WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: web accessibility retrofitting service

for

From: Phil Teare
Date: Mar 24, 2008 10:50AM

It keeps looking more and more like you need a rewrite and not a retrofit
then.

By self voicing I mean like this (literally no work done here, just dumped
it into our test system):
https://www.talklets-secure.com/vbrowser2/browse.php?u=%3A%2F%2Fncsu.edu%2Fcurrent-students%2Findex.php&b=188

(the voice can of course be US)

Simply put, the benefits of self voicing through something like V Browser
are that you can make something that is not accessible, accessible, without
rewriting the actual base system. Effectively making the Assistive
Technology (which would be web based) do the hard work of presenting an
accessible interface. Rather than making the legacy system itself accessible
to any and every Assistive Technology (like JAWS etc).

Pros:
little to no work your end
Accessible from most online machines, even if AT not installed on them (this
is pretty cool, especially for educational establishments and public
services)

Cons:
latency (you'll need a good connection, or it'll be jittery), but hosting on
your servers greatly reduces this issue.
some users are used to their AT and won't want to change to a web based
system

Thinking about it, it sounds like you want something you just buy in a
box that fixes what you have. There have been attempts at this, but most,
sadly have been fairly disappointing, and for fairly unavoidable reasons.

Does that make sense?

Best
Phil

--
Phil Teare,
CTO & Chief Architect,
http://www.talklets.com from Textic Ltd.
(44) [0] 208 4452871