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Re: Accessible Maps - Best Practices

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From: Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]
Date: May 5, 2016 7:14AM

As a speech recognition software (Dragon NaturallySpeaking), imitating the mouse and keyboard are extremely difficult when encountering interactive maps. Yes, I can see a map visually but if I want to zoom in or select specific building or location on a map to then navigate to that specific information, I'm up a creak. It MIGHT be that the building, for instance, is a clickable icon on the map, but what is the command for it? Do I need to know what the alt-text is in order to tell Dragon "Click Main Building" or "Click Residence Hall A"? if there is no legend or glossary, which has to map to the alt-text and to the computer/web command line, I would have to spend all day guessing what the label for each location is. Similarly, in online training, I've tried "Click Next" to go from one screen to another, because the arrow on-screen was visually labeled Next; turns out that the code was Forward - I had to somehow know to tell Dragon "Click Forward".

Accessibility - and assistive technology - is not just about vision loss.


Gary M. Morin, Program Analyst
NIH Office of the Chief Information Officer

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