James said: "I was shocked to find that only about 10% of blind
people in the UK use screen readers, mainly due to inhibitive costs
and the (generally) complicated set-up involved and learning process.
"

The number may be a bit higher here in the states, James, but all the
same issues apply.

There is slow progress being made. When I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10, I
was surprised to find that the Orca screen reader is part of the
default installation of the Gnome desktop:
http://live.gnome.org/Orca

It isn't a mature product yet (though Ubuntu itself is great for
me), but it is free and functions pretty well. I alerted Dan
Jellinek, who does a great job of keeping up with accessibility news
in the E-Access Bulletin:
http://www.headstar.com/eab
... and Dan alerted his readers, most of whom are in the UK. Linux
may never achieve an impressive market share, but maybe it will push
competitors to advance this technology and others.

FireVox is a Firefox extension that enables text-to-speech in the
browser alone. From what I've seen in print, it's moving forward at
a good pace and it's been widely accepted.
http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/

If you follow that FireVox link, you can also read about AxsJAX, with
which Google aims to improve the accessibility of Web 2.0
applications.
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

I don't agree with Kevin Carey about sound starting by default,
although I have much respect for the RNIB's very consistent and
compelling accessibility advocacy. From the standpoint of interaction
design, it isn't usually good practice to surprise people; there's
always a price to be paid for that.

I'm with you on standards compliance, James. We also can (and
should, I think) design in such a way that we don't push unwanted
enhancements from the server side and at the same time don't inhibit
them on the client side.

I wish I was as certain about an answer to Vicky's original
question, but there's obviously a lot that Vicky can't tell us. I
believe people are weary of being talked at, and quick to leave when
they perceive this kind of message. The message or the customer's
need would have to be very compelling to overcome that resistance.
The Web is not as good a medium for this as TV or radio because it
isn't linear and users aren't *required* to wait.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25934


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