Video of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan

The following is a repost from BoingBoing for those who might not have already read it:

Wow! From Coilhouse:
Helen Keller — inspiration to generations and inspiration for an entire genre of schoolyard humor — and her teacher and friend Anne Sullivan in a clip from 1930 in which they describe the way in which Helen learned how to speak … It’s a fascinating little clip which pays homage to a woman who, even beyond her amazing circumstances, was a radical socialist, suffragist, and supporter of birth control, who was friends with the likes of Mark Twain and who worked tirelessly to champion the rights of both the downtrodden and the physically disabled.
(Via Richard Metzger)

The Problem With Invisible Links

While I’m talking so much about things related to web development, I thought I’d post a little rant about a subject that’s been bothering me for a while now.

Can developers please, please, please JUST STOP IT ALREADY WITH THE INVISIBLE LINKS! I often work with people who are looking at the screen. When I encounter links that they don’t see, this does absolutely nothing but ad confusion for both of us. If a link is not displayed on the screen, it should, at the absolute minimum, be labelled “invisible” by my screen reader. This will stop me from asking sighted counterparts to, say, click the “skip to main content link, then look two or three lines down,” when the skip to main content link only exists for screen readers. This results in exchanges like this:

them: “What skip to main content link?”

me: “the one at the top of the page.”

them: “I don’t see it.”

me: “It’s, like, the first link.”

them: “No, it isn’t.”

me: “Oh, never mind. Just skip down to the main article. Did I spell all those street names right in the second paragraph?”

them: “Nope. You’ve got an extra d in Dundas. Third line. Fourth word.”

me: “Hold on. I think my screen reader splits lines completely different from the browser.”

Congratulations, everyone! We have now reached the point, in accessible technology, where it is almost completely impossible for a blind person and a sighted person to communicate with one another about a web page. If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here in the corner, banging my head against the wall. It’s more productive than trying to work with my sighted classmates, some days.

The ARIA Saga Continues

This post is all prompted by Google’s recent addition of ARIA technology to Google news, that I blogged about Yesterday.

My post generated a lot of (unexpected, to me) discussion in the web accessibility community. I feel that I’m much too hard on ARIA in my original posting, because user-facing information about what ARIA does is thin and scattered. I’ve been asked how information about ARIA can be better communicated. Honestly, I don’t feel that the problem, in this case, lies with the developer community. As I said in a comment on my blog entry, the fault is Google’s. Google created a link on Google News and Google Reader to websites enhanced with ARIA. However, it failed to explain what ARIA can do for the user, what software the user must have to take advantage of ARIA, or give any introduction of what changes ARIA brought to Google News. Most users, who have older and out-dated software, will find that the ARIA link does nothing, and leave baffled. Those of us who try and investigate will find information about ARIA directed at developers, that provides little to no information about what ARIA does for us, and how to make it work. When, in my case, I finally found out what ARIA enhanced Google News did, I assumed that was the limit of the technology, and left unimpressed. I think that, at this point, the best thing the Web Accessibility Initiative can do is stress the importance to developers using ARIA of ensuring that the user has software that can support ARIA, and explaining how exactly the ARIA page is different from the non-ARIA page. Perhaps some of this effort should also fall on the shoulders of screen reader programmers; most screen readers have anounced to developers that they support ARIA, but they haven’t explained this feature to their users. Perhaps the WAI could create some sort of user-facing documentation for ARIA that developers could link to whenever they create an ARIA enhanced page; but I’m not really sure that that’s the job of a standards body. As things stand right now, blind users are starting to see ARIA links popping up on accessible websites, trying to find out what ARIA means for them, and coming up confused or empty handed.

My original comment follows:

@Shawn Henry: This seems clear enough, but it’s a document for web developers. To me, the user, this is all just theory. What should probably exist somewhere (and maybe does? Google doesn’t index
everything.) is a page describing websites using the technology, discussing what differences it makes for users (like interaction with google chat, the pop-up menus in gmail, etc),
and what screen reading and browser combos support this technology (the only one I’ve got working
thus far is firefox 3+NVDA; Freedom Scientific says they support it, but something must be broken
on all three of my windows boxes because I just can’t make it work). The people who should probably
write this kind of user document, in fact, are Google. They’ve suddenly presented all screen-reader
users of Google News and Google Reader with a mystery link about “ARIA,” (a link that our sighted
counterparts apparently can’t even see, so we get strange looks when we ask about it) and failed
completely to explain anything at all. When people search for information about ARIA on google
itself, it seems they wind up at either web developer resources, year old discussions of google
reader, or my blog, depending on what keywords they use. IMHO, the way to do this would be to
present a kind of “ARIA information page” the first time the user clicks the ARIA enhanced link,
explaining what software they need to be using, and what extra functionality ARIA ads to the page. Pressing questionmark for help, while an interesting interface enhancement, is just so far removed from anything I would ever think of doing on any normal page, that I won’t try it unless prompted with a “press questionmark for help” message. Otherwise, I’ll go hunting for a help link. Because that’s what you do with web pages: you click links on them.

What Is Google News ARIA?

I’ve gotten a somewhat surprising number of hits to my blog over the last few days, coming from lost googlers searching for strings like “google news aria” and “what is google news aria.” Unfortunately, it seems that Google itself doesn’t have any information posted about the subject (or if they do, it’s not ranked highly in Google). Thus everyone is winding up at my rather short entry on accessibility improvements to google news, where I don’t really explain what ARIA is for, because I don’t really know. In an effort to satisfy the internets curiosity, I thought I’d take a minute to do some research on the subject.

According to wikipedia, Aria is really called WAI-ARIA, and:

WAI-ARIA is a set of documents that specify how to increase the accessibility of dynamic content
and user interface components developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript and related technologies.

That kind of rings some bells, for me. I vaguely remember reading something about it, somewhere. At the time, I think I just ignored it as yet another of the vague, academic, and impossible to follow pronouncements from The World Wide Web Consortium. The wikipedia article doesn’t help; it’s an awful text block of doomb with hardly any links to other wikipedia articles, and no headings or paragraphs. Before anyone says anything: no, I will not fix it. Wikipedia has a CAPTCHA, and I refuse to give any of my time or money to the organization until the wikipedia CAPTCHA has been completely removed. This particularly poor example of a Wikipedia article also fails to answer the all-important question: what does Aria do for *me*, the user?

An article from 2008 on the Google Reader Blog gives us a hint. Apparently, Google Reader also has ARIA support. The article says that it works with firefox3 and firevox or jaws 8. When using that software, after clicking the ARIA link, pressing questionmark will read out a list of hotkeys. I couldn’t get it to work at all with any version of jaws or firefox. However, it works as advertised in NVDA and firefox 3. It makes working with the extremely ajaxy google reader much easier; hotkeys can mark an article as read, jump from article to article, visit an article, subscribe and unsubscribe from feeds, and more.

But none of that has anything to do with Google News. However, after going to Google News, and selecting the ARIA enhanced link, pressing questionmark will read out a similar, if shorter, list of hotkeys. Unfortunately, when it comes to Google News, I just don’t see the point. I can already jump from story to story by pressing h, as each story now has a heading. I don’t need the special hotkeys that ARIA provides to do this. The other hotkeys in Google News are similarly unimpressive. But don’t take my word for it! Go to the ARIA enhanced google news with Firefox and NVDA, and see for yourself. All the functionality offered by ARIA can be done easier, and faster, with NVDA itself. While ARIA is useful for ajax websites like Google Reader, it’s of no use on Google News. And even in Google Reader, I’m still not sure why we need ARIA. Can’t we already assign hotkeys to things with the accesskey atribute? Many, many websites already do this. Perhaps, though, I’m missing something important. But on first blush, it doesn’t look all that revolutionary. The other advantage of using accesskey is that it doesn’t need a special version of the page, like ARIA seems to. Accesskey atributes can just be added into the original page, rather than building something entirely new.

The best way to conclude my thoughts on the matter is as follows: “meh.”

Another Source For Described Movies Online

I’m a little late posting this, as I just looked into it today. The National Film Board of Canada has recently posted several described films online for free. They’re mostly nonfiction war films. But if that’s you’re thing, you’ll get a kick out of the collection. You can find the list of described films at this page on the national film board website.

Jaws 9: Jaws 8 With Bugfixes

Instead of updating the blog last night, I downloaded and installed Jaws 9.0 Public Beta 1. The good news: they finally fixed the blank pages problem! Now, whenever you load something in the browser, it never comes up blank. The bad news: other than some surface features, Jaws 9 is really just Jaws 8 with all the major bugs squeezed out. Shouldn’t this be jaws 8.5? At least it’s faster than jaws 8, and doesn’t give blank pages. If you haven’t yet, you should upgrade for those fixes alone.

Blind Crawler

For those of us still using Jaws for Windows, Blind Crawler may come in useful: it’s a site with the specific purpose of searching jaws scripts. Just type in the application you need, and it’ll pull up the page with scripts for it. It’s…Google for Jaws 1.0!

New Skype

A new version of skype was just released; according to the developers change log, it should fix the accessibility issues we’ve been having with the older version of skype for a while now. Also, a new version of firefox came out yesterday; if your firefox hasn’t updated yet, it’s time to do that, now.

FileDir

From the guy who gave us Text pal, it's filedir beta. A more accessible and full featured file explorer replacement. This bothers me, not because it's bad, but because, as someone who works with lots of files, I can clearly see how far it has to go. It doesn't support two of my most wanted features: renaming by wildcards, and defining hotkeys for third party actions. It can do everything else, and lots faster than file explorer, but…not that. This could get really nifty in future, though.

article on audio games

I got asked to do up a quick article on where to get audio games by dwv for the newsletter they put out. It contains introductions to a couple games and links that anyone who's reading this journal already knows about. It was also written in 15 minutes. However, I might as well post it; a google searcher might find a use for it. Then they might subscribe to my lj. Readers are good.

Audio Games: Gaming for the rest of us

Computer games have, for those of us with little to know sight, been infamous as things that we can’t get access to play; The fast action, and amazing graphics of modern computer hardware are completely closed off to the world of screen readers. However, computers are also opening up an entirely knew world: audio games. These games, instead of having pictures on screen, are entirely based on audio feedback. If you’ve got headphones and a computer, you’ve got all you need to start audio gaming. Best of all, for a casual introduction to the field, you don’t even need to spend any money!

Topspeed2

Topspeed2 is currently the most advanced audio racing game available. Pick your car, pick your shift (manual vs. automatic…that’s another entire article), pick the track you want to race on, and play against either the computer, or other players over the internet! You’ll hear your car engine in your headphones; make sure to keep it in the center! Too far to one side, and you’ll crash into the wall on a sharp corner; if you’re really not careful, you could just drive straight into the wall on a straightaway (I’m speaking from hard experience, hear). When you get really good, you can enjoy the fun of crashing into your friends cars when you’re playing them over the internet, and forcing them off the track! Even more advanced players can create entirely new tracks and vehicles.

Tip: the car you pick has drastic effects on how sharply you can turn before spinning wildly out of control, how fast you can travel, and several other variables.

You can download Topspeed2 completely free at the following web address:

http://www.playinginthedark.net/download_e.htm

Maze Craze

Do you like mazes? I’ll tell you a secret: I think mazes are, to date, the worst creation ever to come out of human society. However, this is biased by the fact that I can never quite, you know, complete them. When presented with a maze, real or virtual, I’m always lost within about four moves. However, if you don’t suffer from my problem, you’re probably going to enjoy the game Maze Craze. It comes with 11 playable mazes, and an editor to let you create your own devices of torture, I mean mazes, and share them with your former friends. You can download it freely at:

http://www.danzgames.com/maze.htm

Supershot

Supershot is an extremely simple game, good for those times in your life when you’ve got five or six minutes to kill, but don’t want to get involved in a more complicated game. It can best be described as target practice: sounds come at you from the left, center, or right. Depending on where the sound is, you have to hit a particular key to deal with it. As the game continues, the sounds go faster and faster. On harder levels of play, you won’t be given multiple chances to hit a sound, and you’ll need to reload. That’s it; those are the rules. Honestly, it’s harder than it sounds. It’s the sort of game that will kill a few extra minutes, and that you can stop at any time when the rest of your life resumes. You can get it at:

http://l-works.net/supershotsetup.exe

That’s the direct link to download, because the game doesn’t even have a web page.

Jim Kitchen’s Games

A man named Jim Kitchen has been writing free audiogames for many, many years now. His games are much too numerous to go over in detail. However, they include: Life, Hangman, Baseball, Mule, Trivia, Snakes and Ladders, concentration, master mind, casino (not for real money, obviously, includes blackjack, poker, craps, roulette, and slots), Trucker, Yahtzee, Monopoly (with 72 different boards!), Skunk, NFL Football, battleship, Golf (with over 180 different courses!), mach1, pong, bopit, and more! This man is the all time world champion of audio games. He wrote every single one of those games himself, and some others not mentioned here, and gives them all away for free! Each one of his games is at the top, or near the top, of it’s class in quality and excellence. To be entertained for months, check out his website at:

http://www.kitchensinc.net

Even More Games!

The games I’ve mentioned are just a quick introduction to the vibrant, evolving industry of Audio Games. To find a large list of over 200 free and commercial audio games that you can download and try, go to:

http://www.audiogames.net

The website includes games, cheats, reviews, and a forum for when you’re completely stuck on one game or another. Just because you can’t properly see the screen doesn’t mean you can’t waste all of your free time playing computer games. Also, if audio isn’t your thing, check out:

http://www.brasslantern.org

to get introduced to the hours you can spend playing text based adventure games.

Nonvisual Desktop Access: New Screen Reader

A new release of an open source screen reader for Windows has been released, called Nonvisual Desktop Access (or NVDA). Unlike other free screen readers for Windows, this one is open source, so anyone can contribute. It supports sapi4, sapi5, and viavoice. It works with Mozilla, Explorer, Microsoft Office, the MsDos window, Outlook Express, and most standard Windows applications. It has no installer, and can be run straight off a USB stick. It will only run on Windows XP, for the moment. I'll be keeping a close eye on this project in future; it looks like good things could start happening.

Text Pal 1.9

The Excelent freeware Programmers editor Text Pal has a knew release. New stuff includes better c# support, go to error, and various fixes. If you're using Jaws or Window Eyes and are a programmer, check this out; you'll probably enjoy it.

td bank

For those of you who are Torontonians, the knew td bank machines are accessible. Bring a pair of headphones, and plug them into the machine. After 5 to 10 seconds, the machine will welcome you to td bank and ask if you want service in French or English. You control the machine using the keypad under the shield, rather than the buttons on the side of the machine. Also, if someone has guided you to the bank, the second option offered is to completely blank the display for privacy. As the headphones cause the machine to not even beep, the person guiding you can't even tell what or how many buttons you've pressed, never mind what you're doing. If you've never used the new machines before, You'll want to have a guide the first time you bank to show you the headphone plug (on the middle right of the machine) and where to insert your card, and get your cash. After that, you're good. Oh, on an unrelated matter, have a link to Markham Nutrition. Crappy website, good store. Gluten free stuff, expert staff, and okay prices.

supernova mapping tutorial

So: I covered jaws/window eyes related stuff yesterday, and completely left out supernova. Mostly because I don't use it. So: have a mapping tutorial. Mapping is like set files for windoweyes, or scripting for jaws. We've got lots of tutorials on both the former, but not much for Supernova. So have a look; even if you're not a user, it's still an interesting look. (tutorial by, and link from, arfy8820)

Window-Eyes for Jaws

The following pops up on the zone time and time again. It's one of the few things on the zone that isn't completely moronic, so I figured I'd pass it on for those of you who haven't seen it yet, in honor of the release of the window eyes 6 beta. Sorry for not linking that, but the GW Micro guys, with their obvious understanding of good PR in the wake of the latest jfw we-don't-need-to-beta-test-our-products-because-we-don't-fix-the-bugs-anyway disaster, have decided not to offer an easy to find information page on the beta, and they've removed all their podcasts. *sigh* If I became a screen reader developer, would my brain turn into pumpkin mush, too? Oh, and have a link to the main menu ep about jaws. Aren't those slow scansoft bulky voices going to be absolute hell when reading the desktop? Try taking those at 400 wpm. Yeah, suuuuure. I lust after orphius. Oh, and if you can't distribute it online, perhaps it shouldn't be included?

GW Micro is pleased to announce the release of Window-Eyes for JAWS. This exciting new
product will revolutionize screen reading technology. Screen reading has never been easier.
Window-Eyes for JAWS provides you the best of both worlds – the power of JAWS and the ease
of use of Window-Eyes. Window-Eyes for JAWS reads what JAWS alone will not, provides ease
of use JAWS cannot, and gives access to settings that no one can find in JAWS. “Some people
asked us why we'd release a screen reader for a screen reader,” said Dan Weirich of GW Micro.
But if they had ever used JAWS, they wouldn't have had to ask.” Let's face it. No screen reader is
perfect. But JAWS has been remarkably foul of late. And even so, people and organizations just
keep buying it. Well at GW Micro, we're not going to give up. Our motto is – if we can't beat
them, we'll join them – and do it better. So our “middleware” screen reader, Window-Eyes for
JAWS is a logical progression for us. Here are answers to some questions raised by our exciting
new product: What do you mean by “middleware” screen reader? Middleware is normally a layer
of programming that lets different programs talk to each other. Microsoft Active Accessibility is
“middleware” that provides accessibility information. Well, Window-Eyes for JAWS is
middleware that provides a usability layer, translating information from JAWS into human
understandable terms, and organizing JAWS settings into a comprehensible interface, to make it
possible to actually use JAWS without years of study. If you've ever used JAWS on the Internet,
you know why Window-Eyes for JAWS is an essential addition. If you don't code HTML by
hand, you probably scratch your head when using JAWS on the Internet. Who knows or cares
what a blockquote, onmouseover, or anchor are? With Window-Eyes for JAWS you don't have to
know! Will I have to change settings in multiple places? Not once you install Window-Eyes for
JAWS! Ever try to find where to change punctuation in JAWS? You have lots of choices: the
Voices dialogs, the Verbosity dialog, or two or three different places in Configuration Manager…
No more! With Window-Eyes for JAWS, all your punctuation settings are in one location! In
fact, all settings are easier to find and change. What about SAPI Voices? They're supposed to
work in JAWS, but that's only an unsubstantiated rumor – until now! Get Window-Eyes for
JAWS and use any SAPI synthesizer you have installed, and with the added bonus of no crashes!
How stable will this program be, running on such an unstable platform? Window-Eyes has a rock
solid reputation for stability. If we can do that in Windows, we can do it in JAWS. Will I be able
to use third party programs? We admit, JAWS doesn't support much more than Microsoft Office
these days, but with Window-Eyes for JAWS you can run all of your favorite programs.
Window-Eyes for JAWS extends the support you get beyond office environments. Life is about
more than work so enjoy it! What about synthesizers and Braille displays? Using these devices in
JAWS has never been easy. Select it when you install JAWS or reinstall it to get them to work.
But with Window-Eyes for JAWS, just select your Braille display or synthesizer from a list, and
you don't even need to restart the program! And Window-Eyes for JAWS fully supports using
your Braille Sense as a display! I'm not a programmer; will I have to learn to write scripts?
Absolutely not! If you're a real glutton for punishment and hate yourself and life in general, you
*can* write scripts… But with Window-Eyes for JAWS you don't have to submit to such torture!
And are you tired of frames that break every time you restart a program? No more! Window-Eyes
for JAWS gives you all the easy to use customization tools that have been in Window-Eyes for
years. Buy Window-Eyes for JAWS and never script again! Every time I install a new version of
JAWS, I find that something I use all the time is broken. Will Window-Eyes for JAWS help with
this? Yes! With Window-Eyes for JAWS, never worry about upgrading again. We provide the
consistency that JAWS cannot. And those commands that give three different results on three
tries? With Window-Eyes for JAWS that will never happen again! Get your copy of
Window-Eyes for JAWS today! Disclaimer: We accept no responsibility for anyone taking this
“press release” seriously, and offer no apology or sympathy for anyone without a sense of humor.