Accessible Web Browsers

I have men­tioned a symbol-based browser before, but here is a list of three dif­fer­ent acces­si­ble browsers:

Free Acces­si­ble Web Browsers for Learn­ers with Mul­ti­ple Disabilities

Icons, Symbols and Cognitive Disabilities

Guide­line 1.3 Cre­ate con­tent that can be pre­sented in dif­fer­ent ways (for exam­ple spo­ken aloud, sim­pler lay­out, etc.) with­out los­ing infor­ma­tion or structure

Draft Guide­line 1.3 of the Web Con­tent Acces­si­bil­ity Guide­lines 2.0 dis­cusses the impor­tance of mak­ing infor­ma­tion avail­able in a form that can be per­ceived by the user– either directly or through an assis­tive tech­nol­ogy. For exam­ple, if a site uses an image to con­vey mean­ing, then the alt text should be present so that it can be seen (in a text-only envi­ron­ment), heard (by a screen reader) or even felt (through a refre­sh­able braille dis­play). This per­tains to both pre­sen­ta­tion and structure.

The tech­nolo­gies men­tioned above– text-only browsers, screen read­ers and elec­tronic braille– all do a good job at pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion to the appro­pri­ate audi­ence. How­ever, what about users with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties? Text read aloud may be help­ful in some sit­u­a­tions, but what about a graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of con­tent? There are already some efforts in this area with the Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide sym­bol sup­ported browser that claims to be able to rep­re­sent over 29,000 words with sym­bols and while I applaud their efforts, with a Windows-only, pro­pri­etary, subscription-based prod­uct, I doubt there will be any wide­spread adop­tion in the near future.

Per­haps one day there will be an open sys­tem that will facil­i­tate the col­lec­tion and use of sym­bols in every­day tools. Until then, here are some other project/ideas that are explor­ing the use of symbols:

• Merriam-Webster Visual Dic­tio­nary
  Over 6,000 images orga­nized hier­ar­chi­cally under 15 major themes
  
• Zlango Over 200 icons divided into 8 major cat­e­gories devel­oped for use on mobile devices. Read Romeo and Juliet in Zlango speak.
  
• sosym­bol There isn’t a lot of infor­ma­tion on this site, but they do have a col­lec­tion of stan­dard­ized icons and you can con­tribute your own using their online sym­bol cre­ator after you have logged in.
  
• Icon­finder Icon search engine
• Sym­bol Signs from the AIGA 50 freely avail­able passenger/pedestrian symbols.
• Symbols.com Sim­ple sym­bols for a num­ber of words.

Using Symbols to Access the Web

From the AT Tech­NET @ VCU: Assis­tive Tech­nol­ogy Blog, a link to Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide, the first symbol-supported web browser. Every­thing hap­pens in the browser where you can view pages in nor­mal view, with plain text or using sym­bols. Their icon library con­tains over 29,000 words. It also reads any text that you highlight.

Is this type of tech­nol­ogy the answer for some users with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties? What about a poten­tial user who can’t access your mate­r­ial even when you have gone great lengths to sim­plify your writ­ing. Also, while indi­vid­ual sites may pro­vide their own visual ele­ments to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent ideas, is their value is hav­ing a stan­dard set of icons? Per­haps the ideas would be to allow users to asso­ciate sym­bols with the words them­selves, or at least have the option to over­ride the default icon.

Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide is pro­vided on a sub­scrip­tion model and is PC-only (30-day demo available).

Does it work with any site? Prob­a­bly not, from their guidelines:

While Web­wide inter­prets clear, well-written HTML; some lay­outs and styles will be more effec­tive than oth­ers. To this end, we will be pro­duc­ing guide­lines for web design­ers who would like to make their infor­ma­tion acces­si­ble through Webwide.

Hope­fully their guide­lines are in line with already estab­lished web stan­dards and guidelines.

Evaluating Websites for Accessibility with Firefox

From the intro to the arti­cle:

Patrick H. Lauke out­lines how Mozilla Fire­fox can be used in con­junc­tion with the Web Devel­oper Tool­bar to carry out a pre­lim­i­nary acces­si­bil­ity review

Bowser toolbars redux

• Web Devel­oper Extension
• Acces­si­bil­ity Exten­sions for Mozilla
• Fangs: The Fire­fox Screen Reader Emu­la­tor Extension
• Shark­ware, JAWS Screen Reader Adap­ta­tion for Mozilla Firefox

All of these are for Fire­fox, of course. Go nuts with these and let us all know what works and what doesn’t.

Browsers as test platforms

There is an inter­est­ing arti­cle from accross the pond about how to use browsers to develop and debug html struc­ture, javascript, CSS etc. Read it and dis­cuss below.

Firefox is here!

I’ve used Fire­fox as my pri­mary browser for devel­op­ment for the past year and it has per­formed great. I highly rec­om­mend it for you and your orga­ni­za­tion. From mozilla.org:

The wait is over. Fire­fox 1.0 empow­ers you to browse faster, more safely and more effi­ciently than with any other browser. Join more than 8 mil­lion oth­ers and make the switch today � Fire­fox imports your Favorites, set­tings and other infor­ma­tion, so you have noth­ing to lose.