Tag Archives: accessibility

How the visually impaired can use a computer?

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | January 9, 2012 - 10:42 am | Articles Leave a comment

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:

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!

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Thousands of Websites; all are citizen centric; but are they accessible to all citizens – a review

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | October 17, 2011 - 10:56 am | Articles 1 Comment

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.

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Solutions for people with low vision

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | September 19, 2011 - 8:46 am | Articles Leave a comment

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:

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.

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Online Banking Exam and need of a scribe?

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | June 23, 2010 - 5:24 pm | Articles 3 Comments

Today, I saw a posting on one of the mailing lists in India requesting for a scribe to write an examination for visually impaired. There’s no surprise in it, but what made me to feel surprised is that the candidates has to appear a bank examination conducted online!! If the examination is conducted online, why should there be a need for a scribe?

While I have investigated further, I am yet to get complete information but it appears either bank examination centre do not equip with Assistive Technologies or Examination system is not accessible and hence candidate is looking for a scribe!

I feel, at such scenario, the change needs to come at both bank authorities, candidate and individual / organizations who would be putting efforts to help respective candidate.

As far as bank is concerned, they should ensure to provide assistive technologies to the candidate. I know, some of the assistive technologies like JAWS External Website, that most users are comfortable but the software is expensive. One way to deal with this is to use evaluation copy of the same, if examination do not exceed 40 minutes. If not, bank should provide open source screen reader NVDA External Website, that is equally a powerful screen reader.

Second thing banker should ensure that examination system is accessible as per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines External Website and comply with Guidelines for Indian Government Websites External Website.

As far the candidates are concerned, they should be comfortable in taking up online exams and be able to explain the authorities about assistive technologies. Most often, bank authorities would be willing to make necessary accommodation, but they would not aware of about advancement of technologies.

Today, unfortunately, most of the visually impaired candidates are not comfortable to take up online exams and it’s due to lack of qualitative training, although, there are several organization claim they impart computer training, it’s sad that except a very few of them, most organization do not have quality training programs. So again, I would urge that all the organization working in the disability sector need to keep track of advancement of technology and offer appropriate training programs.

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How would I want to see disability organizations in India? – a personal prospective

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | May 22, 2010 - 4:33 pm | Articles 2 Comments

Disclaimer: Views expressed on this post are of my personal and does not reflect views of my employer and do not intend to hurt anyone.

In general, disability organizations play an innovative role in the rehabilitation process of persons with disabilities. Let’s analyze the situations for last two decades.

Early 90′s there was almost no awareness towards disability and when someone see a disability, they just show sympathy towards them and go away. Lately, a few organizations started working to rehabilitate people with disabilities by providing self employment activities such as re-caning of the chairs, candle making etc. Late 90′s a few organizations started teaching how to use Coputers with assistive technologies such as screen readers but at a very basic level such as word processing. Then the problem was where to get employment for them. Those days, I have seen many companies who didn’t even let people with disabilities appear for the interview. Seen so circumstances, where people called in for interview, but actually, when they reach respective office, they have been sent back by security personnel by saying “you are blind, you cannot attend an interview”.

I must say, 2000 onwards there is a rapid development in the araa of technology and there’s almost nothing that a person with disability cannot do. They can write software, work in banking sector, corporate industry, education sector and you name it, they work on it. Even there is a blind person who is a pilot, there are people with mobility impairment, who design fantastic graphics, there are blind people who does the photography. What more, people who are deaf blind uses computer… What a rapid development.

On the other side, the problem is that in spite having enough technology that a person with disability can work with the integral community, most of the office infrastructure and intranet is not accessible. Hence, many people do not get jobs that they can actually perform.

In my humble opinion, it’s the responsibility of all of us including the disability organizations to create awareness about accessibility and assistive technologies. This is the space where NGOs need to be more active and desciminate information about accessibility and keep track of the progress. For instance, National Federation of the Blind does a fantastic work in this space where they go and sensitize companies towards accessibility and as well they file law suits on issues related to accessibility.

So folks, this is what kind of NGOs I would like to see in India! I want organizations to move on from the history and run main stream activities.

Can I see this change? comments welcome.

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How to send an email using Yahoo! Mail

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | May 18, 2010 - 10:06 am | Articles Leave a comment

Hello All:
I have received a few requests that they would like to know how to send an email using Yahoo! Mail using Screen reader and thought let me share with everyone. In the below explanation, I have used Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) as my screen reader; however, they should work in the same with other screen readers.

  1. Log in to Yahoo! Mail using user name and password
  2. Choose Button “New” and press space bar to activate
  3. Press “E”till you reach “To” edit box and type the E-mail address of the recipient
  4. Press Tab and you will reach “CC” and here you can type email address of the recipients you may wish to copy. Use semi-colin to seperate each email address if you are sending to more than one recipient.
  5. Press tab and write the subject of your message in “Subject field”
  6. Press Tab and you will find “Attach files” press space to activate if you want to attach files to your email and do the following:
    1. Activating “Attach file” will lead you to a new page; Press H to reach heading that says “Attach files”
    2. Press Tab and you will find “Browse” – press space bar to activate and this will open “File upload” dialog box
    3. Select the file you wish to upload and active “Open” button and now you are back on “Attach file” page on Yahoo! Mail. If you wish, you can attach more files using the browse buttons in fields given
    4. Once you are done selecting files you want to attach, press tab till you reach button “attach files” this will take a few moments and lead you back to “compose Mail” page
  7. Press tab key and reach “Message body” field and type your message
  8. Once you are done, press tab key and activate “Send” button to send the email.

If you have any questions, come and discuss with us on Y-Accessibility Group

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CSUN 2010

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | March 22, 2010 - 8:41 am | Uncategorized Leave a comment

CSUN 2010 is another great conference in area of accessibility and assistive technologies at San Diego, CA from 22nd March through 27th March, 2010.

Be there to meet our Yahoo! team and see our presentations. Also, there would be some surprise waiting for you.

Hope to see you there.

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My experience at Techshare India 2010

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | February 21, 2010 - 10:59 am | Events 3 Comments


Techshare India 2010 was another unique experience and an excellent platform to network, learn and share!

I have reached Delhi on 14thFebruary, 2010 (hmm. enjoyed business class flight in spite having economy class flight due to overbooking of the flight!) and visited India Habitat Centre in the evening; it was pleasure to meet whole gang of my BarrierBreak friends! Charminar area was full of working going on and getting ready for Techshare India 2010. Again, it was fun to be with Sachin Verma of EmployAbility who was putting Braille labels in the lifts!

15th February, with fellow Yahoos, I have reached venue at 7:30 AM and our event vendor has done a great job and Yahoo! stall was looking so colorful. Thank you guys!! Thanks Shilpi for the great help at the last minute…

Techshare India 2010 started with the Welcome address by Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Managing Director, BarrierBreak Technologies, she explained her intention behind bringing Techshare to India in 2008 and developments took place during this two years. A few highlights we have seen in India after Techshare India 2008 are India has come up with Guidelines for Indian Government Websites, a few Indian Government Websites have become accessible including National Portal of India (English), National Portal of India (Hindi), RTI Website and recently, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. There’s also an effort in progress to bring National Policy on Electronic Accessibility which would be open for public review soon.

Kevin Cary, Chair, Royal National Institute of the Blind People (RNIB) has mentioned about the RNIB’s prospective behind organizing Techshare and expressed happiness to see their brand conference in India. Also, he expressed that soon Techshare will be organized in other countries like Africa, China etc. He mentioned, India is one of the first countries to ratify the United Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP shared his view what the accessibility is all about and it’s important. He says there are about 5000+ Indian Government websites that are inaccessible as per the survey they have conducted during 2008 and he hopes to see all of them accessible soon.

Shri. Mukul Wasnik, Hon'ble Minister, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment addressing at the inaguration of Techshare India Exhibition

Techshare India’s Assistive Technologies Exhibition was inaugurated by Shri. Mukul Wasnik, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India; while addressing, he expressed his happiness to see such a fantastic exhibition and offered his full support both at his level as the Minister of SJ & E and at a personal level.

Further for next two days, there were 3 tracks of presentations focused on the importance of accessibility from business prospective and how it help not only people with disabilities but to everyone. Also, there was a workshop track for the duration of 2 hours each which was a platform to learn a specific technology like DAISY etc. Some of the key speakers include P. Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Lab India, Swaran Lata, W3C India Office, Steve Benette, Sales Director, Dolphin Computer Access, Anandraj Thangappan, Wipro Limited, Shilpi Kapoor, Managing Director, BarrierBreak Technologies etc.

Subramanyan Murali presenting at Techshare India 2010

Subramanyan Murali, Technical Lead, Yahoo! presented a paper on Fixing the Developers Mindset that has received a overwhelming response. I also take this opportunity to congratulate him for winning the Yahoo! Ratna Award, an annual recognition program at Yahoo! in India.

Srinivasu presenting at Techshare India 2010

I have presented a per on Need for Web accessibility in Developing Countries – Yahoo! Initiatives. Please view below slide share presentation.

There’s also a great response received for Yahoo!’s booth at Techshare India 2010 Exhibition. We have showcased Yahoo! Home page, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Cricket and Yahoo! Careers. Also, we were happy to use open source screen reader NVDA to demonstrate Yahoo! properties and it’s glad that we have created awareness about this open source project which most of the visitors were not aware.

Another highlight besides the video of Accessibility Lab at Yahoo! stall is we have demonstrated how one can use different automated web accessibility tools to do a preliminary test of their website.

Kudos BarrierBreak for organizing and congrats Yahoo! for receiving good response.

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Techshare India 2010 – An Accessibility Conference and Assistive Technology Exhibition in India for 2nd time!

  By Srinivasu Chakravarthula | January 22, 2010 - 11:27 am | Events Leave a comment


Techshare India was organized for the first time in India during February, 2008 by BarrierBreak Technologies in partnership with Royal National Institute of the Blind People and received a fantastic response with around 400 delegates, huge number of visitors saw the assistive technology exhibition. That was beginning of more innovations in India from technology prospective and I believe that has created a path towards everyone talking about accessibility in India. With great response received for the conference, Techshare India was also taken to Mumbai and Bangalore as roadshows!

Now, for the 2nd time, Techshare India 2010 is being organized on 15th & 16th February, 2010 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. This time, there’re more exiting presentations and exhibitors and an opportunity to see many assistive technologies. I am hoping this will be a path way to bring more assistive technologies at affordable prices in India.

I’m excited to share that Yahoo! India R & D is one of the sponsors and exhibiting the thoughts and experiences. What else? my colleague Subrahmanyan Murali is talking about “Fixing the mindset of Developers” on 15th at 5:00 PM to 5:40 PM and I ‘ll be speaking on “Need for Web Accessibility in Developing Countries: Yahoo! initiatives” on 16th at 3:00 PM to 3:40 PM. Hope to catch up some of you there!

Below is an announcement by the organizers:

Techshare India 2010 – India’s Largest Conference on Accessibility and Assistive Technology Exhibition is being organized by BarrierBreak Technologies on 15th and 16th Feb 2010. This year the theme of the conference is “Bridging the Barriers”. This 2-day conference and exhibitions is a pan-disability event, where technology professionals meet to share experiences, products and research in the field of digital assistive technology.

The three main objectives of Techshare India 2010 will be to increase consciousness about accessibility, to offer a platform for knowledge sharing, and to extend the use of assistive technology. It is hoped that these objectives will be met by the inclusion of a wide variety of presentations and exhibitions from organizations and leading figures representing the digital technology disability sector.

View Agenda: http://techshare.barrierbreak.com/agenda2010.php

To register visit: http://techshare.barrierbreak.com/confreg.php (Special discounts for education institutes, NGOs and persons with disabilities)

Techshare India 2010 will also host a range of exhibits featuring the best in cutting-edge developments in assistive technology across India and beyond. We want to bring together a bouquet of products from switches, track balls, adaptive keyboards, sip-n-puff, screen readers, DAISY players, AAC devices, software for learning disabled to independent living products. Some of our exhibitors: Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Yahoo! India, Dolphin Computer Access, Optelec, AbleNet and PRI Liberator.

The exhibition is a great place for teachers and parents of persons with disabilities, senior citizens, occupational therapist, persons with disabilities, etc. So if you know people who aren’t attending the main conference but may be interested in the visiting the exhibition which is Free, please pass on this message so they can experience part of Techshare India 2010.

View Exhibitors and Products: http://techshare.barrierbreak.com/exhibitorsfor2010.php

For more details write to us techshare@barrierbreak.com or call Pooja Nahata at +919820725102

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