commentary
Accessibility is not only about hardware. Software, such as Internet page design, should also be designed in a way to maximise the feel for the vision impaired.

I know I have talked about accessibility before, but I only focused on the topic of assessing hardware accessibility such as "is a photocopier keypad and display aligned so that a wheelchair bound operator can easily view and operate the product?"

Nonetheless, there is a far more pervasive example of "software" accessibility — the Internet. A lilliputian history to set the scene volition certainly help.

For the blind and visually impaired the Internet has been a boon, an astonishing wealth of information that was previously not available tin can be had with a PC and text reader software. News, research papers, journals and even gossip are a mouse click away, millions of pages and facts that never would have found their way into braille publications.

The lives of the visually impaired take been enriched and, from a piece of work and productivity point of view, this has certainly improved task satisfaction for employees with disabilities.

Just ironically the very richness of Cyberspace pages, in terms of media content, is resulting in a serious decline in information content for the visually dumb. Now I'm not saying nosotros demand to go back to the bad old days with banal text merely pages but with a little forethought the non-visual experience can be improved dramatically.

By all means include a photograph or even a curt blitheness or MPEG on your Web page but have time to retrieve almost naming conventions. Instead of but naming a JPEG image "IMAGE1.JPG" for example, what nigh naming the image "TREE.JPG" or, better still "Apple IN Blossom.JPG"? That manner when a read out loud by a text reader the user volition accept a far ameliorate idea of the content.

MPEG's can be labelled in a similar way and you might also like to try to ensure that the accompanying audio also imparts information regarding the visual content. I'thousand sure past now that many of you are proverb "nosotros know all that, information technology's common sense when scripting". Well just accept a look at the HTML code for a few random Web sites and yous will find that mutual sense is not all that mutual. As much every bit I'm loath to admit it the Lab'due south own Web page is terrible in this regard, and it was written past contracted Web designers. We are all and so busy in the Lab that nosotros practise non have the fourth dimension to create and maintain our own Spider web site.

I have to say our site has some examples of exactly what not to exercise. Navigation buttons for example are scripted as "Button1" and "Button2" — not a whole lot of information conveyed to the blind. We are currently creating a whole new site to remedy these and other issues.

Instead of rabbiting on about the problems a visually impaired person may run into, it would possibly be easier just to take a look at an example I found on IBM's spider web site that quite clearly illustrates several of the problems and their solutions — http://www-306.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/opera.html.

There are tools available on the Web to cheque Web folio accessibility simply I must say one of the best I take seen is IBM's aDesigner which is available for download at the post-obit link — www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner.

aDesigner is able to simulate Web accessibility equally would exist experienced by the blind and visually dumb so you lot tin can get a handle on the types of problems that can arise. But for me the best attribute of the programme is its ability to check whatever Web page for conformance to accessibility guidelines in a graphical manner.

Links and text are highlighted in a detail colour depending on their "ease" of access, the darker the highlight the longer information technology takes for a blind person to notice and access the information using a text reader. If you apply the mouse to signal to a detail item aDesigner will too calculate how many seconds information technology would have for the user to navigate to this point but using a text reader. This is a great tool for all Web site designers.

More general data on accessibility guidelines tin be found at the following links — www.section508.gov and http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Steve Turvey is Lab Director of the RMIT Information technology Exam Labs, and tin be reached at stevet@rmit.edu.au.

This article was first published in Engineering & Business organisation magazine.

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