Mad Web Skills

Accessibility shouldn't cost a lot of money if your website is built with accessibility in mind from the beginning.

I was recently asked to evaluate a product called BrowseAloud in the interest of improving a website’s accessibility. This is a browser plugin which aims to help those people who have difficulty seeing the screen, maybe through old age or those with lower literacy or dyslexia who might find it helpful to hear rather than read the words on the page. It basically functions as a screen reader, but will only operate within the browser on websites who have subscribed to the BrowseAloud service.

My first reaction was to point out that many users who require this sort of accommodation would usually already have software installed on their computer to help them. Most operating systems have Text-to-Speech and screen-reading (available in Windows since XP by pressing the Windows Key + U), screen region enlargement and visual contrast functionality built into them and most web browsers have text resizing/zoom functionality available.

In addition to these tools already available, we invest a great deal of time and effort ensuring that the websites we build meet all mandatory (and many optional) accessibility guidelines and regulations, and take a long-term view to ensure that accessibility for all is maintained.

Having said that, I can see how this sort of technology would be useful. The main problem I have with this particular product is that it is something that actively must be downloaded and installed by the user in order to be available. Many people with text access issues are particularly unlikely to be able/willing to download and install anything additional to their computers. A competitor to this product, Talklets, seems like a slightly better solution as it does not require anything special to be installed apart from the Flash Plugin (which is almost as ubiquitous as the web browser itself.)

I’m personally also not a fan of BrowseAloud’s business model. Their plugin requires no changes to be made to a website or software to be purchased or installed. Paying them an annual fee simply adds your website to a white-list of sites that their plugin will work with. There’s no reason why BrowseAloud couldn’t work with ALL websites, but they cripple the plugin until you pay them what could be an expensive annual cost. (Granted, I don’t know exactly how much it costs, but from what I’ve read from others, it’s not cheap.) I would probably prefer them to sell the un-crippled plugin to the public for a nominal fee, or at least offer that as an option. I guess it’s easier for them to target enterprise organisations such as government and educational sites, mainly because traditionally they are the types to throw lots of money at a perceived problem.

The Opera browser, available free of charge, also has in-built speech capability which can assist with reading web page content. There are also free extensions to Firefox such as FireVox which adds web-page reading to the browser. While I’m not sure how effective these tools are in the real world, I would much prefer to use an accessibility page of a website to point users to these resources that will help them with ALL websites.

In summary, there are a lot of options for accessibility these days. Accessibility should mostly be built in to the website by following W3C standards for development and accessibility. Additional tools can be used to ensure that as many people as possible can access the content of the site, but I believe these users should get themselves a solution that works on ALL sites, not just on some that have been “enabled”. Otherwise, all you’re doing is setting up a nice walled garden for them, and as soon as you need to link out to an external site or whatever, you’re leaving them stranded. “Give a man a fish…”, etcetera.

Not really a web-related post, but I’ve had a pretty bad day and need to unwind. I haven’t written a list like this in a long time, which is something I used to do quite often on my old blog, and quite enjoy. That said, here (in no particular order) are the top seven things that give me an uneasy feeling:

• Drinking cold water from a coffee mug. It just doesn’t feel right…
• When my hair gets to that length where its too long to spike up at the front and goes all wavy.
• When completing a transaction at a store, and the shop assistant says “Have a nice day. Goodbye.” and I say “Goodbye.” but I’m still putting my money away and gathering my stuff, so I’m, like, still there about 10 seconds after having said goodbye, and the shop assistant is just standing there smiling at you.
• The possibility that every wall mirror could actually be a one-way mirror with a secret room behind it, like in Law and Order.
• When greeted with “Hello”, I respond with “Good thanks”.
• The weird sludgy life form growing in my coffee cup when I return to work from a long weekend.
• When making a split-second decision whether to say one word or another, and you end up inventing an entirely new word, then hope that the person you’re talking to doesn’t notice.

Earlier this month, I was invited to speak at the Excellence In Local Government Customer Service 2008 conference in Sydney. It was my first time presenting on my own outside of companies I’d worked for. (I did the same presentation about two months earlier at a different conference, but I shared the presenting with another staff member on the team.) Now, I’m quite comfortable speaking in front of many people (this conference had about 150 attendees), however there’s always that part of me at the back of my mind wondering if these people are interested in what I have to say. Well, this particular presentation went really well. I got a lot of good questions, which means they were listening at least, and some great, positive feedback.

The topic of my presentation was in relation to how Local Government all-too-commonly tend to spend obscene amounts of money to solve simple problems. At my day-job we had implemented an online appointment system for the public to arrange a time to see a town planner. We had initially contacted our current software vendors to see what they could offer, but these solutions were going to cost upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. We had a budget of $3.50, a half-roll of sticky-tape and some pocket lint. (Okay it was a bit more than that, but not much!)

I ended up finding a php script offered by an independent Dutch developer that cost $50 USD. I was then able to configure it to our needs, customise it to match the look-and-feel of our website and have it launched in about six week. This kind of application roll-out method is quite familiar to many freelance web gurus, but it’s quite different to how most government organisations work, which I believe is why my presentation went down so well.

Personally, I prefer to develop my web applications from scratch, incorporating all and only the features I require. It then becomes a fun learning exercise or an excuse to try out some new techniques, but in real-world situations like this, a cheap, off-the-shelf script is exactly what we needed. The project was delivered on time, on budget and I was held aloft on the shoulders of my team-mates as they cheered my name. (Okay, so that didn’t happen… I think someone may have said “good job” or something though, so that’s cool.)

Bruce Mactier Building Designers is a Shepparton-based business which has been providing quality, affordable design services since 1984 and Mad Web Skills were lucky enough to have the opportunity to build their new website.

Bruce and the team were great to work with, and I had a lot of fun with the project.