However students with disabilities who utilize Assistive Technology (AT) often have difficulty with CAT because the systems are not accessible to AT. They have, in particular, presented major challenges to students with print disabilities who use screen readers and/or Braille.

A recent article in Education Week describes what may appear to be a solution to this problem. Developed by the Oregon Department of Education along with help from the American Institutes for Research, the new adaptive test can be use with refreshable Braille displays and, if necessary, sections can be printed out by Braille embossers in the school.

It looks like it probably took a lot of time and money to accomplish this, but kudos to Oregon for leading the way.

Read the whole article on Education Week.

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Photo credit: Image licensed by Creative Commons by Sebastien.delorme

In the correspondence that followed, my colleague noted that the mobile version of Facebook was “usable” with screen readers but we both agreed that there were a number of things that you could not do on Facebook using the mobile interface or even the iPad/iPod Facebook app.

I wish I had read a December 8th posting from Marco’s Accessibility Blog because he had done all of the work for me, detailing extensively the issues related to the two big social networking sites as well as several more – some of which I’d never heard of before. Marco’s “Social Networking and Accessibility: A rather sad picture” blog does give a pretty comprehensive, sad and up-to-date (he revised the blog several days later with new information) picture of the topic so I highly recommend reading it in its entirety. I like the fact they he did not stop with screen reader AT but also mentioned issues for folks with mobility issues and the requirement to use a mouse/pointing device to access content and perform functions with many of these services.

So, if you are looking here for a good, reliable and accurate review of the major social networking services and their lack of accessibility, head on over to Marco’s and check it out. I will be adding him to my blogroll.

Happy New Year – Let’s hope there are new and good things in store for accessible web design in 2012.

We’ve recently made some accessibility enhancements to Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. Improvements have been made in keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers among other items.

Google Calendar: Google Calendar now has new keyboard shortcuts and better screen reader support for our blind users. Members of the blind community can now use JAWS, VoiceOver and ChromeVox to manage your calendars, create and edit events or simply browse your events.

Google Docs and Google Sites: New keyboard shortcuts and better screen reader support with support for two screen readers: JAWS and ChromeVox.

Read the rest of the report

As reported here, you will recall that Google had gotten into some hot water with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) last spring. NFB had lodged a formal complaint to the Department of Justice on concerns it had regarding the accessibility of these free applications. We’ll be checking them out and spreading the word.

According to their official blog, Google reports that they have worked closely with the American Council of the Blind (ACB) to develop a survey that would give them “a greater understanding of how people choose and learn about the assistive technologies they use.” They go on to note that the survey “will help us design products and tools that interact more effectively with assistive technologies currently available to the blind community, as well as improve our ability to educate users about new features in our own assistive technologies, such as ChromeVox and TalkBack.”

The survey for people in the blind community, reportedly takes about 20 minutes to complete (link to the survey is here) and includes incentives by way of random drawings for gift certificates to Amazon.com.

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Photo credit: Licensed by Creative Commons by Robert Scoble

On May 31, 2011, the Justice Department’s Disability Rights Section and Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California entered into a comprehensive settlement agreement with Wells Fargo & Company. Under the Agreement, Wells Fargo will pay up to $16 million to compensate individuals who experienced discrimination in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when trying to call Wells Fargo, access Wells Fargo’s services, or visit one of Wells Fargo’s retail stores.

The ruling pertains to discrimination to Wells Fargo customers who were deaf, hard of hearing as well as some with blindness and visual impairments.

Read the entire article which includes links where injured parties can get more information.

The Law School Admissions Council (LASC) in the US has agreed to make its website fully accessible to blind and visually impaired users following legal action by the country’s National Federation of the Blind (NFB).

The NFB filed a lawsuit against LASC in 2009 claiming that the organisation’s website – used by nearly every US law school to accept student applications – violated the California Disabled Persons Act and the Unruh Civil Rights Act (a California-based piece of discrimination legislation).

The federation claimed it was not possible for screen-readers to recognise various text on the website, meaning that visually impaired law school applicants who wished to apply online were forced to rely on assistance from a sighted employee – over the phone – at LASC’s customer support service, which was only available at certain times.

Following a two-year legal battle a settlement has been reached whereby LASC will make its website accessible by allowing screen-readers to recognise all text on the site, meaning visually impaired applicants will be able to independently complete applications at a time of their choosing.

The changes will come into effect from September 1 this year, and the NFB will perform semi-annual accessibility testing of the site until September 1, 2012.

From 2006-08, the NFB was involved in a similar case supporting a class action against the US superstore chain Target for the alleged inaccessibility of its website. Target eventually agreed to pay six million dollars and make changes to its site, while not accepting liability (see original story on Headstar).

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Sadly, I must report that SP1 does not solve the issue of fixing the program so that VoiceOver, the resident screen reader for Mac OSX, works with the product. VoiceOver is still not able to read the content of the document pane. VoiceOver will read the toolbars and their content, and says that it is “interacting with document pane view” but that’s all. VoiceOver cannot read the content of the document pane, thus the product is still not accessible.

Over the past few years increasing number of universities – including the University of Maine – and more recently an increasing number of public school systems have adopted Google Apps for Education and G-mail as their mail system. On the Google Apps for Education home page, they claim “more than 10 million students” use the service.

But there might be a problem.

Last week, amid the news surrounding various world crises, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) posted a press release indicating that they had “requested that the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, investigate civil rights violations committed by” two major universities for using Google Apps for Education. They state that this is “because the schools have adopted technology that is not accessible to the blind.” A similar request for investigation has been filed against four Oregon public school districts that are using Google Apps.

The press release cites the fact that “United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Education have specifically warned all university presidents against the adoption of inaccessible technology.”

NFB has included links to videos they prepared showing the inaccessibility features of the Google Apps in question.

It should be noted that there are probably other mail systems and applications used in schools and universities that are not accessible to people with disabilities, but now that Google Apps for Education have been called on the carpet, it would be pretty hard to defend their use now. That is unless Google puts their tremendous technical skills and considerable wealth into fixing the Apps immediately.

Read the entire Press Release from the National Federation of the Blind.

Now the bad news: MS Office for Mac still does not fully work with VoiceOver. VoiceOver will read the toolbars and their content, and says that it is “interacting with document pane view” but that’s all. VoiceOver cannot read the content of the document pane, thus the product is still not accessible.

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I was hoping that with my recent purchase of the latest version of MS Office for Mac – version 2011 – I would be happily telling you about the outstanding accessibility features of the new version. I was hoping that unlike its predecessor, MS Office for Mac 2008, there would now be the ability to add alternative descriptions to images (see below for an explanation as to why alternative descriptions are important) and that when converting or saving documents made by the new version, the PDFs and HTML pages created would all be accessible. I was sure that given the fact that this is a brand new version of Office it would work fluidly and fully with the Mac OSX native screen reader VoiceOver, a built-in feature in Mac OS since version 10.4 (Tiger) in 2005, nearly SIX YEARS AGO.

But no, I can’t report any of this because, in terms of accessibility for people with disabilities, Microsoft Office for the Mac – 2011 is a complete failure. Not only can you not make accessible documents with this product, it does not work with VoiceOver. That’s right; you cannot read documents created in MS Office for Mac 2001 with VoiceOver.

A VPAT – Voluntary Product Accessibility Template – “is a tool used to document a product’s conformance with the accessibility standards under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The purpose of the VPAT is to assist Federal contracting officials and other buyers in making preliminary assessments regarding the availability of commercial ‘Electronic and Information Technology’ products and services with features that support accessibility” (quoted source itic.org). The VPAT, as the name implies, is a voluntary statement made by the manufacturer regarding their own evaluation of their product in terms of how it meets the Section 508 requirements. In a rather bizarre finding, the VPAT for MS Office for Mac -2011 proudly notes that VoiceOver effectively works with the toolbars and “the ribbon” of MS Office for Mac 2011.

Unfortunately, Apple’s own office suite, iWork, isn’t much better when it comes to making accessible documents. iWork ’09, the latest iteration, does not have the capacity to make accessible documents either. Specifically, there is no way to add alternative descriptions to images or other objects inserted in a document.

But the good news is that at least VoiceOver can read the contents of documents made in iWorks in addition to working with all of the menus and toolbars.

If you need a word processor, or spreadsheet, or presentation software for your Mac, save your money and download the latest version of open source solution LibreOffice (3.3.0). Oh, if you don’t speak Spanish, the word “Libre” means “Free,” as in no dinero!

LibreOffice (v 3.3.0 for the Mac) does have the capacity to add Alternative Descriptions to image and works completely with VoiceOver. That said, when converting your LibreOffice documents to other formats, you will need to test them to make sure all of the accessibility features have been carried over.

Link to download LibreOffice

Why Alternative Descriptions for images are important in all digital document

Images present the most difficulty to persons using screen reader technology. These assistive technology (AT) devices convert the written text into spoken words or into Braille so that persons who are blind or who have visual impairments can “read” the document presented on their computer screen.

While many, if not most, images in documents are “pretty pictures,” there are times when a document contains an image that is vital to the understanding of the document. Without the Alternative Description of the image, the screen reader generally will alert the user that there is an image but cannot communicate anything else.

Since modern communications between and among people are increasingly done with the sharing of many forms of office documents – including word processor, spreadsheet, presentational (e.g., PowerPoint) and PDF documents – it is imperative that all of these documents be made as accessible as possible, particularly if the intention is to share the document publicly.

Fortunately, the use of the ALT description has gotten wide notice. I’d like to say that it has become well known (and well implemented), but sadly most digital documents are still prepared and published without the inclusion of any alternative descriptions for images.

You probably already know the definition and purpose of the ALT description: it is underlying code added to images that have been inserted into a digital document. The code is used by assistive technologies called screen readers to provide users who are blind or have visual impairments with a textual description of the inserted image.

For years, the debate of “when to use the ALT description” and “when to use the Null ALT” (i.e., ATL=”” in HTML) has been discussed within the accessibility community. My own personal – and completely unscientific – research revealed that there has been no universal agreement on this debate. My observations among screen reader users has been that those users who had become disabled later in life, or who still had some limited vision, preferred that every and all image have an extensive and detailed alternative description. On the other hand, those born blind seemed to me to care less about the “pretty pictures” – as one friend called them – except in situations where the image was a “text graphic” and contained information needed by the user.

For years, I have operated with the philosophy that states “less is best.” I have determined that nearly all of the images added to digital documents are in fact “pretty pictures” and that since they do not provide any important meaning to the document, it is best to use the Null ALT. It should be noted that an equivalent method for adding a Null ALT to digital documents, other than HTML/XHTML documents, does not exist. For word processed, PDFs and the like, you will still need to add some text to create any alternative description. See my series of articles about accessible documents.

My brevity philosophy apparently has some support. A new resource by Australian, Dey Alexander, which takes a similar position as mine, has recently gotten some attention in the accessibility world. Alexander suggests that for purely “decorative” images, and for those “informational” images that repeat information already in the body of the document, the Null ALT is perfectly acceptable. When I was a graduate student, my professors always preached that a well written research document describes everything the person needs to know in the text of the paper and that the charts, graphs and images are only there to support the written content – not the other way around.

At this point I am not ready to discuss the ALT descriptions for completely visual content like graphs and charts. You’ll have to stay tuned for my opinions on that. Suffice it to say that these purely visual elements present a great challenge for people concerned about accessibility and for screen reader users as well.

But getting back to the point of this commentary…I have not (yet) found the definitive explanation for how to write decent/good alternative descriptions.  I suspect that any offering in this regard would be something no one could agree upon and result in more cantankerous debate.

A few months ago, fellow accessibility guy, Cliff Tyllick from Texas offered this suggestion on what a good ALT would/should be. Cliff wrote that a good ALT description would be “…a succinct statement of the meaning you expect a sighted person to get from that image.”

Sounds reasonable to me, but I can see the hair-splitters fighting over the word “succinct.”

For a final thought, I’ll turn back to another article by Dey Alexander called “The 5Es of Content Usability” which speaks to the need for Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error tolerant and Easy to learn writing. I know that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but maybe it is safe to assume that you should use less than a thousand words in an ALT description for that picture.

Happy New Year.