As on time of this posting, I have 639 friends following me on Twitter and thank you all for being friends. I have an appeal to all of you.

NVDA is a free and open source screen reader that offers access to computers to visually impaired at no additional cost. Thanks to all the individuals and companies who have been supporting the project. To sustain the project and most importantly for this screen reader to continue to be available for free, it’s essential that NV Access gets more funding. Here is an open letter I have received in one of the mailing lists:

Dear Fellow NVDA User,

I’m writing to you to explain why our consistent contributions to NVAccess, and NVDA are important.

The mission of NV Access, the company that makes NVDA states:

We are dedicated to the ideal that access to technology should not incur an extra cost for blind and vision impaired users. We believe that blind and vision impaired people should be able to use any type of technology for the same cost as their sighted peers. To that end, our primary aim is to support projects which provide free and open source computer software solutions that enable this accessibility.

== My Story ==

I want to say what NVDA means to me. I live in the United States. I’ve had the good fortune to be able to be in a position to have a government agency, combined with corporate funds available to me. If I had been unable to purchase my screen reader and keep up with the costs of the maintenance of that screen reader at the time when I first became employed, I would never have been able to afford to buy what I needed to get my first job, and I’d probably be living alone, with little to no money to follow my dreams.

Now, because I have a screen reader, and the funding from the company I work for, I can maintain my way of life, take care of my family, and have some extra money left over.

And with NVDA, I now have a free alternative, which in many ways is better than the screen reader my company maintains for me.

Besides that, I have direct access to the developers of NVDA, NV Access. And if I have the means and the time, I can contribute to NVDA by donating, testing, writing documentation, translating NVDA into a language, answering questions on the support list, and telling the NVDA story to those who will listen.

Because I’m a musician, who would rather be playing music full time than doing what I do now, I understand what it means to have given up what I love to do in order to do what I have to do to feed my family. It’s the difference between night and day. Few of us have the joy of being able to have fun at work. Mick and Jamie are now able to do what they love to do for a living, fulfilling the mission of NV Access, the company that makes and maintains NVDA.

If my steady contribution can help keep them working on NVDA, then, vicariously, I can have the joy of knowing that they are doing what they really want to do.

And selfishly, I get to benefit from that small donation.

== Where Does The Money Go? ==

Like many others, I want to know where my money is going when I donate. For anyone who donates, this is a fare question to ask. Let me put this into perspective.

I work for a recruiting company in the United States. The starting salary of an entry-level, full time employee in a professional position is about 30,000 USD. If the individual also needs to have the health insurance to take care of the average family, that raises the cost to the company who employs that individual to about 45,000 USD.

Part of the money we donate keeps Mick and Jamie working on NVDA for us.
Jamie and Mick would love to be able to say that they are pulling in 90,000 USD to work full time on something they love. That would be a great foundation on which they could count to keep NVDA alive and growing.

== A Myth About Big Donations ==

When I considered donating to NVDA, I said to myself “Why should I contribute? Mick and Jamie are doing fine with the funding they have been getting from foundations and corporations.” When I started to check to see if this was true, though, I found out how wrong I was. According to The Foundation Center, at http://foundationcenter.org/, less than 17% of all giving to worthy organizations comes from foundations and corporations. And much of the time, there are great peaks and valley s in that giving. That means that NV Access must constantly attempt to raise funds to keep itself alive, and that Mick and Jamie are under constant stress both because they have to spend time to raise funds on which to live, and because of the peaks and valleys in funding. And assuming that they have the most supportive families and friends in the world, their ability to spend as much time as possible on making NVDA what it needs to be suffers from the time spent away from working on it, and from the stress of the conflict between doing what they love and doing what they have to do to take care of their loved ones.

== We Are Very Important ==

To totally spell that out, NV Access, given the above figures, would rely on 83% of its donations from individuals like you and I.

You and I can make a huge difference, if we will.

Let me use myself as an example. The software maintenance agreement for my screen reader would cost me approximately 130 USD per year. Now I’m not that good at math, so bear with me. That’s something like 12 USD per month. That breaks down to about 3 USD per week. In some places I might go to eat, that’s half the price of a desert. So if I go out to eat once a week, and I go out to eat more times than that, and I skip desert, I can afford to donate 12 USD a month for the use of NVDA with no problem, and I get a little better health in the bargain.

Here’s another example that fits my situation. I like to buy coffee in the lobby where I work. I’m even a card-carrying, cup wielding member of the coffee club they have going down there. That makes the price of coffee 1.25 USD for me. I drink at least a cup a day, sometimes more. If all I do is give up one, single cup of coffee per week, which is probably bad for me, that works out to about 5 USD per month. I can definitely afford that, and I also get better health in the bargain.

Now, let’s see. Can I put a price on access to my computer? What do I get out of being able to use my computer? I get a job that allows me to feed myself, my family, my two dogs, my cat, and pay for my house, my car, all those meals out, and lots more. And all I have to do is give up one desert a week or a cup of coffee a week, depending on how much I want to donate. If I lose the full time use of the screen reader I talked about above, I still have NVDA. If I lose my job, I still have NVDA to help me get another one.
If I lose my computer, and can’t use NVDA on it, I can still go to the library and carry NVDA on a flash drive with me, and still have a way to help myself get back on my feet. How can I put a price on that?

== What About You? ==

Now, let’s take the community of NVDA users as a whole. Let’s say that the entire community of NVDA users gets to benefit from two releases of NVDA per year, which is the norm. For this example, we are totally eliminating corporate and foundational giving, and we are eliminating the higher numbers in my example.

For this example, let’s assume that the whole NVDA community consists of
25,000 individuals who donate not 5 USD per month, but who donate 5 USD per release. If that happens, NV Access would get 125,000 per year, which is 35,000 more than the salary figures I quoted above as that of two entry level professional employees in the United States. If the NVDA community consists of 25,000 individuals and everyone downloads twice a year and gives
5 USD per download, NV Access would get 250,000 per year.

Now, as I freely admit, I am bad at math, but that makes my head swim.

Let me go a little further. Let me assume that we use the money I talked about above to employ Mick and Jamie full time. NV Access could take the money and not only employ Mick and Jamie, but also employ two other people and pay each person 62,500 USD. What would those other employees do for us?
One might be a third programmer, and that would exponentially increase the speed and efficiency of NVDA development. Another could be an administrator, possibly answering tickets, handling customer inquiries , maintaining the web site, and who knows what else, to take the pressure off of the developers. The result, still more efficiency and a much better NVDA.

== Recap ==

Let me emphasize.

- We all give not 12, but 5 USD per month.
- We do it every month.
- No corporate or foundational giving whatsoever.

My math can’t handle the amount of money that would generate. I just blew out my brain cells.

Can you see how powerful you and I can be if we just will decide to give 5 USD per month? I’m definitely having trouble seeing what we can do together.
Can you?

But the point is also this. How much are we getting back for that little investment? There’s no possible way I can put a price on that. And the feeling we get from knowing that for 5 USD a month we can use our computer and do what we have or want to do for fun, and to have the joy of being able to freely contribute to a great screen reader, and a great cause, is much better, and more lasting than a little bit of caffeine, which is probably bad for us, and only lasts for a few hours.

What do you think about this? Will you help me? Will you help Mick and Jamie? Will you help yourself? It’s so easy to set up a donation of 5 USD per month, and you will hardly feel it. You may not feel it at all.

If you are reading this right after you get paid, or right after your money comes in, go and set up a donation now. If you’re reading this, and your funds are low, set up a reminder for yourself to set up that donation for the time you know you will be getting more funds.

Either way, do it now.

Isn’t it easy to be so powerful?

You have the power. Do it now.

Thanks for reading.

Jim

Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
A picture can say a thousand words, but whether they’re the right words is another matter

So, that said, you are 639 people and 640 including me; can each one of us contribute Indian Rupees 500 (Five Hundred only) and that will become Indian Rupees 3,20,000/- which I guess would be a good contribution. Visit NV Access Donation page to make your donation.

Oh! yes, how about spreading this word to your followers, I can’t count the numbers, but that would perhaps bring in a tremendous support.

thank you all in advance for your support. Good luck NV access Team!

I have noticed that Income Tax India‘s Website underwent a re-design and decided to check if the website has met with Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) requirements. Unfortunately, it has not meet several check points of the compliance matrix of GIGW. since every citizen including those with disabilities and tax payers uses this website and Income Tax Department is one such department that generates revenue through citizens, it must be accessible to all users. Below are findings from my review.

Page titles are not descriptive; All pages displays same title as “National Website of the Income Tax Department of India”; instead, it should show the title that reflects to the page content, for instance, Home page should have “Home – Income Tax Department, Government of India” and About Us should have “About Us – Income Tax Department – Government of India”

There is no link to the National Portal of India. GIGW requires all government portals to prominently display the link to the National Portal of India (http://india.gov.in).

No policies such as privacy policy, copy right policy present on the page. External websites are not indicated to differentiate between government and non-government websites; for instance, at the bottom of the page, there is a link to the site developers Quintegra Solutions and same should have an image associated with that indicates Quintegra is an external website. Also, there are several links that opens in a new window and same is not informed to the user; for instance the e-File link given in a multimedia slider.

Clicking on several links on the right rail, does not lead to any new page and focus remains on the home page itself. It cannot be considered as the website is still undergoing changes, since the site nowhere displays the same or it is in beta version.

The website does have a link to “terms of use” but by activating the same, a small window gets opened with disclaimer information.

Although the form names are given in a separate column, links to download a form is given just with the Form no and it would not be descriptive for assistive technology users such as those using the screen reader. Screen readers have a functionality to view all the links in a dialog box and in such a scenario, they only get to know the form numbers and not the description of the form unless they move the focus into the table.

All the circulars and notifications are listed with their file numbers but no title of the circular or notification is mentioned. Also, many of them do not have validate date mentioned.

There is no mechanism in place to archive the old tenders.

Though, there is an image link to “Contact Us”, the image do not have text alternate and contact page do not have contact information of important personnel and functions.

There is no feedback form nor there is any help section in the website. There are several documents including complete tender information is given in PDF format; but the file format, size and source to download necessary reader is not available. Content is not packaged in a way that is easy to navigate; several pages opens in a new window and there is no mechanism to revert back to the home page; for instance, all links under Tax laws and rules menu opens in a new window.

Information about page last updated is not made available. There is no archival policy on the website; though an archival section is present. No acronyms or expansion to words like PAN, TAN etc, are provided on the website. There are several links given under the sub menus in the navigation; however, the sub menus are not accessible via keyboard, hence those links won’t be accessible to all users from the home page.
Most of the layout is controlled with table mark up and information gets cluttered when styles are disabled. Government ownership information “Income Tax department, Department of revenue, Ministry of Finance, government of India” is given in the form of image with no text alternative. The same information would not be available to screen reader users, those who rely on text browsers or who intentionally turn off the images. Also, the same information would not be available for search engines.
Alt attributes are not provided for images; thre are multimedia slide shows on the web site but no mechanism is provided to control them by user; means there is no “pause, stop” buttons. Though there are no links that lead to a page “under construction”, there are several links frokm home page that leads no where and focus remains on the home page itself. There is no “Skip to main content” or “Skip navigation” link is provided there is no mechanism for user to bypass the repeated blocks of content like navigation.

Website does have a Search box but not functioning. By giving an input in the search edit field and clicking on Search button does nothing and focus remains on the same page. CSS is not used across the website and most of the page layout is styled using table mark-up. Website is not quite usable when scripts are turned off. Associated labels are not provided for input fields. There are several links with screen text ‘Read more” and that is not descriptive.

These are some of the high level findings and not the thorough report. A thorough report can be generated on request and on a mutual benefit.

My journey at Yahoo! came to an end last week as part of layoffs. So I thought, let me pen few of memories for three years.

Honestly, it was an amazing, fun filled and encouraging experience for me. Thanks to Sandeep Datar, who found me on LinkedIn and offered me a challenging assignment to build Yahoo!’s second Accessibility lab in their Bangalore office. It took about three months for me get the lab ready to be inaugurated and I have used that chance to not just coordinate to bring up the accessibility lab, but to educate several personnel about what are the kind of products they are procuring and what this lab is all about. It was nice to see the smile and excitment on their faces and they were in fact, so happy that they get to know about several unique products.

Just before the launch of the accessibility lab, we have organized a trip to a few non profit organizations for employees to enable them to understand the world of disability and how they could as well be part of main stream world.

Further, the busy life has started in terms of training engineers and QA teams about accessibility and evaluation of the products for accessibility. Some times, it was not so easy to get attention of product owners towards accessibility, but many times, we got a very encouraging support. All that I believe, no engineer or product owners would intend to build inaccessible products, it’s just they need to know why they should care about accessibility and as accessibility advocates, it’s our responsibility to create that awareness. What I have realized is that, no matter, how much you speak and provider lecture, folks could only understand, when you give the simulations of experiences. What I liked at Yahoo! India office in particular is the support and encouragement we receive from the management. I never got a nagative response to organize any event related to accessibility.

While I was at Yahoo!, I have also got an opportunity to be part of the Disability Working Committee of the NASSCOM Foundation and the National Advisory Board of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) India. With these partnerships, we have also organized a workshop on Web accessibility in association with W3C India and Yahoo! Thanks to Victor Tsaran, who was the keynote speaker and all others who were part of it.

Other few memories are been able to play a good show at Techshare India 2010 and happy to see Yahoo! winning the NCPEDP MphasiS Universal Design Award.

It was amazing to partner with teams in South East Asia and China and particularly happy for the association we had to make Yahoo! Messenger accessible. Hope the good work continues…

Thanks to Sandeep Datar and all who supported me to win the Yahoo! Ratna Award, the highest recognition at Yahoo! India. Not to forget the great support I have received from Victor Tsaran (Hey Victor, I will continue to call you at late at nights!).

It was also nice to get opportunities to present at prestigious conferences like Techshare India and CSUN. also, it was nice to see that during accessibility at Yahoo! has grown to a large extent including launch of Yahoo! Accessibility Blog and other social channels.

Wish Yahoo! continue the good work on Accessibility.

While ago, I wrote about social networks and how they are useful and this time, I thought to share my experience with a few iApplications. Why do I say iApplications? Because, this post will be about a few applications that are used on iDevices and in particular on iPhone.

One of the things I must mention that most of the services are accessible as apps than their web pages. Mostt of them work well with in=built use of access options like Voiceover etc.

Screenshot of Yahoo! Finance iPhone application

Twitter: I use native Twitter app that comes with iOS and quite happy with the ease of use and features. This lets me see my timeline, compose tweet, off late, mentions tab also shows me if someone follow my timeline. I particularly like this feature since it would be easy to follow that twittermate instantly, if I feel so! Direct messages are now under “me” – profile tab. Also, there is a discover tab that is again, something useful… it lists down the popular topics, who you may want to follow and so on. In fact, due to this tab, I got to know several things including funny things like “Internatioanl Kisses Day” and so:-) Click following button to follow me on Twitter!
Download Twitter app for iPhone and iPad

Screenshot of witter for iPhone

Facebook: Again, I use the native app for Facebook; yet to review for accessibility. But usable enough. Only my major complaint about Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and mobile version is that there is no mechanism to share what I like. Besides that, we can post status, comment or like what others post or share, view events and birthdays and interact with groups.

LinkedIn: This is again a cool app and thanks to their engineering team, the app is fairly accessible except for a few issues.

Currency Convertor: This is again something I use very regularly. the good part is that you can just key in any amount that you wish to convert and select currency and you are done.
PS: I am just posting this for now, since this is in drafts for quite sometime and more app info will come soon.

Thanks to NASSCOM Foundation for publishing my below article.

Most often, people have a question – can a blind person use a computer? If so, do they need a special keyboard or a special computer?

Before answering this question, let me take an example of a typist who never looks at the keyboard but can type with speed and accuracy. How is it possible? Practice! Yes, it’s the same in case of people with vision impairment. They just need to be trained. They do not require a special computer – all that they need is assistive technologies.

Firstly, let us understand that vision impairment is of two categories:
1. Total Blindness
2. Low vision

Definition of blindness: http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/fr/fr19/fr05si03.htm

A person who is totally blind would be able to use the computer with the help of screen readers or Refreshable Braille Display. A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen (or, more accurately, sent to standard output, whether a video monitor is turned on or not). This interpretation is then presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology (AT) potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, illiterate or learning disabled.

A Refreshable Braille Display or Braille terminal is an electro-mechanical device for displaying Braille characters, usually by means of raising dots through holes in a flat surface. This would be useful to those who are blind or deaf-blind. Because of the complexity of producing a reliable display that will cope with daily wear and tear, these displays are expensive. Usually, only 40 or 80 Braille cells are displayed. Models with 18-40 cells exist in some notetaker devices. A person with low vision would have to opt to use screen magnification software that allows the user to increase / decease the size of elements, change the contrast, use variety of mouse pointers etc.

With the help of these kind of assistive technologies, users with vision impairment can use almost all the applications in any computer such as word processing, spread sheets, presentations, internet, email clients, web designing tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver,programming tools like Visual Basic, .net, database management systems etc.

Although, they rely on audio output, they can work at an amazing speed! All this is possible since assistive technologies provide them the flexibility to read only the information they require. Let’s look at an example of how one can navigate through a web page using a screen reader – Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) – a free and open source screen reader.

1. Press “Windows” logo key to activate the start menu
2. Activate option “Run” and type the choice of application e.g. Firefox
3. Once the Firefox application starts, press “Alt + D” to access the address bar
4. Type choice of URL, e.g. http://www.yahoo.com

Now let’s understand how the screen reader actually reads. There are several ways to navigate the page using screen reader:

1. By using the down arrow key to read the entire page.
2. By using the “Tab” key to browse through the elements such as links and hit enter to activate the desired element.
3. By using quick navigational keys such as H and Shift + H for headings, K and Shift + K for links, F and Shift + F for form fields, G and Shift + G for graphics,etc.

Also, most of the screen readers such as NVDA offer list of elements in a dialog box such as with NVDA, by pressing Insert + F7, user can revoke elements list box that consist of links, headings and ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks.

As explained above, users will have a lot of flexibility with these assistive technologies and can perform operations at a rapid speed!

Some of the popular screen readers:

• Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA), Free – http://www.nvda-project.org
• JAWS for Windows, Commercial – http://www.freedomscientific.com
• Dolphin Hal, Commercial – http://www.yourdolphin.com
• Window Eyes, Commerical – http://www.gw-micro.com

Tip: If you are don’t have time to download the screen reader, but need a screen reader to surf the Internet, just visit http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu and type the web address, and it will read aloud for you!

Now, let’s talk about people with low vision. Around 60% of people with low vision do not possess enough level of vision to see the monitor and for some, this vision may not be stable. Hence they prefer to use screen readers to avoid strain of the eyes. But the other set of low vision users use Screen magnification software to use the computer. Some of the feature that a screen magnifier have are:

Zoom-in and zoom-out the screen
Set the desired contrast for foreground and background
Increase and type of the mouse pointer
Adjust the speed of mouse pointer
Some have screen reading feature as combination

Some of the popular screen magnifiers:
– Dolphin Supernova, Commercial – http://www.yourdolphin.com
– ZoomText Xtra, Commercial – http://www.aisquared.com

To conclude, with the help of assistive technologies, a person with vision impairment can use computer for everything like any other user!

Louis Braille

Hello All:

January 4th is Birthday of Dr. (I know, he do not have an official doctorate, but he deserves it) Louis Braille.

Louis Braille is inventor of Braille Script that is used by people with vision impairment to read and write. This script is based on six tiny dots. Louis got this idea originally from the military secret code language that consist of 12 digits.

Today, there is an advancement of technology and people with vision impairment can can use comoputers and several other devices like scanner, OCRetc to have access to print material. Having said that, Braille is still important. I could immediately think of two benefits of Braille for people with vision impairment. One is this helps to improve the spellings and second is Braille would be quite helpful for those who don’t like to listen so much or do not wish to use ear phones in busy places.

Watch an interesting video on Louis Braille.

Are you excited to learn Braille?Go to Learn the English Braille Online

Braille Alphabets

Hello, firstly, warm wishes to everyone on marking the International Day of Persons with Disabilities – 3^rd December, and I know, there are a lot of events planned across India and rest of the world. Congratulations everyone for being very active to create awareness towards disability.

I only have three messages; one is for society, second is for the organizations working for people with disabilities and finally for all friends with disabilities.

Dear Society, I could see a lot of change from the past to now! There is a rapid growth in sensitization towards disability and I am happy for it. Having said that, let’s not stop here. Let’s all continue the good work and sensitization happens at every corner of the world. There are still urban cities besides the rural world, where the awareness level towards disability is pretty low and get scared to offer opportunity to the persons with disabilities. Friends, thanks to the technology, today people with disabilities could perform any task with equal quality and within the given time. But only thing is that, we all need to ensure inclusive infrastructure and systems in place. Once again thank you all and look forward to continue the good work with all of you together.

Dear Organizations working for Persons with Disabilities: It’s time to ensure your clients get the perfect skills and aptitude. Today, there is a lot of awareness among the society and no employer would really worry about the disability that employee may have, but certainly would be of concern, if the employee do not show the productivity. Let’s think on the requirements of the industry and ensure our clients join the competition. Good luck and thanks for doing all the good work.

Dear friends with disabilities: Hello, come on, today, there is almost nothing that we cannot do. Let’s make good use of technologies available and run along with the mainstream. No one come and give us a hand to grow; it’s our duty to find the path and make our career. Let’s take the advantage of the technology and grab the opportunities. On the other note, if you employed somewhere and need support may it be in terms of infrastructure or accessibility, ask for it, do not hesitate. It’s right to ask for reasonable accommodation.

Good luck everyone!

Reproduced from CIS Accessibility Blog Thanks CIS for the opportunity.

Today, there are about 7800 Central and state government websites hosted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). They are all certainly citizen centric – whether it is the Ministry of Finance, banks, the passport authority, educational board, transport, consumer affairs, or the most important website that generates revenue for the government – the Income Tax Department.

However, the question which we need to ask is whether these websites are up-to-date and accessible to everyone? Internet is often more useful to people who are elderly and for people having disabilities.

What does accessibility really mean? Accessibility is nothing but ensuring that information and functionality is available to all users including people with disabilities. The Accessibility Guidelines identify an accessible website as one which can be perceived, operated, understood and is robust. Today, thanks to the advancement of technology, people with disabilities are able to use computers and perform every task that others do. For example, a visually impaired person uses the screen reader to access the computer; a deaf blind user uses a refreshable Braille display, hearing impaired persons rely on captions to understand the multimedia, learning disabled users rely on image based content and elderly people prefer to see large fonts and so on. In addition, there are lots of features available in the browser itself. For instance, in Firefox, we can increase the font size by using key combination of CTRL and Plus and can also change the contrast of the page.

Having said that, website owners need to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 to enable people having disabilities and elderly persons to surf the web more effectively. In India, the Government of India and the state governments need to follow the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) formulated by NIC.

A brief survey of some 1500 of these websites revealed that barely one per cent of these meet the requirements of the above guidelines. Many of them are not up-to-date and some don’t even reflect government identity that could actually make users think of authentication.

The websites were checked for their elements and their mark-up; which means, audit was conducted to see text alternatives for non-text elements such as images, videos, buttons, etc. Other criteria were the presence of heading structures, associated labels for form fields, grouping of form elements, keyboard access for navigation, slide shows and other media, links and image maps. The test also checked to see if rich functionality works with keyboard and on text browsers; whether flash content works well with screen readers and documents are verified for accessibility; in addition, websites were checked for the color contrast.

The methodology used to test the websites was a combination of automated and manual testing. The initial testing was done using the automated evaluation tool WAVE, a Firefox add-on which checked for errors and features, structure, outline of the website, simulation of text version and simulation with no styles. This was followed by a manual check for appropriate text alternatives, heading structure, form labels, colour contrast, etc. The test revealed that most of the websites were not accessible, merely due to the lack of semantic mark up and common errors, some of which are described below:

• No text alternatives for images – Without text alternatives, neither screen reader users nor search engines and those who disable display of the images on the browser can perceive information about the image.
• No associated labels for form fields – Without associated labels, screen readers will treat the form fields as orphan form fields with no labels and read them as “unlabelled”fields. Hence, it will be impossible for visually impaired users to fill in those forms.
• No heading structure defined – This would create an issue both for search engines as well as persons with disabilities. Assistive technologies such as screen readers usually have access keys for users to quickly navigate a page, which rely on the mark-up.
• Deprecated Marquee has been used – This is a deprecated element in HTML and ought not be used anymore.
• No keyboard functionality for flash content and drop down menus – Without keyboard support, people with mobility limitations and visually impaired or elderly users and those who do not wish to use the mouse cannot perceive the information.
• Not enough government identity is present – It is GIGW’s requirement that all government websites should display government’s identity through emblems.
• Several websites have poor color contrast – This will prevent people who are elderly and persons with low vision from easily identifying the content of a web page.
• Several websites have used table based layouts – This is not the best practice to control the layout; one should use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
• Information is cluttered in some well known websites such as that of the Income Tax department – It will be difficult to perceive information easily by people who are elderly, who have low vision, have learning disabilities and those who surf the web through mobile devices.
• Several websites do not have a mechanism to send feedback – It is again a GIGW requirement that every website should have such a mechanism.
• There is no mechanism to skip the navigational module – This is an extremely useful feature to help screen readers and keyboard users to skip navigational links and directly access the main content.
• No accessibility options such as large text or color schemes are provided – This would be helpful to less experienced users who are as yet unaware of in-built browser options.
• Several forms do not have a mechanism for error handling – It is necessary to inform users about errors before submitting the form.
• Several websites do not have appropriate page titles – Page titles help users to know where they are on their computer.
• Many websites do not have site map – This is an easy way to have access to all the pages at one place.

Hence, there is a lot to be done to actually enable every citizen to use these citizen centric websites. There are guidelines in place at http://web.guidelines.gov.in and it’s time for every ministry to ensure successful implementation and to make their portals accessible to all.

I often read in some mailing lists about need of escort for visually impaired travelers. While that’s true that having an escort would be helpful for people with vision impaired, I have also seen several visually impaired traveling alone, busy attending conferences. So wanted to collect trips and tricks for people with vision impaired as to how they could travel independently. Am collecting tips through several mailing lists and social networks, will share the responses that are appropriate here. If you are a person with vision impairment and a frequent traveler, please do add a comment. That will not be published in the comments section but I will incorporate in the article with due credit.

Early 2010, I have contributed to Accessibility Knowledge Series by BarrierBreak Technologies and thought, now I should quote that here and add some more tips.

Much often, we attend meetings and conferences; Today, mostly every speaker uses Power Point Slides to express what they will have to say. Although they speak most of the time, there would be some important content / pictures that convey information more than the talk.

Telescope or hand held magnifiers would be of immense help for people who are partially sighted to get access to these presentations.

Telescopes come in variety of ranges such as 2x, 4x etc. and they can either be hand held or can be mounted into spectacle frame and the distance can be adjusted as needed. These gadgets could also be of help to school going children who have difficulty to see the board.

Secondly, to read business cards and other printed material, portable magnifiers such as Optelec’s Portable Magnifiers could be helpful.

Using this, one can adjust size of the font, adjust the contrast as needed such as black on white, white on black, yellow on blue etc. Even one can take the snap of the material and read at a convenient distance.

Reference:

• Baliwalla & Home
• BarrierBreak Technologies

For a long time, I was looking for a solution that would enable me to read the slides shown by the presenter in any conference or meeting and a very simple technique helped me a lotin the recent past. I took out my hand phone (Nokia E71) and turned ON the camera. Using the zoom option, I was able to read clearly. Another option is to capture the slide and read but for this, in some cases, one need to obtain permission from the presenter.