IT Accessibility Review
Volume 1, Number 9
Around the IT/Web Accessible World
Talking Web Sites are now a Reality
The University of Toronto´s Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC) has been involved in promoting accessibility for many years and continues to be a leader in the area of accessible Web-based technologies.
The latest addition to the ATRC collection of tools is the ATalker text-to-speech utility, which finally makes it possible to create talking websites. The technology to delivery Web-based speech has been around for nearly a decade, but up until now it has not been implemented in any practical manner. ATalker promises to change that.
The first release of ATalker is available as an add-on module for the ATutor Learning Content Management System, which is used to deliver online courses. Students can use ATalker to read text displayed on the Web aloud by generating speech files that can be played in most multimedia players. For example, a student might take their course notes and turn them into MP3 speech files, load them into a player, and listen to their notes as they would any MP3 music file.
Instructors on an ATutor system have the same tools available to them as students, with the added ability of saving speech files as a supplement to course content. Students taking a course in ATutor could simply select an "Audio Introduction" link, for example, and have a summary of the week´s topic read to them.
Administrators can create different voices for their ATutor systems, so that when a student uses the keyboard to tab through the links on a page, or holds a mouse pointer over an ATutor feature; those features are read out loud. When users complete an action in ATutor, such as posting a forum message or submitting a registration form, the feedback message that follows can also be read aloud.
For people with disabilities, particularly the ones that affect reading ability, a tool like ATalker can make online learning much easier. Students can simply listen to course notes, or listen while they read, improving comprehension by processing information through dual perceptual modes. From a "curb cut" perspective, ATalker can be just as useful for those who do not have difficulties reading. Audio notes, multi-tasking (i.e. listening to course notes while typing a summary), or using the ATalker reader as a means of learning a new language are all examples of how an adaptive technology such as this can benefit everyone.
ATalker is based entirely upon open source software. The primary technology underlying ATalker is the Festival Text-to-Speech System, developed at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The Festival system utilizes a number of open source audio encoders as well, including LAME, OggEnc, and BladeEnc, which take the speech output from Festival and compress it, greatly increasing the speed at which the files are transported over the Web. ATalker itself is programmed in the open source PHP programming language.
Looking toward the future, the next step in ATalker´s evolution will be to generalize the utility to work with any Web-based application or content, so Web application developers and content authors can make their Web sites speech-enabled.
Further work is planned to extend ATalker´s support of the SABLE and SSML markup languages. These formatting languages are similar to HTML, and allow authors to customize voice output with a full range of speech attributes. SABLE and SSML are both easier to learn than HTML, with only a small number of tags and speech attributes to understand. With these markup languages, one can generate an endless variety of speech patterns including a child´s voice, a French speaker reading English, female and male speakers engaged in a conversation, a reader speaking in Spanish, and so on.
The future of the Web as primarily a text and graphics medium is changing. In the coming months and years, speech-based websites will become a reality. Imagine using your telephone to surf and listen to the Web. Imagine downloading content from a website onto your MP3 player, and listening to it on the ride home from work, or school. Imagine listening to lecture notes or the monthly financial reports during your daily workout. Imagination is all that limits the possibilities for the talking Web.
Audio, unlike visual information, does not require immediate physical proximity with the information being conveyed; a person can hear things over a greater distance than they can see them. This opens up a whole new way of using the Internet. Web surfers will no longer have to stare into a screen to use the Internet. Coupled with speech-to-text, often referred to as voice recognition software, the Web can eventually become a hands and eyes free learning environment.
For details about ATalker, the technologies that have gone into its creation, or to try it for yourself, browse through the following resource sites or contact ATalker.
ATalker
Festival Text-to-Speech System
SABLE Markup Language
Synthesize Speech Markup Language (SSML)
Source:
Accessible News Number 25.
Fall 2005.
Assistive Devices Industry Office (ADIO).
eAccessibility is an Issue for All of Us
The UK Cabinet Office published eAccessibility of public sector services in the European Union, a comprehensive report on accessibility of government online services across the European Union (EU). The report was commissioned for the UK Presidency of the EU to help member states by undertaking an evaluation of eAccessibility and establishing the scope of public policy towards eAccessibility.
Highlighted examples of good practice are, Spain Social Security Administration, UK Department of Health, and European Central Bank. These websites show how good design features such as clear layout, simple background with good contrast and features that are linked from the Home Page can have a significant impact on accessibility and usability.
The report revealed that only 3% of the 436 online public service websites achieved a Level A rating, which is considered to be the minimum standard under the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. A further 10% achieved limited level A and 17% marginal fail Level A. The remaining 70% were found to fail Level A. No websites tested reached the higher double A standard.
Analysis of the research demonstrated a number of common reasons for failure. Based on these, the report recommends a six-step plan, Priority actions for improvement, that could be quickly and affordably implemented to result in a rise from 3% to 30% of websites achieving the Level A standard. These simple steps include providing effective text alternatives to images, ensuring the site works without a mouse, and coding the content structures correctly. The report was published on the day that EU Member States met in Manchester, UK, to discuss how eGovernment can transform public services.
Speaking on behalf of the UK Presidency, Jim Murphy, UK Cabinet Office Minister said:
"I am encouraged by the excellent examples of good practice highlighted in this report, but there are clearly widespread failings which must be addressed. eAccessibility is an issue for all of us. We know that able and disabled people use online services more when they are designed to meet their needs. The main reason for investing in electronic service delivery is to enable people to access the service more easily. Making technology more inclusive is hugely important for the social and economic well-being of the EU, and that´s why we are making digital inclusion a key issue at this conference today."
The research was carried out by a partnership led by the Royal National Institute of the Blind and including AbilityNet, Dublin City University, the Royal National Institute of the Deaf and the Society for Information Technology Management.
Source:
Cabinet Office
e-Library in Braille Rolls On
HYDERABAD-- Visually challenged students of government schools in the state can now look forward to an e-Braille Library on wheels that will bring a variety of reading material in Braille script to their door step.
A Maruti van fitted with a multi-media computer system with special software package and radio cum tape-recorder will also enable the visually impaired students to operate the computer and the system will read out the books for them. The students can listen to programs on radio or to cassettes of rhymes and songs of their choice on the tape recorder.
The first ever e-Braille library on wheels, the initiative of Guru Kondaveeti Jyothirmaye International Trust, was inaugurated by State Election Commissioner, A.V.S.Reddy at Erra Manzil Mahila Samajam Hall.
Kondaveeti Jyothirmaye, well-known singer of Annamacharya Sankeertanas, and founder of the trust that takes up welfare programs, said that good response to Ramayana and Mahabharata brought out in Braille prompted them to bring out more books and make them available to visually impaired schoolchildren.
Fund Source
Industrialist Raghavendra came forward to fund the project at a cost of Rs.2.5 lakhs. The mobile library will go to various schools as per the request of the managements.
The Braille collection brought out by the Trust has Ramayan, Bharatham, Bhagavatham, Bible, Quran, moral stories, and stories of Alibaba, Akbar-Birbal, Tenali Ramakrishna, and Annamacharya Sankeertanas. The mobile library also has stock books in Braille.
Mr. Reddy, appreciating the efforts of Jyothirmaye Trust, promised to do his best to further their cause. Some students of Government High School for Blind Girls, Malakpet, were the first to use the e-Braille library and went through the Braille books, and listened to the computer read books.
Source:
The Hindu
© Copyright 2000 - 2005
Visual Studio 2005 Makes Accessibility a Real Possibility
One of the barriers to developing accessible websites has been that the development tools made it difficult or impossible to create conforming sites. Development tools were chosen for their capability and productivity, but until recently, the ability to generate accessible websites was not on the requirements list.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 included support for developing accessible websites. Microsoft provided guidelines and walkthroughs on how to use the functions to create accessible sites. However, it did require the developer to understand accessibility requirements and coding in detail. The support did not include support of XHTML, which is considered the best standard for supporting accessible sites, nor did it provide prompts to encourage the inclusion of accessible features such as alt tags or accesskeys; finally, it did not provide an in-line testing tool to check compliance to accessibility standards.
Microsoft senior managers recognized their obligation as a major supplier of IT to make their products inclusive and that meant extending and improving on the functions available in Visual Studio 2003. This was reinforced by the growing pressure on Federal buying decisions to conform to Section 508. Microsoft has put significant effort into ensuring that new web development and run time solutions meet or exceed Section 508 requirements, W3C standards and similar legislation in other geographies such as the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK. Much of the work that has been done has a second, and for some a more important, benefit. For a site to be accessible, it is essential to separate the content from the layout. This separation also enables:
- The deployment on different forms factors such as mobile phones and PDA.
- Much greater re-use of code snippets.
- Standard look and feel across a website.
- Cloning websites with the same function but different branding.
To create this environment, Microsoft had to extend and improve ASP.NET with version 2.0 and provide the run time .NET Framework 2.0. Visual Studio 2005 now provides the development environment which supports these new functions.
In addition to this support, Visual Studio now comes with a validation program that will check that the code generated is firstly valid XHTML and then adheres to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) accessibility standards. This function comes with the standard health warning that not all WAI requirements can be checked for automatically and human checking is still required. Notwithstanding the health check, the validation program provides two important benefits; firstly, it reduces the number of bugs the human checking will pick up, and secondly, once an accessible site has been set up it may not be necessary to run a human check against every new page. The reduction in the need for human checkers should translate into a considerable cost saving.
Visual Studio 2005 makes accessibility a real possibility and Microsoft should be applauded for the careful testing and the dedication in making this happen. I believe that Microsoft will build on this base and add more help and wizards so that accessibility is not just a possibility but a probability.
Several earlier adopter clients already have proved the technology and have accessible websites in production, including parts of the National Health Service in the UK.
For the more technical, there follows a brief description of the major enhancements that have been made to ASP.NET:
- Every ASP.NET control that displays an image includes a method for supplying alternate text, including the ability to set the text to null, and add a long description when required.
- Forms can include labels on input fields, checkboxes and radio buttons, as well as creating sets of fields, defining tab orders and access keys.
- A skip navigation function can be incorporated into a page.
- Tables of data can be set up with the correct headings. Complex nested tables can also be defined.
- Valid transitional or strict XHTML will be automatically generated.
- Tables are not needed for layout.
With all these functions and an understanding of the accessibility requirements, it is perfectly possible to create fully compliant accessible websites.
Source:
Bloor Research
Published: 29th November, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Bloor Research
"Welcoming Disabled Customers" Revised and Updated
Welcoming Disabled Customers has been completely redesigned and updated. Following careful research and front line field testing, one of the Employers´ Forum on Disability´s best received and thought-provoking publications has been fully updated, redesigned and is now ready to purchase.
1 in 4 customers in the UK is disabled or is close to someone who has a disability. By providing services that your disabled customers find easy to use, they become more accessible for all your customers. Welcoming Disabled Customers gives practical advice on how to offer quality service to disabled customers.
Welcoming Disabled Customers includes the latest information on:
- The law
- Good customer service
- Confident communication
- Customers
- Find out more about the publication "Welcoming Disabled Customers"
Source:
Employers´ Forum on Disability
BNP Paribas Group Improves ATM Accessibility
Featuring Nuance Communications´ Real-speak technology, visually impaired users are guided through transactions such as cash withdrawals, deposits, and account balances by a natural voice that´s easy to understand. The system also notifies ATM users when an error has occurred during the transaction.
Other accessibility features include a more consistent transaction flow, pronounced bezels for card readers and headphone jacks, a single-style keypad that provides consistency across the entire line of ATM´s, and grouping of primary and secondary transaction functions. Opteva terminals are built with a standard headphone jack and the necessary hardware to enable audio capability for users with visual impairments.
"The use of standardized audio messages is the simplest and most discreet way to facilitate access to ATM´s for the visually impaired," said Xavier Bianne, managing director of Diebold France. "Nuance´s text-to-speech technology offers the flexibility required for translating on-screen messages into audio messages."
Diebold says its Opteva ATM´s are the only ATM´s in the world to be endorsed by the US´ National Federation of the Blind (NFB).
The ATM services are available in six languages and are due to be installed in the bank´s branches through the second quarter of 2006.
Source:
cbronline.com
