What it’s like to browse the web with a disability
Watch a visually impaired user browse a Government of Canada Web site and see for yourself some of the challenges impaired users face.
“We’ve all heard about web accessibility, but you may wonder what it really means to those who use assistive technologies. You’ll now get a taste of the challenges they face
http://commonlookandfeel.ca/clf/video/Accessibilityvideo02.flv
Resources
W3C – WAI
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
- Techniques for WCAG 2.0
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Documents
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
- User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
- Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema
- Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Version 1.0
- Web Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review
Video Transcript
TAMEY: We’ve all heard about web accessibility, but you may wonder what it really means to those who use assistive technologies. You’ll now get a taste of the challenges they face.
KEVIN: Hello my name is Kevin Chappell and I’m the manager of Public Opinion Research for the department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I’m a visually impaired employee and I work with a voice soft called Dolphin Supernova. Here’s a demonstration of how Dolphin Supernova works with the Internet and Government of Canada Web sites. Here we go.
Here I am at the Foreign Affairs Web site.
SCREEN READER: Foreign Affairs and International Trade Frame page has 94 links, 37 heading, Government of Canada
KEVIN: Just told me it has 94 links and 37 headings, it doesn’t tell me what they are or where they are or how to go about getting access to them. These icons here (3 images at the top of the content area) I can click on any one of those.
SCREEN READER: Foreign Policy
KEVIN: I clicked on Foreign Policy
SCREEN READER: Foreign Affairs. Home. Foreign Policy complete frame page has 62 links, 17 headings. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada link press insert the click.
KEVIN: So all it tells me is that it has so many links, so many headings, but it doesn’t read it to me. So I have no way of accessing this site in terms of finding out what’s on it. It’s not reading what’s here (pointing to left navigation); it’s not reading the main text, it’s not reading any of the links. So I don’t know. I put the cursor on top of one and it doesn’t say anything, so I don’t know what I’m on top of. So I need to know where I‘m at before I can click and I don’t know where I am. So if I click on one for example.
SCREEN READER: Blank line.
KEVIN: Blank line it said.
SCREEN READER: Doing Business Abroad – The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. Complete. Frame page has 73 links, 22 headings. Affairs at Commerce International Canada link press insert the click.
KEVIN: So I’ve gone to Doing Business Abroad, but it just tells me how many links but it doesn’t really tell me anything about, and when I clicked on the actual link to it didn’t tell me what it was at first it told me blank line. And now when I opened it up it started to read to me what the page was about. So I know the tile of the page but again I’m still stuck. I don’t know where to go on this page to find out what I’m looking for. So I’m looking for market intelligence, now I don’t know where to go on that. And If I go down here (using mouse on left navigational links) it doesn’t say anything. So I don’t know what these are saying I don’t know what they are. I don’t know what this is (image at the top of the content area). Anyways, so really it is quite useless with a person with a visual disability.
TAMEY: Simple changes can make web sites usable and accessible to all.
SCREEN: Let’s help make gc.ca sites accessible.
3 Responses to “What it’s like to browse the web with a disability”
I liked the high quality video that you produced featuring the accessibility of http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/
The site validates xHTML 1.0 Strict, which is great. It’s too bad that the screen reader doesn’t read out the text within the link for the menus in the demonstration.
Inserting a title with the links is pretty easy to do in many CMS’s, but not something that I’ve ever seen demonstrated the need for so effectively.
@mgifford
You’re right that the links should have titles, and it’s a relativity simple thing to do or add to a CMS work flow. As an example we’re currently using Wordpress for this site, it’s easy to do by adding a title attribute in the insert/edit link dialog:
Another point about the use of the title attribute. When I visited http://www.voyage.gc.ca/consular_home-en.asp I noticed under the Recent updates heading, a list of countries. Following the list there was a footnote which indicated * – indicates a Travel Warning. I think that this text should have been placed before the list of countries to allert the reader. Also, the title could have indicated the Phraise Travel Warning. This way, a user would be allerted when the mouse cursor was placed over the link, and a Screen reader user would hear this or see this in the list of links if their screen reader was set up to include the title when searching or tabbing on links.
This is an advisory that I would not want to miss.