Hi Ian et al,

For someone who is blind, it's not a matter of avoiding the websites that are unfriendly to screen readers. For example if a travel website can't be read by a screen reader, it may well be one has to call and suffer the added fees for booking over the phone. And then there are the websites that use "capcha" (sp), where you have to enter a scrambled code. Some organisations have an audio version, but others are just inaccessible to someone who is blind or vision impaired.

We don't deny access to a cafe or restaurant, for example, to someone who is disabled, and so we shouldn't deny access to a website just because someone has a disability.

Cheers
David

----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Smith <smithi&#167;nimnet.asn.au>
To: .au DNS Discussion List <dns&#167;dotau.org>
Sent: Friday, 10 November, 2006 2:03:20 AM
Subject: Re: [DNS] Let's Talk Net


On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, David Goldstein wrote:

> Hi Lea,
> 
> I appreciate the issues you raise as accessibility for people with
> disabilities is ongoing. For people who are blind, there are
> neverending problems as most webdesigners don't even consider a
> thought for people who are blind. In the US there is currently a
> court case on accessibility for people who are blind - see
> http://iht.com/articles/2006/11/06/business/ecom.php

A lot of websites are pretty awful for the sighted, even :)  With now
over 100 million to chose from, the unfriendly ones are easier to avoid. 
(I hasten to add, most of the links you post us are sighted-friendly at
least to someone having animations onced, and flash nevered)

[..]

> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Lea de Groot <dotau.org&#167;elysiansystems.com>
> To: .au DNS Discussion List <dns&#167;dotau.org>
> Sent: Thursday, 9 November, 2006 3:08:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [DNS] Let's Talk Net
> 
> 
> Josh Rowe wrote:
> > .auDA launched it's "Let's Talk Net" web site today.
> > 
> > Let's Talk Net
> > http://www.letstalknet.com.au/
> 
> Looks interesting.
> Just out of curiosity - how is a deaf person supposed to get access to 
> any of this information?

Potentially the podcast / MP3 medium is quite well suited to the blind,
given they can navigate to it via RSS feeds and such, but any sort of
audio is always going to be useless for the deaf, eh, till speech-to-
text software evolves at least another order of magnitude anyway.

> And how will the search engines index it, allowing someone whos never 
> heard of AUDA, is looking for just this information and has figured out 
> how to use a search engine, to learn from this excellent information source?

Indexing speech is still considered a Very Hard Problem, 20 years on.

I've yet to assess the excellence level :) but offering these pieces as
transcripts would be good for a) the deaf or even hard of hearing, b)
the not really so few people, even businesses, still having to use
dialup and c) those who'd rather read, or like to be able to quote .. 

> And how will a poorer person, who is really trying hard to get out 
> poverty, but their speakers broke and they can't afford new ones, learn 
> from this site?

A transcript version wouldn't go amiss, but it's more work and less fun
for pHaT website developers :)  Although as Jon has pointed out, these
talks will be scripted anyway, most likely in a form that could readily
be exported as the basis of simple transcripts, say ABC radio style.

> I could go on, but it boils down to a small question of 'is there an 
> accessible alternative that I have missed on the homepage?'

I'll get to listen later to see if there's anything said that isn't
discernable on either the AuDA site or the er 'webnames' dumbdown.

> Curiously,
> Lea
> ~ who isn't turning on her speakers even for something educational!

Well it may be good as a podcast site when it serves it up at a decent
rate, and works better with (eg) Mozilla.  The 'play' button raised the
box above showing another button, that did nothing here.  The 'download'
buttons worked so I saved five, chosen by whim from both 'consumer' and
'business' divisions over maybe 20 minutes. 

Best I got was about 6.5Kbytes/sec, most were more like 5Kbytes/sec,
having chosen the 'broadband 120kbits/sec' rate (ie ~15Kbytes/sec).  I
suppose the server may have been buckling under the weight of thousands
of hits due to being mentioned in slashdot or something, but otherwise
it needs more bandwidth (or better maths on the speed limit config :)

Just to be sure things were working from here I popped over to the ABC
podcast site and found a little 5 minute job, 2067KB in 41 seconds is
about 50.4KB/s, about what to expect from 512k ADSL, even in the bush.

Much later: tried another one and got 2311KB in 10m33s - you can do the
maths, but that's totally woeful for a supposedly audio site ..

Cheers, Ian

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