Visually Impaired Aids on a Website

Macca07

Does anyone know anything about this?

As in, if someone who is blind is looking at a website, and they move the cursor onto an image, the caption of the image will be spoken to them.

Don't know if it can even be done, just curious

Pixelcraft

absolutely, it's all about coding an accessible website, and should be part of the design process from the beginning.

Macca07

Pixelcraft wrote: »

absolutely, it's all about coding an accessible website, and should be part of the design process from the beginning.

could u give me the proper name for it so I could look up how to do it

Pixelcraft

it's not a feature, it's integral to quality web design. Google accessibility for websites, WCAG2 guidelines, there's tons of information out there

p

Indeed. If you add the correct markup & html content then the site will be fairly accessible.

The main thing to understand is that blind visitors already have special web browsers that read the text to them. You need to add caption for images, descriptive links titles to give more context to things in case it's not clear.

I'd recommend this site to give you a good introduction to the topic:
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/

Blowfish

Slightly off topic, but this has always amused me. http://www.cie.ie/home/

Highlight all content on the page, then read the text that shows up between the top banner and the very top of the page...

Eoin

Blowfish wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but this has always amused me. http://www.cie.ie/home/

Highlight all content on the page, then read the text that shows up between the top banner and the very top of the page...

This is a complete guess, but is there a chance that the text you have mentioned is only hidden on normal browsers, and is in fact the first thing that someone using a text based browser would immediately see (hear)?

tricky D

Text alternative sites should be used only as a very last resort. Personally, I wouldn't accept them as a solution, especially with the colour schemes the CIE group sites use.


In relation to the OP, you have to imagine yourself as a blind user. For starters, you're unlikely to use a mouse as you get useless feedback. Roll over what image, where on the page???

How it does work is that screen readers read the contents in the page, generally from start to finish, so the order of content needs to make certain sense. At the top of a page there'll be some links hidden to sighted users: skip to content, accessibility help page, skip to navigation, go to sitemap, etc. A bit like the CIE stuff, but properly executed (display: hidden; in the css or handled with an aural media style sheet). The blind user can tab through these and/or use an accesskey to 'click' the link. These accesskeys should have some logic behind them and also make use of the pips on keyboards (J and F key on mine). Last time I checked there's no hardfast standard as to which keys are recommended for what functions. Images' alt text is spoken from the screen reader and long descriptions provided as needed.

Then there's things like transcripts for video and other objects, how tables and form elements get read, navigation assistance, css media selection and a load of other methods where you have figure out how to get good communication of the content to the blind and incorporate the solutions elegantly into the page.

It's also not just about blind users, there's epilepsy, poor vision and colourblindness. I've a mild colourblindness which if I was less experienced would mean I risk missing some page items and almost 10% of Irish males are affected, so that's not insignificant at all if your sales are affected.

Lastly, there's the other disabilities: quadriplegia and similar conditions where wands are used, and deafness.

The links:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
http://www.usability.com.au/resources/papers.cfm
and dive into accessibility is good

I'd advise anybody doing accessible sites to take the time to learn up on the w3 stuff properly as there's a helluva lot of poor practice, poor advice and tons of snakeoil out there on this matter and Good Practice is very rare.

cormee

Blowfish wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but this has always amused me. http://www.cie.ie/home/

Highlight all content on the page, then read the text that shows up between the top banner and the very top of the page...

Why is that amusing? The text is hidden because it doesn't need to be seen by someone with vision. It will however be read by someone using a screen reader such as JAWS. It's kind of like a 'skip to content' link that is standard in most accessible sites.

It could have been hidden a little more efficiently using CSS though.

cormee

Macca07 wrote: »

Does anyone know anything about this?

As in, if someone who is blind is looking at a website, and they move the cursor onto an image, the caption of the image will be spoken to them.

Don't know if it can even be done, just curious

Following accessibility guidelines you should add alt text to all non-decorative images (use null for decorative images) when a blind/low vision user tabs onto an image while using a screen reader the alt text will be read out to them.