Marriott is working with the American Federation for the Blind to strive for a more accessible web experience.

They are joining the AFB’s Accessibility Assurance Program and committing to working directly with disabled consumers to collaboratively make Marriott.com as accessible as possible.

By participating in this program, Marriott is making these three commitments:

1. We will enable consumers with disabilities to use our web site(s) by applying accessible design standards and by providing accessibility-specific “help” features (FAQs, tips, tricks, techniques, etc.).
2. We will enable consumers with disabilities to report website accessibility problems they encounter and will make reasonable efforts to respond to and/or remediate any such problems identified in a timely manner.
3. We will provide opportunities for consumers with disabilities to influence the accessible design of future website enhancements and upgrades.

(Source: Accessibility Assurance Program)

Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International, explains this new relationship and Marriott’s commitment to greater accessibility on his blog, Marriott on the Move.

This is a great example of an organization proactively tackling the subject of web accessibility. It’ll be interesting to watch for the fruits of this relationship.

Related Links:

• Marriott.com
• AFB Consulting
• Marriott on the Move

Tags: Accessibility Assurance Program, AFB, American Federation for the Blind, marriott

In a fascinating nexus of accessibility and social media right here in the state of Wisconsin, a researcher posted a message on Twitter using a brain-computer interface system — basically by thought.

Adam Wilson, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison researching biomedical engineering, posted the message “using EEG to send tweet” by using technology in which the letters of the alphabet flashed individually on a screen, and the computer was able to gauge brain activity, selecting the desired letter when brain responds to it flashing.

Such technology has a long road to go before being mainstream, but its successful test on an Internet application opens up tremendous potential in enabling those whose bodies are inoperable to communicate and interact online.

Read more and watch a video here:

• Researcher use brain interface to post to Twitter (WTN News)

Tags: als, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, brain-computer interface system, eeg, twitter, university of wisconsin-madison, uw

It’s one thing to summarize screen reader technology in a few sentences. It’s entirely more meaningful to watch one in action.

Victor Tsaran, an accessibility engineer at Yahoo, talks about and demonstrates how a blind user navigates their computer via a screen reader. It’s a revealing look into an experience of which most of us fully-sighted people have no frame of reference.

Of course, it should be noted that there is no captioning or text version of this video, for those with hearing disabilities.

Tags: assistive technology, screen readers, visually impaired

Social media juggernaut Facebook, which boasted reaching 200 million users this week, has been working with the American Foundation for the Blind, and announced some strides towards improving the accessibility of the site, particularly for the visually impaired.

Carl Augusto, President and CEO of AFB, posted a lengthy entry on the Facebook Blog, sharing how he, as a blind person, initially had troubles utilizing Facebook when first visiting.

Two years ago, AFB began discussing with Facebook ways to make the social media site more accessible to blind users. Facebook is working on enhancements, and has published an informational page called Making Facebook Accessible for Everyone.

Among the features highlighted on that page are:

• Audio alternatives to CAPTCHA, which is the technology you see on some websites that requires you to enter letters from a distorted display that a human can decipher but a computer script or automation cannot.
  
• Straight HTML version of the site (specifically, the mobile version) that is friendlier to screen readers.
• Non-Javascript version of Facebook Gift Shop, which addresses a standing frustration with the inaccessibility of that locale
• Ability to use Facebook Chat via screen reader.
• Shortcut keys to key sections of the Facebook, listed out by browser

Tags: american foundation for the blind, assistive technology, carl augusto, facebook, screen readers, Social Media

As I covered in Web Accessibility 101: Assistive Technologies, the text browser Lynx is particularly useful for stripping down a web site to its raw, GUI-less nature.

Why is this useful? Well, someone with a motor skill disability that prevents them from effectively using a mouse can navigate a website in Lynx solely by keyboard. Also, blind web surfers using certain refreshable Braille displays can use Lynx as their browser. There are others – disabled or not – who may have connection or hardware limitations that make graphical web browsing slow or just impractical.

Lynx strips out all graphical elements as well as JavaScript, leaving just the raw text, links and alt tags. As such, depending on the complexity or manner by which a site was constructed, a user surfing the web this way may be able to get around, or may be hopelessly barred from getting where they are trying to go.

I recently checked out my site in Lynx and was pleased to see that, overall, one can get around effectively via the arrow keys. I can’t take too much credit for that, given I’m using WordPress as the guts of this blog, but it’s at least another area of accessibility where I can set my mind at ease.

If you’re a Mac user like me, you can download Lynx right from Apple’s website. Once you install it, you can fire up Terminal, type in “lynx” and surf the web.

Otherwise, check out the Lynx site for more information.

Tags: apple, assistive technology, braille, internet software consortium, lynx, terminal