The Group That Makes Tech Work For the Disabled 44
jfruh writes "When the iPhone was first released in 2007, the blind community assessed it and determined it was essentially useless for them. Today it's the number one phone used by blind people, largely because of the efforts of the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). NCAM is part of WGBH, Boston's public television station, which broadcast the first captioned TV show in 1972. Since then NCAM has been a lifeline that makes sure that people with disabilities aren't left out of the technological revolution."
"essentially useless" (Score:5, Insightful)
Every device whose primary interface is graphical will be "essentially useless" to a blind person. Fucking duh! It's not just the iPhone, it's every touchscreen device made. The story of accessibility tech for people in IT is simple: Separate the interface from the control logic.
No, really, that's it. That's all you really have to do to make accessibility possible. You gotta keep 'em separated. Do that, and as long as your documentation isn't horrible, it won't be hard for someone to come in and develop an interface for the disabled. HTML separates content from formatting -- good idea. But then corporations came along and screwed that all to hell, with javascript, proprietary plugins, etc., and now large sections of the web are uninhabitable by people with disabilities because they didn't follow Rule #1: Keep them separate.
As far as making a touch interface useful to the blind... hepatic feedback and auditory tones to indicate where there hands are or what function is being called before committing the action. -_- But if you don't get it right in version 1, don't feel bad -- the government has screwed up far worse than you ever will. Despite color blindness affecting 5% or more of the population, our traffic signals are still red/yellow/green... whereas other countries have realized that red/yellow/blue works just as well and color-blind people aren't having to guess what color the lights are. Positioning isn't always reliable, and people get distracted -- multiple cues are better.
So in summary, separate layout from content, and don't be like the government. :)
Re:"essentially useless" (Score:4, Insightful)
Every device whose primary interface is graphical will be "essentially useless" to a blind person. Fucking duh! It's not just the iPhone, it's every touchscreen device made.
You are right, the iPhone and other devices are completely useless [apple.com] to a blind [nfb.org] person.