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 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
