[Nfbnet-members-list] Huffington Post: A Lot More Needs To Be Done To Help Blind People Use The Internet

[Danielsen, Chris]

A Lot More Needs To Be Done To Help Blind People Use The Internet
Facebook’s new blind-friendly feature puts a small dent in a big problem.
Huffington Post – 04/06/2016
By Casey Williams

For the blind, navigating the digital world can 
be as tricky as moving through the physical one.

Some companies have tried to make their sites 
easier for the world’s 39 million blind people to 
use. Facebook, for instance, just introduced a 
new image-recognition feature that lets blind users “see” photos on the site.

But blind advocates say fixes like Facebook’s 
don't solve the biggest obstacles blind people face online.

“We think it’s pretty cool,” Mark Riccobono, the 
president of the National Federation of the 
Blind, told The Huffington Post. “But we get 
concerned about flashy technology.”

“For the average blind person, it’s not whether 
they know something is in a photo or not that 
determines whether they can do online banking, 
pay their bills or buy groceries,” said Riccobono, who is blind.

Even as the Internet becomes an increasingly 
necessary feature of modern life, much of the web 
is difficult for blind people to use effectively.

A range of technologies exist to help blind 
people navigate the web. Braille keyboards and 
text-to-speech programs convert text to audio, 
which allows blind people to consume information 
on the web aurally. The devices can also 
transform speech into text, which allows blind 
people to “type.” These devices often work well 
with thoughtfully designed websites. But they hit 
snags when sites have elements that aren't 
clearly labeled or are incompatible with keyboard 
shortcuts, which blind people rely on.

“Websites that have been designed from the 
beginning with accessibility in mind are easy for 
blind people to use ­ they’re easy to navigate, 
you can jump around pretty effectively and get 
information as effectively as a sighted person,” 
Riccobono said. But, he said, many sites still 
have “artificial barriers” that make performing 
basic online tasks difficult for blind users.

One of the biggest barriers is unclear labeling. 
In order to describe what’s on a given webpage, 
text-to-speech programs comb through the source 
code for labels that describe the page’s 
elements. They then say those labels aloud. If 
elements aren't clearly labeled in the source 
code ­ if a checkout button, say, is just labeled 
“image” ­ it can make navigating the page very 
frustrating for users who rely on spoken descriptions to move around the site.

“If I go on an e-commerce website and put stuff 
in my cart, but get to the payment screen and 
have trouble because the checkout button’s not 
labeled ­ that’s a high degree of frustration,” Riccobono said.

Web developers can use accessibility guidelines 
for blind users when designing their websites. 
But even when they refer to those guidelines, web 
companies don't always do a good job implementing them, Riccobono said.

“If you don't test [your code] for accessibility, 
and a problem arises and it’s not dealt with, 
then the code gets launched anyway,” he said. 
Once finalized, it can be difficult to retrofit 
websites to improve accessibility.

Blind advocates have urged the Obama 
administration to update the Americans with 
Disabilities Act to include explicit standards 
for web accessibility for blind users. While 
President Barack Obama initially seemed amenable 
to the standards ­ in 2010, he named them among 
“the most important updates to the ADA since its 
original enactment” ­ last year his 
administration quietly postponed consideration of 
new web accessibility standards until 2018.

For Riccobono, updating the ADA is a necessary 
step toward equal access for the blind.

“We need to do in the digital world the same 
thing we've done in the physical world,” he said. 
“The lack of standards makes it very difficult 
for businesses to understand when they've met a 
high standard of accessibility.”

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blind-people-internet-accessibility_us_57051a56e4b0537661883b1c>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blind-people-internet-accessibility_us_57051a56e4b0537661883b1c

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