>From another (non-technical) list, there has been a bit of a discussion
about blind users. One fellow is blind and participates in the online
discussion. He wrote the following. It may be useful to some who might take
blind users into consideration in their web site design.
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Andreas Ramos [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.andreas.com
I use synthetic
speech. I run a program which results in my soundcard speaking areas of
the screen which I can designate in a manner which best suits the occasion.
I can set the talking speed, filter out punctuation, and, if my program is
sophisticated enough, switch languages.
In order to read books, I use a document scanner and opticle character
recognition software to translate the scanned images into text files.
I am, therefore, able to gain access to printed material, CD-ROM databases,
the www and so on.
My access is, however, not necessarily totally unrestricted. The authors
of the software on which I depend must, from time to time, update their
programs to take account of difficulties which their users encounter. For
example, the design of a web page may be such that I find it difficult to
navigate from link to link. I must make very little use of the mouse,
because pointing and clicking is a very visual thing. In most cases I am
able to tab from link to link, but frames are nearly impossible to navigate
in this way. Also, an excessive use of graphics without text labels makes
reading links very difficult.
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