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CGrouse
#1 Posted : Friday, October 5, 2007 9:37:16 AM(UTC)
CGrouse

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Joined: 6/4/2004(UTC)
Posts: 291

This was just posted on the Internet, anyone worried? Anyone have a site accessible to the blind?



http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9041002&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1



Thanks,


Christopher
Thanks,


Christopher
Cliff
#2 Posted : Sunday, October 7, 2007 2:31:45 PM(UTC)
Cliff

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Joined: 5/24/2004(UTC)
Posts: 4,147

Most websites still live well under the radar in that respect, but I think it's extremely important for web designers to begin to take notice, and for merchants to factor it in as a cost of doing business. Brick-and-mortar business catering to the public are required to offer accessibility to handicap patrons. A common argument is why not web businesses?

I've done a lot of work on accessibility in ecommerce (when specifically required), and can attest that much of it is very difficult to do in .Net, though it has become much easier in .Net 2.0. It can still be pretty frustrating. At the very least you should be using alt attributes on photos, title attributes on links and other elements, a natural tab index (without using the tabindex attribute), and labels for every input. It goes well beyond being accessible to screen readers like JAWS; just allowing your text to gracefully size is an important thing to do.

I would consider any version of BVC to be far from accessible out-of-the-box, so if it's something you're concerned about, you'll need to study up and/or find some help.
MitchA
#3 Posted : Sunday, October 7, 2007 2:31:48 PM(UTC)
MitchA

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Joined: 3/3/2006(UTC)
Posts: 1,737

In plain language... amoung other things, the suit's recommended remedies include:

Adding text descriptions below or next to items otherwise only graphically displayed, (A picture of a plaid flannel shirt with no text is invisible),
Make the site a keyboard-friendly site including the checkout page with all areas accessible via the tab key,
Mouse-over plain text descriptions of pictures (red plaid flannel long sleve shirt, white buttons, one pocket, s,m,l,xl available),
Avoid graphics as text - impossible for OCR's to read aloud - unless the alt text is identical,
Make the site large-type friendly for persons with limited sight.

Not all vision-impaired persons likely to need to visit a site are totally blind, but the ADA apparently make no distinction. Large print books are not mandated from publishers because OCR's and magnifiers can be employed and/or books on tape are available. Many websites, Target's included, lacked simple embelishments that enables the visually impared and blind to shop and navigate through to the checkout page.

Mouse clicking and ONLY mouse clicking is a no-no.


Very inetesting, I tabbed through my cart page, tabbed to the 'checkout' buttom, hit 'enter' and the page refreshed. This is a problem for blind shoppers and makes my site non-compliant... I couldn't get to the checkout page until I mouse-clicked on the button. The 'update' button worked fine when I changed the quantity from 1 to 2. Any reason the 'checkout' button doesn't accept a hit on the enter key???
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes.
birdsafe
#4 Posted : Monday, October 8, 2007 3:13:35 PM(UTC)
birdsafe

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Joined: 2/21/2007(UTC)
Posts: 1,113

One must also consider that we are talking the US District Court of San Francisco -- a very left-wing court that has had numerous ridiculous rulings overturned by higher courts.

While I would certainly see the industry moving in this direction, to me it's kind of like saying we need to adapt the television market for the blind. Or how about drive thru restaurants adapted for the deaf (or blind). Adapting services for the disabled should be applied with some common sense, something the San Francisco court (and extreme left in general) abandoned many years ago.
Cliff
#5 Posted : Tuesday, October 9, 2007 9:10:32 AM(UTC)
Cliff

Rank: Member

Joined: 5/24/2004(UTC)
Posts: 4,147

Joe, depending on services offered, television does have accessibility features available like closed-caption subtitling for the hearing impaired and audio descriptions for the sight impaired. Also, as ridiculous as it may seem, drive-through cash machines do generally sport braille and headphone jacks, which kind of makes drive-through restaurant accessibility seem a little less outrageous. But it isn't a very good comparison to the 'information superhighway'.

It really is common sense to make a website accessible, whether ethically or financially, especially high-traffic sites. Not only do accessibility practices help to improve search engine optimization, promote better adherence to web standards, and expand your potential audience, they can drastically improve usability for the 'average' visitor.

The Target suit is old news, but I'm still not sure why they were specifically singled out. Only recently has it gained media attention again because of it's new class-action status. I have mixed feelings about the lawsuit, honestly. In one respect, I like the idea that it's bringing attention to the problem and seems to be showing that after almost 2 years for some reason Target still wishes to remain in the past and seem to be pridefully ignoring their bottom line. By essentially disabling certain visitors they comes across as arrogant and discriminate.

On the other side, I does seem a bit extreme to file suit against a corporation for something that apparently many federal websites, which are required by law to comply with Section 508, continue to ignore. This is really a customer service issue (or lack of), and when an entire group of customers complains of their requests for service are continuously ignored, the corporation should absolutely be called out. Whether a lawsuit is the right path...

How difficult is it for Target to start ball rolling by moving some product description text into image alt attributes? Maybe they just hired the wrong people. Their front page alone has 763 validation errors, so their web people are obviously idiots. Lawsuits, or the threat of them, often seem to be the key ingredient to change in this country, and this is definitely an important one to follow.
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