All About Access

Ok, so perhaps that’s not as quite as catchy as “Beware the Ides of March.” I nonetheless have a sinking feeling that some of us won’t be fairing much better than ol’ Julius in the weeks to come.

What’s going to happen on the first, you ask? IE 7 is going to come out via Automatic Updates.

So why is that a problem? It’s not, as long as you are running the latest version of your screen access software. And that is the kicker: Given the high cost of assistive technology—screen readers in particular—there are tons of users who aren’t. They cannot afford to. How many of these users are going to go ahead and install IE7 when prompted to do so, only to discover that web browsing no longer seems to work correctly? While I hope I am mistaken, I suspect quite a few. (First ribbons, and now this. I do wish Microsoft would stop doing us favors…. )

Rehabilitation Engineer Geoff Howard posted the following on the NHBlind-Talk list. I’ve decided to borrow it since the information is valuable. Besides, I have to conserve my energy for all of the inevitable questions and support requests that will result from Microsoft’s decision.

• If your computer is set to automatically download and install critical updates, you could turn on your computer some morning and find that you’ve been updated. The current versions of most assistive technology products are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer 7.


• My first recommendation is to set the automatic updates feature to “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install”. This can be found in the Control Panel, under Automatic Updates. You’ll be able to view a list of available updates as they are released, just make sure not to choose the Internet Explorer 7 update yet.


• Internet Explorer 7 turns on “Clear Type” by default, which may cause some video corruption for large print users. This can be turned off in the Internet Options, Advanced Tab.


• ZoomText users: Ai Squared working on ZoomText version 9.04. This will be a free update to users of the version 9 product. Version 9.04 will be compatible with Internet Explorer 7. The release is expected in November. You can check for the update in ZoomText by going to “Check for Program Updates” in the ZoomText programs help menu.


• JAWS Users: JAWS 7.0 and earlier do not support Internet Explorer 7. JAWS 7.10 is recommended for testing, but JAWS will not be fully optimized for Internet Explorer 7 until the release of JAWS 8.0.


• MAGic Users: Version 9.50 and later can be tested with Internet Explorer 7.


• Window-Eyes: GW Micro has some registry tweaks for some items that they have found in IE 7. Information can be found in the knowledge base section of their web site. They detail support for IE 7 in the information section for beta 6, which can be found at http://www.gwmicro.com/News_&_Events/Latest_News/?newsNo=45

A new technololgy developed by Eli Peli, an ophthalmologist and bioengineer at Harvard Medical School in Boston, augments the vision of those having tunnel vision with images captured by a small video camera mounted on special glasses. The lenses have a transparent video display mounted on them that superimposes imagery captured with the video camera and renders outlines of objects missing from the users field of view. Read all about this new technology in the NewScientistTech article entitled ‘Augmented reality’ glasses tackle tunnel vision.

Do you remember the DECtalk Express, the only decent external speech synthesizer we had available to us before the advent of software speech synthesis? Sure, getting a DECtalk Express required coming up with 1000 bucks, but the quality of the speech justified the expense. I have two of them in my possession, and they still work! Well, that’s not entirely accurate. One works as long as I sit very, very still because I managed to snap off a piece that is (was) on one end of the serial cable. Thus the synthesizer keeps getting disconnected. The other works using the damaged cable, but its own cable went AWOL long ago. So I have $2000 worth of equipment, $1000 of which is currently serving as an amusing paperweight, and $1000 of which is flakey at best.

If you don’t remember the DECtalk Express, you’re probably wondering why I don’t just run out to my local computer store and pick up some replacement serial cables. The thing is, I can’t. You see, Digital Equipment Corporation, in its infinite wisdom, created its own special serial cable for use with this synthesizer: On one end there’s a standard 9-pin female connector, but on the other end there is an RJ12. Only it’s not an RJ12. As I learned recently, it’s an “RJ12 MMJ”—a special creation brought to us by Digital Equipment Corporation. I would order replacement cables from Digital were it not for the fact that they went bankrupt a number of years ago. So what does one do??

I tried looking around for serial cable wiring diagrams—and found plenty— but so far haven’t come up with anything for DB9 to RJ12. And even if I find the appropriate diagram, I would still need to track down and order the proprietary RJ12 MMJ connector.

I did find a company that sells an adapter that sounded like what I need, but the product arrived today and is only part of the puzzle. I called to inquire. After reminding me that I was dealing with 20-year-old technology made by a defunct company, and then listening to my plea for assistance, the gentleman on the other end of the phone took pity on me and said they would make me the missing piece (bless him!).

Regardless, this is taking far too much of my time, energy, and money—and none of it would be necessary if Digital had simply gone with a standard serial cable rather than this proprietary nonsense….

So why am I telling you all of this? Admittedly in large part because I feel the need to vent. But also because it is yet another reminder of why proprietary anything is bad—be it a cable or a file format. When we depend upon a single entity for access to our items in perpetuity, we’re asking for trouble: One never knows what that entity might do down the road, or if that entity will even continue to exist. Relying upon standards that are not just open, but created and supported by multiple entities, is the only way to go.

Technorati Tags: DECtalk Express, proprietary formats, ODF, Open XML

I just found out about the OATS project.

OATSoft is dedicated to improving Assistive Technology and computer accessibility through the power of Open Source development techniques. OATSoft makes the best Open Source Assistive Technology Software or OATS easy to find and install. Users and developers are meeting at OATSoft to create better OATS.

It is wonderful to see yet another instance of the assistive technology and open source communities coming together. Through such collaborative efforts, universal design stops being a mere ideal and starts becoming a reality. I definitely want to get involved with the OATS project!

I learned about OATS via Henrik Omma, dubbed Ubuntu’s “Mr. Accessibility,” who blogged about yesterday’s project launch in London. He gives a good overview of where things seem to be and links to some comments and advice he gave the project: all quite good and worth reading. But there’s one thing Henrik said that especially struck me:

As an Open Source enthusiast I’m happy that this project has chosen open source as the vehicle by which to achieve (“better computer access”). But at the same time I acknowledge the fact that for most disabled computer users (and other computer users) the open-sourceness of their tools is not the key factor. I think we should keep in mind that the quality of the result is more important than the license used for those who end up using it.

I agree 100% that the quality of the result is most important and that the license, in and of itself, is irrelevant in the minds of most users. However, while the open-sourceness of the tools is not the key factor today, I do think that will change.

Open source solutions facilitate a move away from the medical model of assistive technology service provision—a model which for so very many reasons is unsatisfactory. Thanks to open source solutions, the user can finally cease being a passive recipient of AT, instead taking on the far more empowering roles of true consumer and active participant. As more and more users with disabilities see all that open source has to offer—far more than mere products!—the open-sourceness of the tools will indeed be a key factor if not the key factor.

The license still won’t matter though.

Technorati Tags: open source, OATS, FOSS, FLOSS, assistive technology

By now, Accessible Search is old news —news that I initially had no intention of blogging about. But ever since the launch was brought to my attention, a couple of things have been bothering me. And I’ve come to the realization that they will continue to do so until I get them off my chest.

While I am delighted to see that Google is now taking accessibility seriously, I’m not so sure they’re going about it in the right way. Before investing the time and energy to create an alternative search engine which analyzes the content and structure of external pages, wouldn’t it have made sense to examine their own site for usability? If they had done that—and perhaps compared what they have to offer with the far more accessible Yahoo equivalents—they might have discovered things like:

• Formatting the list of search results as a true list makes it possible for the screen reader user to jump directly to the results rather than have to take the time to work his/her way down. It would also make it possible for the user to navigate quickly from item to item without having to Tab repeatedly through instances of “Cached” and “Similar pages”.


• The proper use of headings can give the user who is blind a good understanding of a page’s structure. And like lists—and for that matter other elements—headings can be quickly navigated among using screen reader commands.

But Google didn’t do that. Instead they left those access problems in place and created a specialized search engine just for blind users— an engine which, as Mark pointed out the other day, shares many of the same structural shortcomings as the rest of the site.

Structural issues aside, I think the folks at Google are missing a fundamental point: Relevancy has NOTHING to do with visual acuity. Relevancy is about the content, not the container. Of course, that is not to say that the container can be dismissed. Far from it. As Google states in their Accessible Search FAQ:

In the past, visually impaired Google users have often waded through a lot of inaccessible websites and pages to find the required information.

Agreed. BUT: By creating a separate search engine for users who are blind—something which in and of itself bothers me, and which seems to contradict their mission of making information universally accessible— Google is merely treating the symptoms; not curing the disease. And what bothers me the most about that is if anyone is in a position to find a cure, it’s Google.

I mean, let’s face it, for better or for worse Google has become the center of the online universe. Businesses and individuals are utterly obsessed with attaining the highest possible page rank—not in Yahoo or in MSN, but in Google. All Google would have to do is integrate their new “accessibility” algorithm into their current method of assigning rank. If your page isn’t accessible, its rank plummets—not just in some specialized search engine, but universally. No one would find you. No one would click on your AdSense ads. Sure people would complain at first—at least those who hadn’t designed their site with accessibility in mind would. But those folks would bite the proverbial bullet and fix their site because Google’s influence is that great.

Were that to occur, there would be no need for a separate but supposedly equal search engine for users who are blind. With that, plus a little structural cleanup, Google could proudly—and this time rightfully— claim that they had fulfilled their mission to “better organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”

Google: Sometimes it’s not merely the thought that counts. Sometimes it really is the gift….

Technorati Tags: Google, Accessible Search

ODF 1.1, which has been described as “the most accessible document file format, bar none,” is now available for public review according to this announcement from OASIS:

The public review starts today, 27 July 2006, and ends 25 September 2006. This is an open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of OASIS work.

Links to the specification can be found at OASIS as well as on Peter Korn’s blog.

Peter Korn blogs:

Daniel Carrera at the Open Document Fellowship has developed a text-only ODF reader (which is part of their more general ODF Viewer project) that converts ODF to HTML and then invokes the Lynx web browser to read it. I just downloaded this early “alpha” edition of the code, and started playing with it. Thus far it opened my two test text files just fine (one of which was committee draft #2 of the ODF 1.1 specification – a 735 page document that worked out to some 3,416 “pages” on my Lynx 80×24 character terminal window). Unfortunately it didn’t do anything useful with a test spreadsheet I gave it.

I’ve had similar success with text files. Unfortunately it didn’t do anything useful with the presentation I gave it either. At least not yet. After all, it IS only an alpha version….

Peter adds:

At the moment this version works on UNIX systems, but as Lynx also runs on Windows and Macintosh, and the conversion is simply an XSLT transformation, there is little reason why this couldn’t be easily ported to Windows and Macintosh.

However, his entry does not mention what porting the ODF reader to Windows can mean for users who are blind. And it can mean a lot.

As we are all too aware, there are some pretty significant barriers to information access for individuals who are blind or visually impaired:

• The cost of the computer iteself


• The cost of the mainstream software (e.g. Windows and MS Office)


• The cost of the assistive technology required to access the mainstream software


• The cost and availability of quality training

As a result of these expenses, there are a lot of users out there who are running old versions of their screen reader. While JAWS and Window-Eyes have come a long way when it comes to providing solid access to MS Office, the major improvements have all been relatively recent. If you want to be able to effectively access complex documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, you really need to have a recent copy of your access software. If that is not an option—and for many users, it is not—the information in question winds up being functionally inaccessible.

There are other users who do have the latest greatest versions of everything, but have never received the training on how to use their office suite or the more advanced features of their screen reader. If you have no idea how to use Excel or PowerPoint and to do so in conjunction with your screen reader, spreadsheets and presentations wind up being inaccessible.

This all boils down to the following: There’s a heck of a lot of information out there—information which is technically accessible—that still cannot be accessed by users who are blind. Porting the ODF reader to Windows can change that.

Once the ODF reader is ported to Windows, and is further developed to support spreadsheets and presentations, suddenly all sorts of information that was previously inaccessible due to the aforementioned barriers becomes accessible: All you have to be able to do is open it in your web browser. That is going to make a big difference to a lot of people.