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The Internet Technology

For Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws (nytimes.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Hundreds of people with disabilities have complained about issues with automated accessibility web services, whose popularity has risen sharply in recent years because of advances in A.I. and new legal pressures on companies to make their websites accessible. From a report: Over a dozen companies provide these tools. Two of the largest, AudioEye and UserWay, are publicly traded and reported revenues in the millions in recent financial statements. Some charge monthly fees ranging from about $50 to about $1,000, according to their websites, while others charge annual fees in the several-hundred-dollar or thousand-dollar range. (Pricing is typically presented in tiers and depends on how many pages a site has.) These companies list major corporations like Hulu, eBay and Uniqlo, as well as hospitals and local governments, among their clients. Built into their pitch is often a reassurance that their services will not only help people who are blind or low vision use the internet more easily but also keep companies from facing the litigation that can arise if they don't make their sites accessible. But it's not working out that way.

Users like Mr. Perdue [an anecdote in the linked story] say the software offers little help, and some of the clients that use AudioEye, accessiBe and UserWay are facing legal action anyway. Last year, more than 400 companies with an accessibility widget or overlay on their website were sued over accessibility, according to data collected by a digital accessibility provider. "I've not yet found a single one that makes my life better," said Mr. Perdue, 38, who lives in Queens. He added, "I spend more time working around these overlays than I actually do navigating the website." Last year, over 700 accessibility advocates and web developers signed an open letter calling on organizations to stop using these tools, writing that the practical value of the new features was "largely overstated" and that the "overlays themselves may have accessibility problems." The letter also noted that, like Mr. Perdue, many blind users already had screen readers or other software to help them while online.
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For Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws More

For Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws

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  • No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @04:55PM (#62700528) Homepage

    The truth is that Web sites that use simple form submissions, server-side processing, and clear text are simply far more accessible than any whiz-bang Web 3.0 JS-heavy "web app"

    Here in Ontario, the Ontario and Federal government web sites are all old-school form-submission sites. They're fast, reliable and accessible. But alas, not sexy.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      It's the reason why there were alt tags implemented in HTML in the first place!

      But of course no one bothers with that, because blind people are not important..

      • It's the reason why there were alt tags implemented in HTML in the first place!
        But of course no one bothers with that, because blind people are not important..

        Alt tags have a history of getting in the way. Too many people adding descriptions of things that don't matter in order to narrate to someone who can't see what a page looks like to someone who can see. The only time images should be annotated is if they are functional.

    • How do they handle the continual slow encroach of the video-based internet? Do tik-tok creators have to subtitle their little videos with text that narrates the joke?
    • I hear there's a new JS framework/library for that >;-D

  • Honestly (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @05:02PM (#62700540)
    Its pretty bad with normal sight.

  • Blind people actually "read" HTML (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bustinbrains ( 6800166 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @06:31PM (#62700676)

    I went through a phase a few years ago where I wanted to make my websites more accessible. I watched a number of videos and read articles on the topic. Most of those were created/written by fully sighted individuals who were monkeying around with JAWS or NVDA for a few minutes. Then I found a resource where people who are legit blind actually said they just listen to the HTML tags. They've learned how to process spoken HTML as natively as you and I speak normal languages at 3-4 times the speed of regular speech. Sure, sites that use ARIA correctly (but it is just as easy to use ARIA incorrectly!) are more enjoyable to navigate, but the visually disabled are so used to site operators not caring and are used to listening to the HTML tags anyway that they don't consider ARIA necessary to navigate the web. Does this mean we shouldn't care about accessibility? No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that any attempt to implement ARIA is likely to backfire unless you hire a legally blind person who uses screen reader software for their daily driver to review your work and provide feedback.

    With my rudimentary knowledge of accessible design, where the real problem comes in is custom Javascript components. If a widget isn't keyboard navigable (especially the Tab key), then that's a major issue. It's even worse if keyboard navigation can get permanently stuck inside the widget or lost altogether and the user has to start back at the beginning of the HTML document.

  • The web is a nightmare now (Score:3)

    by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @07:20PM (#62700756)

    Constant popups, 'simple' pages bloated to many megabytes pr. .page, dark patterns, overrides, undersides, auto playing videos.. the list goes on even before we get to telemetry and data mining.

    I have good eyesight and the web now is far harder to use than 20 years ago. I can only imagine the struggle the elderly goes through when they are reading something and suddenly the whole page goes white and some bullshit pops up.

    But of course regulation is socialist so we can't have that.

  • I am visually impaired. Blind in one eye, 25% vision loss in the other. Optic nerve damage so glasses don't help. My solution after trying all sorts of apps to try and make it easier to read my screen, was to simply buy larger screens. I went with dual 55" screens and since then Ive had little problems. occasionally I have to resort to the windows magnifier.

    In the end moving my texts off of a phone screen onto my pc lets me function better.

    The options are not great for the visuallly impaired but Ive

  • First view it without a stylesheet. Just the page rendered with the raw html. That's what a blind person gets. If your website is unusable to you with sight, it's going to be even worse for a blind person using text to speech. If you don't know how to turn off the style sheet, you have no business designing a website.

    Rewrite your website to be usable without the stylesheet. Reorder things like long menus so they come at the end, not at the beginning. You do this because text to speech will first read

    • First view it without a stylesheet. Just the page rendered with the raw html. That's what a blind person gets.

      Nope, screen readers process stylesheets.

      If you don't know how to turn off the style sheet, you have no business designing a website.

      Love the if you don't know x elitism when it comes to lame browser shit.

      You do this because text to speech will first read all the damn menu elements every time a new page is loaded if it's at the top, which is damn annoying.

      Yea not like you can control positioning of cursor you just have to sit back and wait for the reader to read everything aloud "every time a new page is loaded".

      Include a description in every single image. You don't need to get all that detailed most of the time, e.g. "Child holding fish" is good enough. There are going to be exceptions where you might need to be more descriptive, just use some common sense. For example, if the type of fish is important, include that. If the race of the child is important, include it. If the image is simply text you couldn't figure out how to position correctly because you suck at layout, then the description is the text.

      Don't do it. Only images that are important for navigation or provide meaningful context should be annotated everything else should be ALT="". The goal should never be to describe how the page looks to someone who can't see. If random p

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