A few weeks ago, I wrote about the announcement from Google that they had markedly improved the accessibility of various free apps they deliver to the public. In a article from the E-Access Bulletin of October, Brian Gaff, an accessibility columnist says “not so fast!”

Google Gaps:

Our regular correspondent Brian Gaff, who is on the committee of the Kingston upon Thames Association for the Blind, writes in to grumble about accessibility issues relating to Google services.

“Judging by the comments in the Google group ‘accessible’ it seems that Google have painted themselves into a corner with their new online apps like Google Plus and Google Docs,” Gaff says. “Half of them won’t work with most basic screenreaders and so they add ChromeVox to their Chrome browser. Hardly what blind folk would want, to have to alter access technology just to use Google’s stuff.

“The failing here surely is that the folk writing the code are not aware enough of what works and what does not for blind access. It’s sad that in this age we are still saying that the writers of code are not educated in making sites that just work out of the box, so to speak.

“Surely in this age when people want more users to generate more revenue, it ought to be a no-brainer to get as many folk as possible to be able to use web sites, software and online systems, but it seems it’s not. We are invisible I suspect.

“I block Google’s ads now as they persist in trying to sell me Venetian blinds… grin.”

Copyright 2011 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .

Among the presenters at this year’s conference is yours truly, John Brandt representing Maine CITE and the Maine AIM Program. Also there will be my colleague Cynthia Curry, Consultant and MLTI Integration Mentor. Both of these presentations will take place on Friday and require full conference registration.

My presentation, AT & AIM – Tablets and Pods in the Classroom will demonstrate and evaluate several devices and apps used for instruction and as assistive technology (AT). Used with Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) these devices can be very helpful to students with disabilities. This presentation takes place at 11:00 am (session 2) in the Arnold Room.

Cynthia’s presentation, Text to Speech, Speech to Text, and Screen Readers will discuss “computer programs that talk.” In the presentation she will demonstrate and discuss how these unique applications can be used to enhance student learning. This presentation takes place at 1:20 pm (session 3) in the Washington Room.

Back by popular demand this year is Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Marketing Manager in Apple’s education division. Last year, Sarah presented on the accessibility features built into Apple’s Mac OS X and iOS and gave us a first-hand look at some of the features of the new iPad. This year, Sarah will again talk on this topic and demonstrate some of the new and improve accessibility features of Mac OS X and iOS in her presentation entitled Accessibility Features of Mac OS X and Apple Mobile.

Sarah’s presentation is co-sponsored by Maine CITE and Apple, Inc. and is offered free of charge to ACTEM members. It will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 in the Sagadahoc Room. If you are not an ACTEM member and would like to attend, please contact Maine CITE.

For more information about the conference and to register, please visit the ACTEM Conference website.

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

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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Copyright 2011 Headstar Ltd, used as permitted.

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Along comes Prezi which can best be described as a whiteboard with wings. Think of a giant whiteboard on to which you have written, pasted and embedded various pieces of text, images, animations and video. Now instead of just viewing this from afar, imagine being able to fly in and out and all around the whiteboard to view the content. If you can’t wait, just run on over to prezi.com and view the demo.

But all of this animation will no doubt reek havoc for my screen reader user friends. I seriously doubt Prezi will be accessible. But I won’t know until I try.

I’m going to start with an embedded version of a test file I made. We’ll see what happens…

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.

Given the time available at the meeting, I did not provide a response then, but I will now.

First, to explain fully what “skip navigation” is I will refer you to the Web AIM website where you can read an extensive explanation.

But the short answer is…When the Section 508 web accessibility guidelines were developed 12 years ago as an addition to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 the issue of navigation links, or the navigation menu commonly found on web pages created headaches for people who used screen reader assistive technology.  At the time, people who used screen readers had rather limited options when it came to reading web pages as the technology of the time could just basically read the content of the page without differentiating various parts. The standard web design custom then – as now – was to build a web page with a title at the top, a menu of internal links (navigation links) either across the top of the page or down the left side of the page, and the content below or to the right of the menu. This meant that a screen reader user had to listen to all of the content of the menu before they got to the main content of the page. It may be okay to read all of these navigation links on first page visited, but it quickly gets tedious when one reads through multiple page on a website and is forced to listen to all of the menu items repeated over and over again. So, the “skip navigation” link was a method designed to help screen reader users by creating a by-pass link around a long list of menu items.

As the years have gone by screen reader technology has changed dramatically and there are now methods built into all of the major screen readers that allow the user to move about the web page more readily ostensibly allowing the user to “browse” the content without having to read every word. However , the Section 508 guideline on “skip navigation” (specifically standard “o”) continues despite these advancements.

I should point out that another method web designers can now use to solve this issue is to put the content toward the top of the page and the navigation after the content. The designer then uses CSS to relocate the navigation menu content back at the top or side of the page for non-screen reader users to see in the usual location. But the screen reader “sees” the page in the order is it written with the content first and the navigation menu later. This is the method I prefer to use and I always seek to choose CMS themes/templates that are designed to render the content in this manner.

Regarding the “hiding” of the “Skip Navigation” link – that’s purely optional as the Section 508 requirement is still met as long as the screen reader can see it. There really is no obvious reason to make it visible and it has the potential to create some confusion to the casual web user.

Why this is particularly interesting is that today WebAIM released a report on their third survey of screen reader users. In December 2010, WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users and received over 1,200 responses. One question pertained specifically to the “skip navigation” issue and I think it supports my position.

When survey respondents were asked, “When a ‘skip to main content’ or ‘skip navigation’ link is available on a page, how often do you use it?” 29% said they used it “sometimes,” 22% said “seldom,” and nearly 14% said they “never” use this feature. On the other end, 15% of respondents said they used the skip navigation links “Whenever they’re available” and just over 16% said they used them “often.” This suggests that the “skip navigation” is used by a minority of screen reader users. The report also observes that, “…there has been a slight decrease in the usage of ‘skip’ links…likely due to increased usage of headings and landmarks for navigation…” In addition, the survey also reports that just over 57% of respondents use the “Navigate through the headings on the page” as the most popular method for “finding information on a lengthy page.”

I suspect that when Section 508 is revise in the coming years the “skip navigation” requirement itself will be…skipped!

What do you think?

Photo credit: Image licensed by Creative Commons by MonkeySimon

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.

I had this feeling today when I read a series of articles from this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about accessible and universal design in college websites (links to all articles below). The cover story for the series tells the story of Darrell Shandrow, a senior at Arizona State University at Tempe. Mr. Shandrow is a journalism major who at age 37 would be considered a “non-traditional” student. But what makes Mr. Shandrow all the more non-traditional is the fact that he is blind student who isn’t afraid of making a few waves.

The right place, right time comment has to do with the fact that I had just blogged a few days ago about this exact topic. It’s nice to see some supporting documentation for my position.

If you are interested in the stuff I write about here you should absolutely read these articles. And like most on-line news stories today there is a place to make comments. I find reading the comments to often be more informative than the article. In this case, the comments made by a few people prove the point of why we need to be advocates for accessible and universal design and why we need to be vigilant.

After reading the articles the first thing I did was send the links out to a half-dozen colleagues and put links on Twitter. Then I went and testing the home page of my alma mater. St. Francis College of Brooklyn would probably score in the lower third.

As someone who started their web design career as a university webmaster, I have a particular affection for this topic. But to me web accessibility for a college/university website is a no-brainer.

The series:

Chronicle of Higher Education article “Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online”

Sidebar: About Cal State’s success

Sidebar: Chart ranking the best and worst college web sites

Universal Design, Usability, and Accessibility