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From: DONALD WONNELL
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 1:08PM
Subject: Physically Challenged Web Page Access
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To try to make webpages useable for motor / physically challenged
persons, the only available financially viable method appears to be to
1) write instructions to familiarize a person with paths to get to
specific resources such as menus and useful data, and
2) assign numbers to actuate keys, with programming necessary to
actuate the keys from numbers that are typed in. Appears a browser like
iE comes up, the program to actuate keys is pulled up, then the person
can use primarily tab and enter to access web pages.

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 Wonnell
Labor Market Analyst - NW Ohio
Ohio Dept. of Job & Family Services / WFD / LMI

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 1:16PM
Subject: RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access
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>1) write instructions to familiarize a person with paths to
>> get to specific resources such as menus and useful data, and
>> 2) assign numbers to actuate keys, with programming necessary
>> to actuate the keys from numbers that are typed in. Appears
>> a browser like iE comes up, the program to actuate keys is
>> pulled up, then the person can use primarily tab and enter to
>> access web pages.


Good, clean, accessible, semantic markup should be completely navigable with
a variety of input devices without the need to create your own keyboard
shortcuts.

Are you referring to a specific page that we could look at?

-Darrel

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 1:27PM
Subject: RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access
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On 5/4/05, DONALD WONNELL < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

>> To try to make webpages useable for motor / physically challenged
>> persons, the only available financially viable method appears to be to
>> 1) write instructions to familiarize a person with paths to get to
>> specific resources such as menus and useful data, and
>> 2) assign numbers to actuate keys, with programming necessary to
>> actuate the keys from numbers that are typed in. Appears a browser like
>> iE comes up, the program to actuate keys is pulled up, then the person
>> can use primarily tab and enter to access web pages.
>>
>> 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?


Do you need us in that discussion?

The things you can do as a designer is to make sure none of your web
site elements are dependent on a mouse (this rules out CSS only
dropdown menus, for example), ensure a logical tab order and add
accesskeys to reach the different sections of the site, and there is a
standard for that: http://www.clagnut.com/blog/193/

You should also add skip navigation to avoid repetitive page sections,
and that is about all you can do.

You can get funky and use DHTML to add more interactivity, but chances
are you actually hijack shortcuts used by assisstive technology and
disturbing use patterns that you need to explain to the users.




-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 2:32PM
Subject: RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access
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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 ADDRESS 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)

From: Glenda
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 4:56PM
Subject: RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access
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In response to John's comment on voice recognition - of course, it depends
on the mobility impairment. I have limited hand function, but there is no
way I can use voice recognition because my speech sucks too. Instead, I use
a joystick and a word prediction /completion software program, of which some
keyboard shortcuts overlap with IE shortcuts -- another strike against using
accesskeys. For me as a mobility impaired user, about the only real problem
I have is if links are tiny or close together, I sometimes hit the wrong
one, or if links move like with those darn fly out menus. If that helps
anyone...

Cheers,
Glenda