We thought it would be interesting to share some of the functionality issues incorporated into our web site that enable our visually impaired visitors to more easily navigate and understand our site. For example, this may be the first site you've ever been to that prominently uses skip links. You may further find it interesting that programs exist to "read" site content to those who cannot access it visually. But first a little background about the world wide web and its evolution over time.
BACKGROUND
The Internet was initially created to allow an information exchange between scientists. For that reason it was principally based on textual information. Starting in the mid-nineties, the Internet became a communication media for everybody and the content on the internet became more and more graphical in nature.
These changes don't bring advantages to everybody and you may have even experienced these issues if you tried to access the internet over your cell phone. You probably gave up and said "I'll check it when I get home". This is not possible for a small segment of the population who can only access the Internet by the means of a screen, especially blind and partially sighted users.
ACCESIBILITY
Accessibility problems can be classified in two categories: technical problems and conceptual problems. Technical problems such as translation of text into speech or conversely speech recognition are solved by the developers of specific browsers, technologies or specific screen readers and are more dependent upon advances in software and science. However, a certain number of accessibility issues must be taken into account by the Web designers. The idea is to present the site to both sighted and non-sighted audiences in a pleasing manner for all and, so, a number of issues can be taken care of in the source code in a "behind the scenes" manner. In many cases, this involves the addition of a few HTML attributes or elements.
Other additions must show up on the page itself. For example, our site employs "skip links". These alert visually impaired users that they may bypass information found on each page and "skip" to the main content of the page. In our case, the "skip links" allow users to bypass our left hand menu if they want to. Sighted viewers do this automatically, but I'm sure you can imagine how skipping over redundant information can be helpful.
There are a number of site functionalities that need special attention so that visually impaired visitors can obtain a satisfactory visit. For example:
A. Links must be very descriptive:
A frequent problem with links is that the text of the link does not give explicit information about the document or page it points out. Browsing tools used by visually impaired people often allow users to jump from link to link, so we have added information to each link identifying whether it goes to another web page or to a document. In many cases we simply add "html" or "doc" or "pdf" to the link text.
Another problem with links arises when the visually impaired are using a mouse to activate the link. In our case, our left hand menu originally could only be used if the user could hit the word in each box of the menu. However, our link boxes have been expanded to cover the whole box rather than just the word. This has been achieved with the use of non-breaking spaces (html code: " ") that are not visible on the displayed page. The link target is now larger for people who may have difficulty clicking on small areas.
B. Images require special coding that describes what is in the image:
A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes; however, a picture to a visually impaired person is truly not worth anything at all unless it is labeled properly in the source code. Sighted viewers don't normally see these labels known as "ALT" tags. Sighted viewers may have only seen these "ALT" tags if they have been to a site where the image failed to load - they then may see a phrase used to describe the image. For the visually impaired these tags are much more descriptive. The image and the function of the image to the rest of the page must be described.
C. Tables and multi-column texts must be meticulously organized:
There are two main types of tables used in websites. One type of table defines how a page is displayed. On our site, each page has a line of text across the top of our "table". This includes the skip link and below it our logo and below that a few links and the date function.
Our "table" then starts with two columns, the first being our left hand menu and the second column contains the main information on each page. You may never have thought of a web page in this fashion, but most are set up this way. After the table is finished we then go back to content that goes across the whole page. This includes some contact information and some more links. We mark the beginning and end of tables with skip links and long passages of text with heading tags or hierarchical tags. These are denoted "h1" through "h6". For reasons that should be obvious we try to limit the hierarchy to "h1" and "h2". We don't feel any information on our web site needs to be presented with six levels of hierarchy.
A second, major type of table are our fill in forms. If you think about a form, the simplest convention is to ask a question (e.g., Name) in the left hand column and provide a space in the right hand column for the user to type their name. However, what if there is one question, followed by 5 or 6 check boxes. In this case you really have a table inside the table. I think you can understand how this can get complicated to understand for the visually impaired. Since it is so important to ensure that the visually impaired can understand where to type their answer, a number of "behind the scenes" things have been done to make this simpler. Just consider yourself lucky that we can do these things behind the scene. Each fill in box is labeled with the name of the question. If a question has several answers to choose from, we mark that as a "frameset" (or a table in a table). Finally, many forms contain pull down menus - we do not use pull down menus because there is just no good way for a screen reader to understand them. We've made our forms usable for the visually impaired and, hopefully, not too klunky for our sighted visitors.
We have done other little things to enhance our sites accessibility and the whole accessibility issue is a process that must take into account both advances in mainstream web design as well as advances in screen reader technology. We can only hope that the latter evolves as quickly as the former. Once in the habit, these accessibility steps don't take that long to implement and make the site much more user friendly to all.
Please contact the NAC office if you have any questions or need more information.
You may use our contact form by clicking here or write us at the address below.
National Accreditation Councilfor Blind and Low Vision Services (NAC)
Steven K. Hegedeos Executive Director
7017 Pearl Road
Middleburg Hts., Ohio 44130
Phone: 440-545-1601
Cell: 440-724-9781
