Re: FN-FORUM: RE: Adding an accessibility bar to a website - thoughts please

date posted 10th January 2007 18:39

Gary Short wrote:

> Screen readers are a great boon and they are much better than they used to be.
> They are great (and practicle) for static pages but, as I said, they web is an
> interactive place, do screen readers help here?

you are being more short sighted than a blind person!

the web (in it's widest context) is an information resource that can be
navigated and understood very easily by a blind person using a screen
reader, which if you've ever seen in use will astound you - Text being
read at 10x your reading speed (equivalent to a visual scan) and
navigation based on link text.

which is why it's important to understand accessibility[1] in it's
purest sense, not least because Google is blind too.

On the topic of providing widgets for accessibility, it is generally
accepted as not useful.

check this out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/

and the originator:

http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/myway/


[1] try gawds.org for a useful starting point