screen readertext-to-speech

Simpler applications, working transparently to convert text-to-speech and providing more selective announcement of semantic elements, are likely to be the most effective solutions for ID users. Provision of text-to-speech server-side may also be a preferred solution for developers, particularly if a predictable, testable and consistent approach is required for their audience. Numerous text-helper and server-side tools exist, some of which are free to end users, the most common we have encountered are summarised on the ‘text-to-speech applications’ page.

touchscreentouchscreen

While essentially just emulating a standard mouse and requiring no major technical adaptations per se, touchscreens have a few implications which developers and designers should account for:

• Screen Resolution
  Touchscreen users often use low screen resolutions such as 640x or 800x to increase the size and accessibility of clickable areas and prevent erroneous ‘clicks’. Pages which do not render fully in smaller viewports and require use of scrollbars will present barriers. Lower viewport widths should be supported without horizontal scrolling and in-page navigation using anchors employed to mitigate requirements to interact with vertical scrollbars or a keyboard.
• Button/Icon/Hotspot sizes
  Since the hand and finger can often obscure the display during interaction, use of very small buttons, icons and links in close proximity should be avoided
• Mouse Button/Click Behaviour
  In many circumstances actions should be mapped to mouse button press rather than release events – eg in Flash using the onPress rather than the default onRelease event handler will most often be required for time critical operations such as within games.

The majority of switch users without ID, use switches via assistive software, to provide sophisticated means of keyboard or mouse emulation. For these users, predictive text and dynamic scanning grids allow an efficient means of entering text or controlling applications using standard keyboard controls and shortcuts. From the developer’s perspective such switch users can be effectively included online, providing attention is given to WCAG2.0 guidelines, particularly in respect of keyboard operability.

ball switchsingle switch

Switch users with ID are less likely to be using accessibility ‘middleware’ and custom controls accepting keypresses directly will often be required, if users with severe and profound are to be supported by an application. Most switches used by this group are connected to the computer via a simple interface which allows the keypresses sent by switches to be selected, but a good default choices would be ‘1’ and ‘2’. Sometimes users may map two switches to ‘tab’ and ‘enter’ as a means of navigating web pages generically.

Single switch users rely on the application they are using, or accessibility middleware, to move focus automatically – in a web page context akin to pressing the ‘tab’ key automatically after a set delay, leaving the user to press ‘enter’ when the desired item has focus. A more able user may be able to undertake more complex and efficient operations via single switch, for instance narrowing a number of group selections to a single item, rather than stepping through a large number of items individually.

Even if switch users are not targeted or provided with custom controls, consideration should be given with respect to difficulties certain common practices present to switch users.

A single switch user accessing a page with a 2 second scan delay for instance could take 1 minute to arrive at the 30th link on a page. Use of prominent in page navigation therefore can be an essential aid to switch users, rather than simply a usability convenience. The increasing trend to employ off page positioning for in-page navigation, without focused items to view, effectively prevents their use by many users. Likewise using text links without graphical annotation for in page navigation is likely to exclude many ID users accessing a page via switches.

SAW5 is a free Windows application from which simple and complex switch scanning grids to be created, sample grids for common browsers are included.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/saw5

HotSpots 2.0 provides a free and simple means of retrofitting switch accessibility to web applications without the need for custom controls to be scripted. This application is used to define a sequence of absolute (screen) positions for progression by switch. Ensuring a fixed screen resolution is defined and the requesting browsers are run fullscreen, allows a measure of consistency to be assumed between different users.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/hotspots2

For further reference and testing, a large suite of free switch-accessible software and applications, mostly intended for non-ID users be downloaded from:
www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/

There are also technologies that web designers can use when they are making websites, to make sure that their sites work for people with disabilities. It is often better for web designers to use these to make their sites work for people with intellectual disabilities, rather than relying on people with intellectual disabilities being able to use assistive technologies.

switchscreen reader

It is not always easy to get hold of these assistive technologies. People with disabilities often use these technologies at school. But once they leave school, they can no longer access them.

The types of technologies include:

• Switches
• Touchscreens
• Screen Readers and Text Helpers
• Text-to-Speech Applications

You can find out more about them by clicking the links on this page or in the menu.

• BrowseAloud
  This package requires subscription by site publishers, but is a free download for end users. High quality synthetic speech can be streamed from a hosted service or the application is able to make use of local TTS built into Windows and OSX. Particularly usefully for ID users are features such as text being highlighted is it read aloud and the ability for the application to work either transparently or by following mouse focus in a more interactive fashion. License costs to Website publishers vary greatly, for non-profit organisations BrowseAloud is a reasonably cheap solution, but licensing costs for larger commercial sites are much greater and server-side solutions are likely to be more cost-effective.
• FireVox
  FireVox is a free extension to the Mozilla Firefox browser. It can be configured to work with a range of cost-free and commercial TTS systems. Although essentially targeting technically able VI users, it can be configured to work transparently or to require only minimal user interaction. FireVox is a very effective and constantly improving solution that works well on most websites, particularly for more able or semi-literate users.
• TextAloud
  TextAloud is an inexpensive third-party TTS helper application for Windows systems – and the biggest-selling application of its type. It provides a page reading toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox in addition to document and clipboard reading facilities. As with BrowseAloud, spoken page text is highlighted synchronously to provide essential contextual cues. Although it includes more complex functions, TextAloud can be configured to read webpage text automatically and the browser toolbars themselves are both simple and clear.
• VoiceOver
  VoiceOver is the built in spoken interface to Mac OSX targeting VI users. While it’s possible to use VoiceOver as page reading software, the verbosity of the application presents considerable barriers for ID users. Use of the OSX speech service discretely to read page text is a more manageable solution, though not one which enables interactive document reading.
• Windows Narrator
  Narrator is Windows’ built-in spoken interface and as with VoiceOver, significant verbosity provided in respect of its intended audience prevents its effective use as a discrete page-reading application by most users with ID.

text-to-speech application‘read aloud’ function

Server-side Text-to-Speech (TTS) Applications

• ReadSpeaker
  Example Site ::  www.cheshire.gov.uk
  ReadSpeaker has been deployed in the UK by several local government websites and provides high-quality streamed TTS and optional additional navigation and display controls intended to enhance usability. ReadSpeaker are also developing a simpler tool, WebReader, which is currently in Beta and targets smaller businesses and personal sites. A further application, SpeechMachine, provides an on-demand TTS service via a simple HTTP API. Most of the UK sites we tested which included ReadSpeaker worked only erratically, although it was unclear whether this related to the stability of the application itself or difficulties in respect of its implementation by site developers.
• VoiceForge
  VoiceForge, from the developers of the Cepstral speech engine, provides high-quality hosted TTS services via a SOAP API. An impressive range of voices and languages are available, though with charges made on a per-stream event basis this solution may work out expensive if a large volume of requests are expected.
• MediaSemantics, Character Server
  This technology powers many popular avatar based systems such as  SitePal. A hosted per-stream service is available, but running Character Server locally provides a comparatively cheap route to licensing the  Loquendo TTS system, probably the most impressive TTS application currently available and often prohibitively expensive to deploy. Character Server provides a range of sophisticated scripted and dynamic animation functions and includes support for an AIML based knowledgebase and autonomous agents. While primarily aimed at presentational content and elearning applications, it is easy to implement as an on-demand TTS system and provides a visual focus, including synchronous captions, which ID users may find more engaging than the ‘disembodied’ speech of many text-helper systems.
• IBM Easy Web Browsing
  Easy Web Browsing provides a number of accessibility and usability enhancements targeting novice and senior audiences with VI. In addition to page-reading and context-sensitive screen magnification, the application provides a number of controls to support navigation and display customisation. The application runs fullscreen by default providing a discrete console-like interface, rather than integrating into the browser or webpage as a toolbar. For end users the installation is cost-free and impressively painless although only supports Windows operating systems. License costs, which include developer support, are not inconsiderable and targeted publishers are probably larger corporate clients.

There are also lots of technologies which can help people with disabilities use the web. There is information about some of them in this section, especially those which are made for people with intellectual disabilities.

You can find out about how to make websites that work for everyone, including people with disabilities, at the websites listed below.

Web Accessibility Initiative

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative works with a number of organisations and through public contribution to develop guidelines and resources aiming to make the Web accessible to most disabled people. The current reference guidelines remain 1999’s WCAG 1.0, however work is drawing towards completion on a revised set of guidelines (WCAG 2.0) which are currently available in working draft form. In addition to content guidelines for Web developers, WAI also produces guidance for the developers of user agents, authoring tools and in relation to the development and implementation of rich media and dynamic Internet applications.

Web AIM

WebAIM provide Web accessibility guidance, training, and tools. Their site contains a considerable collection of excellent free tools and guidance. The site is also an excellent source of up to the minute information and external accessibility links.

Adobe Accessibility Resource Centre

This section of the Adobe site details techniques which enable the creation of accessible PDF documents and sets out a framework to approach accessible design using Adobe Flash.

RNIB Web Access Centre

The RNIB’s Web Access Centre website provides considerable Web accessibility guidance with particular, though far from exclusive, focus on the needs of the visually impaired audience.

Juicy Studio

Juicy Studio is the UK website of accessibility consultant, Gez Lemon. The blog style site provides a great deal of independent Web accessibility guidance, debate and reference materials.

Mencap – Accessibility Guidelines

Mencap are the largest UK charity concerned with the needs of people with intellectual disabilities (they use the term learning disabilities). Mencap produce guidelines in PDF format entitled “Making your website accessible for people with a learning disability” which can be found in the resources relating to learning disablility section.

Jim Thatcher

Jim Thatcher is an accessibility consultant, developer and author with a long history in accessibility, having developed one of the first screen reader applications for IBM way back in the mid 1980s. His site provides excellent reference materials, example techniques and summaries of accessibility guidance.

UIAccess

UIAccess is the homepage of Shawn Lawton Henry (Outreach Coordinator of the WAI) the focus of the main site is user interface design and usability. Thanks to industry sponsorship, the site also hosts an online copy of Shawn’s latest book Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design.

Accessify

Accessify is a UK site dedicated to Web accessibility which offers free tools, accessibility guidance and a regularly updated news blog.

456 Berea St

456 Berea St is the busy and vibrant blog of Swedish Web developer, Roger Johansson. The blog is an excellent and well maintained source covering web standards, accessibility and more…