A federal court agreed with him, and now Domino's has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear Robles' case, in what could prove a landmark battle over the rights of disabled people on the internet. It's estimated that 7,, Americans are technically blind - about 2. Nowadays signs designating access for shoppers with disabilities - from parking spaces to restrooms to dressing rooms - are a ubiquitous part of the retail landscape.
This is thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act ADA , the year-old federal law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. But ADA requirements that are relatively clear when applied to physical stores - such as determining where ramps should go and what height grab bars should be - become much more difficult to discern with a website.
There's not enough clarity in the law to know what is accountable. But advocates like Mr Danielson counter that if one follows that logic then the whole US Constitution could be undermined.
As e-commerce has grown, retailers are increasingly faced with ADA lawsuits over lack of accessibility, particularly for the blind or visually impaired. Website accessibility lawsuits hit a record high in , with retail being the most frequently targeted industry.
More lawsuits were filed in court in the first six months of 1, than in all of , according to the NRF. Ultimately, those pushing for digital accessibility argue that businesses have no excuse for dragging their feet over it.
Speech recognition software allows a user to navigate, type, and interact with websites using their voice. Not providing access through the keyboard on websites is a major roadblock for blind and keyboard-only users. Can you use your website or program without a mouse? Use the tab key, arrows, and enter to navigate. If sites fail to set reading focus appropriately, a pop-up dialog can prevent a blind user from moving forward… or even knowing how to get back to where they were.
Linked text should be able to stand on its own. Images that convey meaning need to be tagged with alt text so the person who is reading your website can hear a description of the image. Smartphones have opened up new possibilities to blind users.
Now, people who are blind have apps that help them recognize money, identify colors, scan bar codes and read product information, and help them navigate in new cities. Think of your favorite app, one you use every day. Can you visualize the user interface for that app? When accessibility features are turned on, a layer of audio feedback is added to each tap on the screen. A blind person can tap on the screen in a particular area and hear information about what they have tapped. They can tap again to activate that area i.
Thus, even those with no vision can understand what is on the screen based on audio feedback. The image below shows someone opening the Gmail app on an iPhone using VoiceOver.
A single tap announces that the person has tapped the Gmail icon. Most of the braille displays are available in 40,70, and 80 characters, but there are also pocket-sized braille devices that are available with only 14 refreshable cells. From the presentation of spelling to word layout and text formatting, these displays are ideal for quiet perusal.
Blind and visually impaired individuals can use it to read text using their fingers. There are plenty of dictation tools that fall under the category of software that can recognize text and translate it to commands as assistive technology. Also known as voice-to-text , speech recognition software is another technology that provides computer assistance and increased accessibility to disabled individuals.
With it, blind and visually impaired people can use the Internet to navigate, type, as well as interact with web content using their voice. There are many common examples of software programs and assistants like these. All of these have capabilities that can read aloud text and help people with low vision search and use the Internet.
Also, there are commercially available software packages that can integrate the features of screen-based readers and dictation, but they are often expensive for people. Aside from technology, it is important for every website to have accessible design for blind and visually impaired individuals.
There are plenty of accessibility issues that can potentially restrict access to people who are blind. These include the following. First on the list is keyboard accessibility. Each web page needs to provide access through the keyboard for navigation, but not all websites respect this.
Keyboard accessibility is a priority for all websites and programs. Pop-up windows can prevent blind people from moving forward to another page. They can also block the path of going from one page to another, and make the user feel lost and unable to get back to where they were.
Pages with clutter and carousels that are full of moving text can be hard to navigate through for the blind. Aside from that, they are not user-friendly for other people.
However, misuse of this markup can create problems for visually impaired people and the way they use the Internet. Heading tags are crucial for screen readers.
Without them, the software cannot properly locate the text blind people want to read. Linked text can also create problems and should be optimized accordingly. For instance, visually impaired individuals prefer longer link texts instead of a couple of linked words only. Alternative text also known as alt-text is the text that describes images so that blind people and visually impaired users reading through the website can understand the description of the image.
There are nowadays special browsers for the blind which can interpret the HTML structure of any webpage, conveying meaningful information to each user in an intelligent way. These technologies can also simplify navigation and provide support in an intelligent way, becoming a guide for the visually impaired. In that manner, browsers like these have many capabilities and are able to provide voice identification and dictation, text-to-speech, integrated screen readers, screen magnification and zoom, as well as text identification when interpreting characters from images.
Smartphones have been widely used by everyone, and lately, they also gave plenty of possibilities to blind and visually impaired users. For instance, blind people now use apps that help them recognize money, identify colors , scan bar codes as well as read product information, helping them navigate in new cities.
Two categories of assistive technology are used most by blind Internet users:. Links to assistive technology vendors can be found in the 'resources' section. Both categories provide a linear information stream either speech or braille , which means that the user can only focus on one element at a time. Whether or not a blind user can access a website in an effective, efficient and pleasant way is mostly dependent on the site's level of accessibility. A website is 'accessible' when its content is available to everyone, regardless of any visual, auditory, cognitive or motor impairment.
Guidelines have been specified to help web designers make accessible websites. The most widely used guidelines are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium , and the ' section of the rehabilitation act ' guidelines. Web designers are still often unaware of accessibility guidelines or choose to ignore them. One of the major reasons for not following these guidelines is that the target group impaired users is often considered to be too small for companies and designers to invest the necessary time, money and effort.
Accessibility guidelines are often validated through automated evaluation tools that help website designers locate accessibility problems in their pages, but common sense is also needed to make the website truly usable for blind people. For example, an image might be given a textual description which does not really describes the actual function of the image.
Web designers can easily increase the accessibility of their page by observing the following rules based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines :. In the following movie, created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a basic introduction to screen readers is given.
A screen reader user describes the basic interactions, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of screen reader use.
0コメント