17 search results for "mlb"

Pick Your Price, MLB Fails to Pay Attention To Pricing in Alt Text, reports monthly pricing as annual rate

Published March 5, 2010 by Kelly Ford

So, is MLB giving people who rely on alt text to understand the intent of images a real bonus or just not paying attention to what their alt tags convey? Check out the pricing according to alt tags for MLB.TV Premium.

The price is first indicated as $119.95 per year. But then alt text for the graphic of monthly subscription pricing of $24.95 indicates the rate is an annual rate as well. So MLB, do I get to pick my price for the annual subscription or are you going to correct your alt tags and pay better attention?

Alt text matters and my point here isn’t to be picky, although if MLB wants to let me pick the price of $24.95 for an annual subscription, which I could conclude based on current text, that sort of pickiness is just fine with me.

For the curious, here is how the alt text reads to a screen reader.

$119.95/year

$24.95/year

And here is the relevant section of the web page HTML. Note how the graphical names for the .png files go as far as indicating monthly and year for the images but that the alt text on the monthly pricing is incorrect.

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The MLB Accessibility Hullabaloo

Published March 4, 2010 by Kelly Ford

I have nothing but respect for the folks involved in helping to advocate that MLB.com improve accessibility of the web site. Lainey Feingold has been instrumental in moving accessibility on a number of issues to successful resolution. To learn more about the story here you can read a press release at http://lflegal.com/2010/02/mlb-press/. My comments are not meant to detract from the progress made.

Still I find it kind of ironic that when browsing to the MLB audio/video information page I find text telling me what follows is an advertisement and the same old nonsense of missing alt text on the ad itself. My money is as good as anyone else’s so come on advertisers and MLB, market to me too.

For the curious, here is how a screen reader presents the experience in question.

Below is an advertisement.

168544/r15_cm_b12_728x90

The string of gibberish is presented by the screen reader because the item is a link. Screen readers present some form of the underlying URL when links without text or proper alternative text for images are included in a web page. The screen reading user still needs to be able to take action on the link in question. The screen reader has no way to know whether the link is important or not.

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MLB Improving Accessibility of Gameday Audio

Published May 9, 2009 by Kelly Ford

Good news for anyone who uses MLB’s
Gameday Audio service. I recently received the following e-mail from Lainey Feingold. For those who are not familiar with Lainey’s work, she’s been behind numerous improvements around accessibility over the past several years in areas ranging from ATMs to web sites.

To everyone who has contacted me about this year’s Game Day Audio Player on mlb.com:

MLB has put up an accessible player for Game Day Audio. The new accessible game day audio player and related media center is live now (as of earlier this afternoon), but mlb is still working on all the internal links to integrate this player into the site. That part should be done early next week. But in the meanwhile, you can use the new player by going directly to the following url:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/player/mpa/index.jsp

Please let us know what you think, and we’ll let you know as soon as this new player is integrated into the full site. ACB, CCB and BSCB continue to work on other accessibility issues on mlb.com through the structured negotiations process, including the game day audio service. We know that problems still exist for mlb.tv subscribers, so please let us know if you subscribe to mlb.tv. Feedback about the new game day audio player will be shared with MLB.

One other accessibility issue that has been address is the all-star ballot. This year’s ballot has been designed to be accessible and has an audio captcha. The ballot is available at: http://mlb.mlb.com/media/player/mpa/index.jsp Please send any feedback on this as well.

Thanks for everyone’s support as we work with MLB to make the site accessible,

Lainey

Lainey Feingold

Law Office of Lainey Feingold

http://lflegal.com/

510.548.5062

LF@LFLegal.com

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What Happens After the Accessibility Agreements End?

Published April 1, 2022 by Kelly Ford

It is unfortunate that it takes landmark agreements far too often for progress on accessibility in the first place. Several years ago Major League Baseball was heralded for their agreement and commitment to accessibility. Progress was indeed made and I know I was one who commented on the agreement and progress.

The agreement closing date has long past and so the answer to the question about what happens afterword in their case is, “Unlabeled image Unlabeled image /121.svg.” If you don’t like that answer, how about “Unlabeled image Unlabeled image /140.svg?” Both of those answers are taken from www.mlb.com/scores as of this writing, and are how two teams are indicated from the live scoreboard when accessed with multiple screen readers.

They are just two of the more than 370 accessibility failures reported by multiple accessibility auditing tools run on the page. Of course, accessibility tools are just part of the story and I’m a big fan of user testing for accessibility. In this case I’m serving that role and just wanted to look up the score of a ballgame. I guess when I sort out who is represented by 121 or 140, I’ll know the score.

This is not a criticism of the efforts that lead to MLB’s agreement. It is, however, a serious question around what it is going to take to make accessibility matter long after the agreements end because I can assure you representing a baseball team as 121, 140 or any other random nonsense is not accessibility the way I want to experience it.

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TuneIn Live on Alexa

Published October 14, 2018 by Kelly Ford

If you are a user of the TuneIn audio services and in particular a subscriber to their premium TuneIn Live service, TuneIn Live on Alexa might be worth exploring. The service is available at a discounted rate of $2.99 for Amazon Prime members or $3.99 without a Prime subscription. This is lower than the standard $7.99 monthly subscription price.

One benefit I enjoy in TuneIn Live is the fact that audio for the NFL, NBA, MLB and NBA, which typically requires individual subscriptions, is part of the service. Whether you use the Alexa option or the standard TuneIn Live, if you subscribe to multiple audio services, this is likely a cost savings.

TuneIn Live works on most Alexa-enabled devices. I was initially a bit hesitant to try this option because I didn’t want to be held to just the physical locations of any Echo devices I have. Although it isn’t listed in the supported devices, I’ve found that TuneIn Live on Alexa also works on an Amazon Fire tablet. This is great for portability.

I remember the good old days of internet streaming when audio from those radio stations that were online was available without by and large any limitations. Those days have long gone, especially for things such as live professional sports, which now mostly require some sort of a subscription.

TuneIn in the free form offers a great deal of audio. I find the Live subscription version adds enough value that it is worth the cost. Adding the Alexa option for a discount, especially since it works on the portable Fire tablet and saves either $4 or $5 off the monthly subscription is worth considering.

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University of Wisconsin Gameday Football App another Accessibility Disappointment

Published August 26, 2012 by Kelly Ford

As I’ve written here previously, I’m an alum of the University of Wisconsin and take pride in having attended the school and my degree. I’m also a sports fan so enjoy following the Wisconsin Badgers and fall Saturdays still remind me of the many rich traditions in Madison that go along with Badger football.

Today I noticed a tweet from @BadgerFootball talking about a new Wisconsin Football Gameday app to stay in touch with, as the name implies, happenings during Badger football games and more.

In just a few minutes of trying the app with Apple’s VoiceOver—a built-in screen reader on the iOS platform—it is a disappointment to see that the University of Wisconsin has once again failed to pay attention to accessibility. Blog readers can search the archives for my last adventures with the Wisconsin athletic department over accessibility issues with football broadcasts over the internet. The service used back then has once again been replaced and to the University’s credit they did provide me with work arounds when the accessibility issues with the broadcast streaming technology were identified.

One can only wonder what processes are or are not in place though to ensure University offerings are accessible. In the gameday app for example, one need only launch the app and use basic VoiceOver gestures of sweeping right to quickly find the accessibility problems. The first items encountered talk about tickets for a game against Northern Iowa. And as a note to UW staff, Northern has a typo in your app where you have it spelled Nothern.

After the first two sweep right gestures, all one finds with subsequent gestures of the same type is a series of seven nameless links. It is this basic problem that leads me to wonder about processes to ensure accessibility. Does the University know about VoiceOver? For apps created for the iOS platform, is VoiceOver compatibility a release requirement?

The nameless links on the app home screen are not the only issues encountered. As an example, following the second nameless link leads to an area of the app called Gameday. Within the Gameday area is a link for Rosters/Depth.

The team depth chart is exposed as one single object to VoiceOver and even worse, read as first a series of position indications and numbers followed by a list of player names. It is impossible to make sense of and even associate player names with their numbers. Major League Baseball has clearly demonstrated making team rosters readable with VoiceOver can be accomplished in their MLB At Bat iOS app.

As just one other example of a basic accessibility issue quickly discovered in the app, there are a series of buttons that appear in many locations. They have names that include “arrow left 72@2x” “arrow right 72@2x” and “but refresh 72@2x”. Obviously one can guess the purposes of these buttons but any reasonable accessibility support of an app would not include such nonsensical names.

I’ll start the process of outreach to individuals at Wisconsin. That said, it is a disappointment to see that this level of inaccessibility exists and something released by an institution under multiple legal requirements to support accessibility and an institution that has a publicly stated accessibility policy that would seem to imply that this app fails to comply.

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Judge For Yourself, Is Ticketmaster Audio CAPTCHA Usable?

Published August 19, 2012 by Kelly Ford

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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