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RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access

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From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: May 4, 2005 2:32PM

DONALD WONNELL wrote:

>> To try to make webpages useable for motor / physically challenged
>> persons, the only available financially viable method appears to be to


Donald, can you more fully define "financially viable"? Are you meaning
free, or simply cost effective/affordable?

In my limited experience with mobility impaired users, they usually employed
a voice recognition software package (Dragon Dictate/Naturally Speaking or
IBM ViaVoice) to speak keyboard commands: mouse up, mouse down, mouse click,
etc. While it took some practice to work with the software (and the voice
recognition software needs to "learn" the users voice/speech patterns), it
was an effective and practical way of navigating web content. A quick
Google tells me that Dragon Naturally Speaking can be purchased for as
little as $79.95 (http://tinyurl.com/d65k4)

For more serious "computing" power, companies such as QualiLife offer a
suite of tools which address various types of impairments and disabilities
(www.qualilife.com), and I know that currently the Canadian division of the
company is exploring institutional licensing options which make their
software suite quite "viable". Their suite includes virtual keyboards
(QualiKey), virtual mouse (QualiClick), and software which turns a standard
web-cam into a virtual mouse (QualiEye). (Note: time limited evaluation
copies of these tools are available at their website for download)


>>
>> This is a pick and shovel way to do it, but seems necessary. VR can
>> help, however it appears the above is necessary to make the
>> process more
>> bearable. Any good alternatives?
>>


Don,
Ensure that your site is logically and semantically structured. It is a
slippery slope to start authoring an "accessible" web site for specifically
one user-group, as you may end up creating access issues for another group.
Some hints and tips for mobility impaired users however would include
ensuring that hot spots (be they hyperlink text, images, image-maps areas,
etc.) be large enough so that assistive tech applications can actually
navigate to them. Tools like Dragon Dictate and QualiEye, while very good
and a boon to mobility impaired users, lack the "fine motor control" require
to click on small links - a good analogy is young children, who also lack
fine motor skills. As a general rule of thumb (based upon previous, but
non-scientific research) clickable images should be at least 16 px square
(or larger), text links should have at least 4 - 6 letters in them; perhaps
instead of linking just one word, link a phrase instead.

If there is a specific "issue" you are grappling with, perhaps a more
detailed explanation with possibly a URL to look at would be helpful.

HTH

JF
--
John Foliot <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)