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.

I often see people talking a lot about how frustrated they are with current job even they have just started with a job. But at the end of the day, they really work to the extent that they need to, then I wonder, why they should stress to themselves for thinking about all discomforts. In fact, that time could be spent with a thought process of how they could professionally grow in their life. I have been in the industry for about 11+ years now and I thought, I could pen some of my personal experiences on how one can build a successful career. I feel, one of the most important factor should that we should love what we do; if we are not satisfied with the job we are into, I think, it’s time to explore other opportunities. Switching jobs is not crime but one should have significant rational to switch to a new job. However, it would be even good for both employer and us, if we make a right decision before starting the job to avoid discomfort to the employer. While accepting an offer or even before going for an interview, one should ask to self, “Is this job meant for me? Will I be happy there?” and probably, one more question could be “Will I do justice to this job?”.

In 11 years, I have switched to about 5 organizations but never got farewell from any organization on a bad note. I have switched either for better opportunities or when I realized completely that if I am not capable of particular job even after tremendous effort. I think, it’s always best to start career with a small or medium size company where we can get an opportunity to explore and work with different functions and gain experience. Then over a period of three years, it would be good to look for opportunities in larger organizations. But again, if you and the existing employer are quite happy for each other, then, it’s better to continue so that you may grow to a leadership role in the same organization.

Another requirement for successful career is to be unique and develop extremely strong knowledge on the domain. Plus strong communication skills are important. Further it would be helpful to have ability to network with others in the industry. Sites like LinkedIn etc. that helps to not just network with people but also get updated on opportunities.

During Census 2001, there were only about 21 million people with disabilities were counted and whereas, there are about 70 million people with different disabilities in India. It is so important that every person with disability get counted and only then it will be easy to approach for reasonable accommodation, accessibility and equal opportunities. So let’s get counted. Remember that Question 9 of Census 2011 is answered effectively and that question is about disability. Here are some of the instances faced by different individuals during the counting.

• Enumerator did not ask about disability
• Enumerator visited home during the absence of member with disability in family
• Enumerator skipped the question 9 but addressed when a member with disability reminds them
• Enumerator did not bother even a family member points out the same

Get counted and share your experience here! Let’s send a collective document to authorities.

Today is one of the days one who loves and cares for music should remember. Today the 24^th January is Aradhana of Shri. Thyagaraja.

Some lines from Wikipedia about Aradhana:

The Aradhana in its present format is not even a hundred years old. Thyagaraja died in 1847. A few days before his death, he had renounced everything and had become a sanyasi. When he passed on, his mortal remains were buried on the banks of the river Kaveri and a small memorial was built at the spot. His disciples returned to their respective villages and observed his death anniversary at their own homes. The memorial was soon forgotten and it was not until around 1903 that Tyagaraja’s last surviving disciples, Umayalpuram Krishna Bhagavatar and Sundara Bhagavatar returned to Tiruvayyaru, identified the place and had it renovated.

Thyagaraja Keerthana by Maharajapuram Santhanam via YouTube
Maharajapuram Samthanam – Thyagaraja Krithi (Youtube link)

It so happened that today, the famous musician Shri. Bheemsen Joshi passed away at Pune. A couple of lines about Shri. Joshi from Wikipedia:

He was born into a Kannada Brahmin family in the town of Gadag in northern part of Karnataka state.[2][3] His father, Gururaj Joshi, was a school teacher. Bhimsen is the eldest in a family of 16 siblings. Some of the siblings still live in their ancestral home in Gadag.[4] Bhimsen lost his mother when he was young, and his step mother raised him.

A performance by Shri. Joshi saheb – thanks again YouTube.
Jai Durge by Pt. Joshi Saheb

January 4th is the Birth Anniversary of Louis Braille! Louis Braille is the inventor of written script for visually impaired. Watch this video!

See a Video to learn more about Louis Braille

Do you want to learn Braille? See this resource