Accessibility and Web 2.0

Giorgio Prister

Description

Accessibility and Web 2.0

Sujets

• Arts

Informations

• Publié par: alurenum
• Nombre de lectures: 62
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ellen Perlman

is a Governing staff writer and

technology columnist. E-mail her at

[e-mail]

.

Technology

Accessibility and Web 2.0

Governments with a presence on social networks still need to ensure that citizens with

disabilities can access their pages.

By

Ellen Perlman

| September 22, 2009

You'd think Gretchen Maune would be the perfect audience for state and local

officials who have started posting their doings on Facebook and YouTube.

The 26-

year-old is interested in government and making her views known. She was an early

Facebook adopter, getting hooked at college several years before the site was open to

everyone. And she's an active Web user who likes to check in routinely with state and

local government Web sites originating in Missouri, where she's a student.

But Maune is blind. She lost her sight in 2006 due to a genetic condition called Leber's

Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. She relearned how to get on the computer using a screen

reader. But since then Facebook has done nothing but frustrate her. Facebook defeats her

to the point where she avoids it. "Half the time I hear gibberish," she says. "Programmers

haven't labeled the links."

And it's not the only aggravating social media Web site. But at least people have created

interfaces for sites such as Twitter, and since Twitter is mostly text, it's easier for

programmers to come up with these apps.

Accessibletwitter.com

and

McTwit.com

work with screen readers, so Maune can

keep up with government tweets for the most part. Maune has explored many of the social media networks looking for

"friendly" ones that she can use. Some are easier than others. But what surprises her most is that so many governments

ignore accessibility laws in using these social media sites.

Some governments don't think they're ignoring the visually or hearing impaired because they say the same information they

post on those is available through other channels, whether it's by press release, town hall meeting or mailing. But that

dismisses the fact that these social media Web sites encourage conversation. Governments contribute content that then is

embellished through user comments.

Difficulties with social media access may prevent people with disabilities from joining the conversation. Many governments

have laws that align with

Section 508

of the federal Rehabilitation Act but don't feel the need to apply them to networking

sites. "It's a shame," says Paul Spicer, spokesman with TecAccess, an accessibility consultancy specializing in information

and communication technologies. "A lot of agencies take painstaking steps to make their [government-created] Web sites

accessible but then they're throwing these social media sites up all over the place." And, indeed, dozens of governments

and officials have taken to Facebook, Twitter, blogging sites and others.

The hurdles to using some of these sites are high. Think about the squiggly or slanted letters and numbers that sites often

ask you to type in after you make a comment on a blog, to make sure you're a human being. It's called a CAPTCHA feature,

or "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart." These are meant to defeat machines.

Well, a screen reader for the blind or visually impaired is a machine. Technology to produce an audio CAPTCHA is available

but not always employed. Sometimes you need to install a plug-in that isn't readily available in order to play the audio. And

some people complain the audio quality is poor.

If governments are going to use these sites, the least they can do is help make them more accessible, says Kate Walser, a

consultant and accessibility specialist with CX Insights. Social media tools aren't necessarily inaccessible, she points out.

Governments can remove barriers when posting their content. For instance, jurisdictions using YouTube for outreach can

provide closed captioning.

Facebook recommends

that any photos shared on the site have captions, so that those who

access images with a screen reader have a text description in its place.

And those who Twitter can write better tweets. When abbreviations are used in tweets, sighted people usually can fill in the

missing letters and understand the words. It's more difficult when someone is listening to those shortcuts. For example, "RT"

means "retweet" in Twitter lingo and it's a widely used shortcut. But if someone writes it in lowercase letters, a screen reader

might say "rut" or "rit" instead of saying the letters, "RT."

Government agencies could put together a list of acronyms or synonyms to help government tweeters keep messages

under the limit of 140 characters, but also make sense to someone using a screen reader. An accessibility strategy in this

case is content-based and simple to do, Walser points out. And it matters. Social media sites are the online town hall

meetings for many jurisdictions. "It's not that hard to address these things," Walser says. "So why wouldn't you?"

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