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BrailleNote and web accessibility

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From: Randall Pope
Date: Mar 4, 2009 10:00AM

Hi all,

I got a question about BrailleNote, a notetaker device from Humanware. From
the complaint I received, many of these users cannot access websites that
contain table layout and other web technology for some reason. Do we need to
slow down and wait for the BrailleNote technology to catch up before going
on with the Web 2.0 technology? Or should we go move on to newer web
technology? This has been on my mind for quite sometimes and trying to
figure the best direction to take.

With Warm Regards,
Randall "Randy" Pope
American Association of the Deaf-Blind
Website: http://www.aadb.org

301 495-4402 VP/TTY
301 495-4403 Voice
301 495-4404 Fax
AIM: RandyAADB

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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 10:30 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] When will developers be able to rely on ARIA?

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Despain, Dallas wrote:
> But when will we be able to release such technology with confidence that
users will reap the benefits?

Now! You lose nothing by implementing it now. If site visitors are
using an older screen reader or browser that does not utilize ARIA,
they don't get the enhanced accessibility. While you should do what
you can to make it accessible without ARIA, if you implement ARIA you
can only make things better for those that have compatible
technologies.

Based on our screen reader survey results, it appears that most screen
reader users have relatively up-to-date browsers and screen readers.
I'd say the vast majority of them have ARIA compatible user agents
now. An IE8 release with proper ARIA support will only increase
adoption.

Jared Smith
WebAIM