF format but by and large things worked to the point where you could access the books and libraries were just starting to really get into the online book world.

 

All I can say is that it is a good thing I’m not taking that same trip today. Libraries, largely living off public tax dollars, have ruined this opportunity. While libraries continue to make electronic books available, by and large they do so by supporting what has become a completely inaccessible platform with books made available in Adobe’s Digital Editions. The library staff I have talked to say this really isn’t their fault and they are just buying services and books from OverDrive. OverDrive passes the buck and blames Adobe. Adobe promises accessibility in the next version of Digital Editions.

 

Based on reports from the recent National Federation of the Blind summer convention, I’m lead to believe that Adobe is close to delivering on some level of accessibility in Digital Editions. Reports from those in attendance indicate Adobe gave demonstrations of something working here. However, even if Adobe released a 100% accessible and feature-rich version of Digital Editions today, I believe the situation libraries have allowed to exist is an important public policy question deserving of greater examination. Further, searching of Adobe’s web offerings still shows no firm info about anything official on an accessible Digital Editions.

 

Libraries should be held accountable to answer for what they are doing spending public money on such an inaccessible book platform. Based on the little financial data I’ve been able to obtain, I’m guessing OverDrive makes a healthy living off of the money libraries spend. According to representatives from the King County Library System, that institution will spend approximately $150,000 for books that end up being in the Digital Editions format in 2011. The Seattle Public Library was unwilling to detail spending on strictly eBooks but indicated the library would be spending a total of $600,000 with OverDrive for online books in all formats. Imagine the public dollars spent across the United States given what these two libraries are spending as just two examples. Obviously much of the income OverDrive takes in pays for the book content and such but by all impressions I have the company is in no danger of going out of business.

 

At one point the Los Angeles Public Library took a stand and said enough was enough and indicated they’d stop purchasing inaccessible books. So far I’ve been unable to determine any updates on that stand aside from seeing books with copyrights newer than the announcement of such a policy being available on the library’s web site. I welcome any updates people have because at least in theory I think the stand the Los Angeles Public Library took is what every library should have done. Instead all seem to have simply passed the buck and largely missed an opportunity to address the accessibility of eBooks.

 

Sure there is blame to go around and as I say maybe Adobe will finally deliver. One can only wonder how things would have turned out if libraries had turned off the public money faucet to OverDrive when this problem first appeared though. I’d be willing to bet OverDrive would be pressing a lot harder for Adobe to do something. Instead they seem to find it easier to pay $50 for Bookshare memberships for the few people who stumble on the fact that some libraries who have OverDrive services are taking part in a program from OverDrive for such subscriptions.

 

We have choices where our public dollars are spent. The platforms used for electronic books by libraries regressed from something that was working. Libraries should not have tolerated this in the least. They should stand up now and turn off the money. That is what gets companies to listen. It takes enough time and effort to make something accessible that when we reach that milestone we need to guard against steps in reverse. Public spending is one tool we should be using. Companies have the choice as to how they want to invest in accessibility but we then too have the choice where to spend our tax dollars. Libraries really blew an excellent opportunity to stand up for accessibility.

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