Alex Jurgensen` wrote:
I spoke to my senior programer about my issue, and I received the response
that we need a simple, compact interface optimized for screen readers and
modifying the existing source code would take several years to do.
Maybe this should be approached from the opposite angle.
You have a current system, which is inaccessible to screen reader users
(and likely others too - has any evaluation been done of that?). You
have a proposal to build a new system, which provides the same core
content and functionality but is screen reader accessible. (If it
doesn't provide the same core content and functionality, and it is
possible to build an accessible system to provide it, then blind users
are still being discriminated against.)
At work, I happen to deal with large websites, am familiar with the
problems of trying to put in radical fixes to legacy code, and recognize
some potential advantages to beginning afresh.
Rather than suggesting the current, cranky system should be fixed,
perhaps the best approach is to build up towards the content,
functionality, and ultimately look-and-feel (or at least, the goods bits
of look-and-feel) of the current system from a new accessible base.
Of course, this would involve considering the needs of all users, not
just sighted and blind users as radically distinct groups, which they
aren't. (They are actually more like a spectrum or even a kaleidoscope,
with offshoots into all sorts of other disabilities that an educational
institution should be thinking about in its service provision, like
deafness, dyslexia, and motor disabilities.)
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
