Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On 28/5/08 13:41, Alasdair King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Alasdair Big thanks for this - really interesting and helpful. One or 2 comments inline Hi Michael, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply any mendacity on your part. I'm fully appreciative and admiring of the BBC's long-term support for accessibility, including BETSIE, informal support for my BBC-using programs, and use of accessibility features like skiplinks. That said, I recognise the difficult legal, political and regulatory environment you're in: otherwise I'd be writing Don't use microformats: publish a podcast of your programmes with DRM-free video and audio content with audio descriptions at the other end instead and that wouldn't be helpful to you, right? Smile. Yeah, fair cop. It's what we'd like too but as you say due to the unique way the bbc is funded etc etc etc ;-) Apologies for getting snarky - we've been trying to get an answer to this for the last 6 months now I'm arguing the following: 1 You have a large potential base of non-technical, vision-impaired users. They really are not technical. They often don't understand the Windows Start menu, how Windows Explorer works, the difference between an executable and a shortcut on the desktop, the difference between HTML as opposed to text format email. They have a set of heuristic techniques and processes they have been shown by volunteers or nephews and follow them to perform the task they want to do. Some have JAWS, lots more have NVDA or Thunder, few know how to change their preferences or what that means. They turn on the computer and press the keys they have learned to press to do what they want, and that's it. If what they get out isn't what they expect, they'll try the keys again or restart the computer. It's incredibly time-consuming, but it's independent activity. Yup, point taken. Still it would be nice to have real data to point to about how users use screenreaders. Hopefully, we'll be doing this research soon 2 There was a recent discussion on the British Computer Association of the Blind mailing list about how hard blind users found the iPlayer pages: well-constructed, fully-accessible web pages, with accessible Flash embedded. Good, accessible design from the BBC as always, but still people having problems. Why? Because it's really difficult to use a screenreader, relative to a sighted person. The cost profile is higher and different, in formal usability terms. The solution (I believe) is to provide tools (programs) that let vision-impaired users do the things they want to do easily. For example, I have a well-regarded (free) Accessible BBC Listen Again program that scrapes your BBC Listen Again pages and presents the contents as an alphabetically-ordered list. Menus control the station. Hit Return to Play, Escape to Stop. Volume resets when you close the program in case the user accidentally turns it off and can't get any subsequent sound. The point is not to provide every feature of your Listen Again pages, like the links to the station websites, but to make it really really easy to do the core function: listen to the radio with just a few buttons. It's tricky. Sometimes making a site accessible for one community makes it less useable for another. In general we try not to ghettoise users into areas of (dis)ability but this sounds like something the bbc should support on bbc.co.uk?!? Anyway it sounds cool. I'll mail you off list for the details. I'd like to do this with your television stations, and with your old archived output when it's available. If you end up with a bunch of web pages I'll write a scraper/crawler, but if you use microformats it'll make it much easier and more reliable for me to produce a putative Accessible BBC Archive program. And if microformats spread from you to other sites, then more data will become machine readable and more simple tools or scripts for vision-impaired users will be possible. Hence my support. Bbc.co.uk/programmes is designed to be machine accessible. For now this just means schedules available as json and unflavoured xml: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm.xml http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/programmes/schedules.json But over time we'll add json, xml, yaml, rdf, ical, xspf, rss2, atom across the app. So hopefully you'll never have to scrape screens again. It does raise the question of whether it's worth supporting microformats. At the moment the main driver for keeping them is the move towards indexing ufs and rdf-a by yahoo etc. I'll keep people informed if those talks progress A move toward rdf-a is still on the table 3 Working in web accessibility leads one to mix with highly-technical professional screenreader users. They should not, I argue, be your target audience. A highly-technical JAWS user will write a script to get round ABBR problems and distribute it to other users, or just use the webpages for sighted people, or turn
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Thanks benjamin I had a quiet day lined up. Looks like I'll be subscribing to mailing list now ;-) On 24/5/08 12:42, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Frances Berriman wrote: I realise I mentioned this URL in the last thread I was active on, but I wanted to bring this to the attention to anyone not following that thread. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/05/microformats_and_accessibility.s html The BBC is trialling microformats in the new programme support pages and are in need of lots of test data and research in order to a) help us make a more informed decision about the use of abbr design pattern in hCalendar here in the community, and b) for them to decide whether to use hCalendar at all (eek!). Please take a read if you are a screen reader user, or know some one who is. Hi Frances You might want to ask on screen reader user mailing lists if anyone would like to test the BBC's implementation. From what I've seen, users on such lists are very keen to try out things and give feedback. UK computer users who are blind or visually impaired: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.freelists.org/list/access-uk Freedom Scientific JAWS users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.freelists.org/list/jaws-uk Dolphin HAL users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dolphinusers/ GW-Micro Window-Eyes users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gwmicro.com/Support/GW-Info_Archives/ Apple VoiceOver users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover/ GNOME Orca users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list NVDA users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.freelists.org/list/nvda Thunder users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.freelists.org/list/thunder (I'm not aware of an active mailing list or forum specific to System Access users.) You might also want to reach out to the screen magnification-using community: Screen magnifier users: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/magnifiers/ ZoomText users: Ai Squared forums http://www.aisquared.com/forums/index.php Hope that helps. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to this. ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Hi Michael, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply any mendacity on your part. I'm fully appreciative and admiring of the BBC's long-term support for accessibility, including BETSIE, informal support for my BBC-using programs, and use of accessibility features like skiplinks. That said, I recognise the difficult legal, political and regulatory environment you're in: otherwise I'd be writing Don't use microformats: publish a podcast of your programmes with DRM-free video and audio content with audio descriptions at the other end instead and that wouldn't be helpful to you, right? Smile. I'm arguing the following: 1 You have a large potential base of non-technical, vision-impaired users. They really are not technical. They often don't understand the Windows Start menu, how Windows Explorer works, the difference between an executable and a shortcut on the desktop, the difference between HTML as opposed to text format email. They have a set of heuristic techniques and processes they have been shown by volunteers or nephews and follow them to perform the task they want to do. Some have JAWS, lots more have NVDA or Thunder, few know how to change their preferences or what that means. They turn on the computer and press the keys they have learned to press to do what they want, and that's it. If what they get out isn't what they expect, they'll try the keys again or restart the computer. It's incredibly time-consuming, but it's independent activity. 2 There was a recent discussion on the British Computer Association of the Blind mailing list about how hard blind users found the iPlayer pages: well-constructed, fully-accessible web pages, with accessible Flash embedded. Good, accessible design from the BBC as always, but still people having problems. Why? Because it's really difficult to use a screenreader, relative to a sighted person. The cost profile is higher and different, in formal usability terms. The solution (I believe) is to provide tools (programs) that let vision-impaired users do the things they want to do easily. For example, I have a well-regarded (free) Accessible BBC Listen Again program that scrapes your BBC Listen Again pages and presents the contents as an alphabetically-ordered list. Menus control the station. Hit Return to Play, Escape to Stop. Volume resets when you close the program in case the user accidentally turns it off and can't get any subsequent sound. The point is not to provide every feature of your Listen Again pages, like the links to the station websites, but to make it really really easy to do the core function: listen to the radio with just a few buttons. I'd like to do this with your television stations, and with your old archived output when it's available. If you end up with a bunch of web pages I'll write a scraper/crawler, but if you use microformats it'll make it much easier and more reliable for me to produce a putative Accessible BBC Archive program. And if microformats spread from you to other sites, then more data will become machine readable and more simple tools or scripts for vision-impaired users will be possible. Hence my support. 3 Working in web accessibility leads one to mix with highly-technical professional screenreader users. They should not, I argue, be your target audience. A highly-technical JAWS user will write a script to get round ABBR problems and distribute it to other users, or just use the webpages for sighted people, or turn off ABBR again. If microformats take off then Freedom Scientific will make sure that script ships with JAWS anyway, and all the vendors will follow suit. I am, therefore, as a professional working in software for vision-impaired people, not worried about the impact on screenreader users of the ABBR tag, since I think the temporary and minor disbenefits are outweighed by the major benefits. Finally, on people with cognitive problems: a significant proportion of the UK population has cognitive, literacy, and learning difficulties. How much time do you spend on their needs in web design? A far smaller proportion are screenreader users: how much time do you spend on their needs in web design - like now? There is a strong argument that the needs of people with cognitive problems are not properly addressed. I don't have any answers for that one, I must stress, but it does seem to me that the needs of screenreader users have historically been politically more important in web design - possibly because people with cognitive problems have more alternative technologies and sources of content, where for blind people the Internet is unique as a source of news, entertainment, communication and independence. All the best, Dr. Alasdair King WebbIE http://www.webbie.org.uk On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 22/5/08 19:04, Alasdair King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Smethurst wrote: Of 4 users 2 had abbreviation expansion turned on. Ah, but what was your sample group? Were they,
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On 22/5/08 19:04, Alasdair King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Smethurst wrote: Of 4 users 2 had abbreviation expansion turned on. Ah, but what was your sample group? Were they, by any chance, highly-able professionals, probably with a business interest in web design and accessibility? Or were they little old ladies using Thunder or NVDA because those screenreaders are free? The honest answer is I don't know. But I'm not sure why highly-able professionals shouldn't be able to find out what's on telly tonight. Apparently JAWS has ABBR support off but ACRONYM on by default, which surprised me. Anyway, I have one user whose screenreader doesn't support ABBR (Thunder), and one who uses JAWS and leaves it off so far. I'll mail you details privately. Thanks, any data appreciated Abbreviation expansion is not our only problem. Screenreaders can also be set up to read *all* title attributes - read tool tips and expand abbreviations settings are orthogonal. With tool tips reading turned on users get the full datetime read out when they float their mouse over the abbreviation. Anecdotally this seems to be a far more common configuration for partially sited users. Interestingly, I think your what about people with cognitive problems getting confused? point might be of more real-world importance, but since people cognitive problems are not as powerful politically they probably aren't a problem for you. Don't want to sound prickly here but our intentions are strictly honourable. We're not doing this to pick holes with microformats or tick bbc boxes or avoid being sued. We're just a bunch of developers trying to do 'the right thing'. Whether people with cognitive problems are politically powerful or not if they can't use our site we're doing something wrong. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to this. ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On 21/05/2008, Martin McEvoy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Have you tried something like this: abbr class=dtstart title=2008-05-15T19:30:00+01:00 span title=Seven Thirty19:30/span /abbr Hi Martin, It's not so much about what to try as the BBC using the hCalendar on a new, very large site and not wanting to use a format that is either likely to change (if the abbr pattern is changed/dropped) or causes accessibility issues. They just want to help push through the current discussion with some real data. Hopefully, this issue can be resolved *very soon* - I'd hate to see /programmes have to drop their microformat implementation because of one, relatively small, aspect of one format. Thanks, though! -- Frances Berriman http://fberriman.com ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 10:26 +0100, Frances Berriman wrote: On 21/05/2008, Martin McEvoy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Have you tried something like this: abbr class=dtstart title=2008-05-15T19:30:00+01:00 span title=Seven Thirty19:30/span /abbr Hi Martin, It's not so much about what to try as the BBC using the hCalendar on a new, very large site and not wanting to use a format that is either likely to change (if the abbr pattern is changed/dropped) or causes accessibility issues. They just want to help push through the current discussion with some real data. Hopefully, this issue can be resolved *very soon* - I'd hate to see /programmes have to drop their microformat implementation because of one, relatively small, aspect of one format. Hmm It seems to me that the microformats community seems to find it difficult to resolve the abbr design issue[1], its been over a year now? I cant see why we cant accept the hAccessibility[2] solution and be done with it and just use a span, I believe most screen readers are not set up to read out loud the @title on a span by default. span class=dtstart title=20070312T1700-06 March 12, 2007 at 5 PM, Central Standard Time /span Another resolution I rather liked was to use dfn[3] instead as it is unlikely the @title will ever be read out loud on a dfn tag, dfn is hardly ever used in the real-world but to me is an extremely useful and posh tag, perfect for a microformat. dfn class=dtstart title=20070312T1700-06 March 12, 2007 at 5 PM, Central Standard Time /dfn Oh well hopefully the abbr issue can be resolved amicably this time around as there seems to be a few usable resolutions[4], if not, lets all talk about it again Next Year :) [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/accessibility-issues#abbr-design-pattern [2] http://www.webstandards.org/2007/04/27/haccessibility/ [3] http://microformats.org/wiki/dfn-design-pattern [4] http://microformats.org/wiki/assistive-technology-abbr-results#Valid_HTML4 Thanks Martin Thanks, though! ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On [May 22], at [ May 22] 7:46 , Martin McEvoy wrote: Hmm It seems to me that the microformats community seems to find it difficult to resolve the abbr design issue[1], its been over a year now? This is difficult to solve because we lack the resources to do testing with screen reader users. The current pattern was established without such testing. If that was a mistake, let's not repeat it. (And if that wasn't a mistake, there's no need to change anything.) I cant see why we cant accept the hAccessibility[2] solution and be done with it and just use a span, I believe most screen readers are not set up to read out loud the @title on a span by default. Has anyone tested this in various screen readers? If not, on what basis would we accept it? Oh well hopefully the abbr issue can be resolved amicably this time around as there seems to be a few usable resolutions[4], if not, lets all talk about it again Next Year I don't think talking about it more is helping much at this point. We're mostly rehashing the same ideas over and over again. What we need, and what Frances is asking for, is help testing these various ideas. Peace, Scott ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On 22/05/2008, Alasdair King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There has been some testing, that will hopefully be published soon, but it's not definitive (since there's not much data on how most SR users have their setups). That's all :) Sorry, I meant of course I infer that they've tested the default settings of the screenreaders... Ah - sorry. My mistake too :) -- Frances Berriman http://fberriman.com ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
On 22 May 2008, at 17:06, Alasdair King wrote: From the BBC page linked: We've looked at quite a few screen readers out of the box and by default they don't expand abbreviation elements so the user still hears 19:30 not 2008-05-15T19:30:00+01:00. I infer that they've tested the screenreaders, they're just worried there are lots of blind people who have turned on ABBR, and the BBC is a big, sensitive target. I know blind people are more annoyed about the lack of audio descriptions in iPlayer, but there'll be some uber-geek screenreader user in a well-off advocacy group who'll complain. People who have problems will be the subset of users who (use a screenreader) AND (have a screenreader that supports ABBR) AND (have turned on abbreviation elements) AND (come across hCalendar ABBR elements) AND (find this one thing the biggest headache in using the site.) Why not just offer to buy both those people a beer to make up? I don't think the ‘what's the default‘ argument is an absolute decider either way with this. The behaviour is supported and used; we've not been able to get numbers on how many assistive technology users do turn it on, but I don't think it's right to dismiss an option of a browser which is acting legitimately with the semantics of the HTML it is parsing. Reading aloud abbreviations is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, whether it's a default, on-demand or whatever. As far as I can judge, assistive technology offering the ability to expand abbreviations is entirely in line with the intentions of the HTML4 specification, whereas stuffing illegible data into it is not. This is less an issue of accessibility as it is semantics. Where ABBR is being used incorrectly, there's no right to complain about a consuming tool treating your code in an undesired way. Recently, we've been discussing the issue of embedding machine-data as part of microformats on uf-dev, and debating possible alternative methods from a parser perspective (namely an empty element with a title attribute). Of interest here is the document now on the wiki covering all the uses of machine data in microformats, and covering all the currently supported means of including that alongside the publishers preferred formatting. http://microformats.org/wiki/machine-data At the moment, the data embedding solution proposed there is being discussed on -dev: (http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-dev/2008-May/000519.html ). It will move over to discuss once we're confident in it being reliably parsable. B ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Michael Smethurst wrote: Of 4 users 2 had abbreviation expansion turned on. Ah, but what was your sample group? Were they, by any chance, highly-able professionals, probably with a business interest in web design and accessibility? Or were they little old ladies using Thunder or NVDA because those screenreaders are free? Apparently JAWS has ABBR support off but ACRONYM on by default, which surprised me. Anyway, I have one user whose screenreader doesn't support ABBR (Thunder), and one who uses JAWS and leaves it off so far. I'll mail you details privately. Interestingly, I think your what about people with cognitive problems getting confused? point might be of more real-world importance, but since people cognitive problems are not as powerful politically they probably aren't a problem for you. Best wishes, Alasdair King WebbIE On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:38 PM, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 22/5/08 17:23, Alasdair King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There has been some testing, that will hopefully be published soon, but it's not definitive (since there's not much data on how most SR users have their setups). That's all :) Sorry, I meant of course I infer that they've tested the default settings of the screenreaders... My screenreader knowledge is minimal but iplayer have tested hCal on a variety of outa the box screenreaders (sorry, can't give a full list - I'll try and hunt it down). By default they all had abbreviation expansion turned off and ufs passed with a clean bill of health I believe we also did very, very limited at home testing. Of 4 users 2 had abbreviation expansion turned on. It's a stupidly low sample size which is why we're appealing to screenreader users to help us out It wouldn't be so much of a problem if it was just one hCal per page but for a schedule day view we have quite a number: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to this. ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss -- Alasdair King ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
[uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Ben Ward wrote:
I don't think the ‘what's the default‘ argument is an absolute decider
either way with this.
Indeed. Even if no screen readers even *offered* the option of
reading the title attribute of abbreviations, the abbr design pattern
would still be a bad idea. Or rather,having it as the only supported
method of supplying machine-readable data (short of making the
machine-readable data available as normal page content) is a bad idea.
In the case where the human readable data really is an abbreviation
for the machine readable data, such as
abbr class=country-name title=United KingdomUK/abbr
then the abbr pattern is appropriate, and it's good that it works.
But when the machine readable data is not a legitimate expansion of
the human readable text, then use of the abbr design pattern falls
into an obvious discord with:
http://microformats.org/wiki/semantic-xhtml-design-principles
An author who was not using microformats could not legitimately claim
to be using proper semantic HTML if they included samples like this
in their pages:
abbr title=cellmobile phone/abbr
abbr title=2008-01-01end of December/abbr
Adding classes ('type' and 'dtend') does not make things any better.
The abbr design pattern is good and should work, but we really must
have an alternative for those times when it doesn't make good
semantic sense.
--
Toby A Inkster
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://tobyinkster.co.uk
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[uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Hi everyone, I realise I mentioned this URL in the last thread I was active on, but I wanted to bring this to the attention to anyone not following that thread. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/05/microformats_and_accessibility.shtml The BBC is trialling microformats in the new programme support pages and are in need of lots of test data and research in order to a) help us make a more informed decision about the use of abbr design pattern in hCalendar here in the community, and b) for them to decide whether to use hCalendar at all (eek!). Please take a read if you are a screen reader user, or know some one who is. Thanks very much, Frances -- Frances Berriman http://fberriman.com ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC
Hi Frances On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 14:12 +0100, Frances Berriman wrote: Hi everyone, I realise I mentioned this URL in the last thread I was active on, but I wanted to bring this to the attention to anyone not following that thread. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/05/microformats_and_accessibility.shtml The BBC is trialling microformats in the new programme support pages and are in need of lots of test data and research in order to a) help us make a more informed decision about the use of abbr design pattern in hCalendar here in the community, and b) for them to decide whether to use hCalendar at all (eek!). Please take a read if you are a screen reader user, or know some one who is. Have you tried something like this: abbr class=dtstart title=2008-05-15T19:30:00+01:00 span title=Seven Thirty19:30/span /abbr There is more on this here: http://alistapart.com/articles/hattrick Best Wishes Martin McEvoy Thanks very much, Frances ___ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
