I’m downright appalled at how much I’ve neglected this blog in the past month. The fact of the matter is that work demands, among other things, contributed to theaccessibility.com taking a hiatus.

Nevertheless, that still doesn’t make me feel good about disrupting what was becoming a good blogging rhythm. And we all know that frequency of quality posting is key to any successful blog.

This is a short blog post to get back into the swing of things.

Last week, Apple released iPhone OS 3.1. There are some nice features in the release, but one in particular adds a nice little accessibility win.

The upgrade makes it easier to activate the accessibility features on your iPhone. By clicking the Home button three times, you can toggle on VoiceOver, Toggle White on Black, and Ask.

While arguably a minor enhancement, anything that makes accessibility features easier to get to is admirable. As I’ve said before, Apple seems to genuinely take accessibility seriously, as they continue to evolve their products such as the iPhone, Snow Leopard and now the mobile OS. Are they perfect? Of course not. But at least there is continual progress.

Tags: apple, iphone, mobile

In “Accessibility News: Web Accessibility in the Spotlight in India”, we talked about how web accessibility is a growing global issue.

Malaysia offers another example of this. The Malaysian Association for the Blind has announced plans to improve the user experience of all the nation’s web sites, to ensure that they are more usable for visually impaired visitors.

They plan to conduct consultative services and advise both government and private web developers on what they can do to better adhere to Web Accessibility Initiative standards.

A team of three certified trainers in web accessibility will shoulder this effort.

Surely, there is a lot of ground to cover in this lofty goal, particularly for a small team. We’ll have to watch over time how this initiative fares, and if the visually impaired in Malaysia gradually find their web offerings more and more usable.

Source Article:
Helping the blind get connected on The Star Online

Tags: blindness, MAB, malaysia, Malaysian Association for the Blind, Web Accessibility Initiative, World Wide Web Consortium

I’ve admitted numerous times that I’m an Apple devotee. So maybe I’m biased when I laud their efforts in the accessibility realm. However – and perhaps it’s in part because they have always done a good job “getting it” when it comes to creating software and hardware that are both well-designed and easy to use – they seem to at the very least take accessibility seriously and continue adding or bolstering accessibility features in their products with each release.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is slated for a September 2009 release. As with most of their products, they have an accessibility features page for Snow Leopard and the OS X platform in general.

Among the heralded Snow Leopard accessibility enhancements:

• More robustness to the built-in VoiceOver capabilities, particularly for web browsing
• Major enhancements to their trackpad – which will represent the active window, enabling users to hear what item they hover over, as well as to discern and navigate through multiple items on the screen through finger movements
• Support for over 40 plug-in Braille displays
• The rotor capability – an enhanced capability of the trackpad to enable users to use a “dial” motion for cycling through text word or character at a time, and also to navigate a web page by common items, such as headers, links and imagery
• Technology that to a degree overcomes sites’ accessibility shortcomings by assigning “auto web spots” denoting important elements of the site. One can, for example, assign certain areas of a regularly-frequented site so that, in the future, VoiceOver can skip right to those elements first.
• VoiceOver Commanders – a new enhancement to the VoiceOver admin utility that allows for greater automated actions and keyboard shortcuts

Many of these features, on the surface, promise to offer greater ease of use, particularly for the visually-disabled — from all-around usage of your Mac to web surfing specifically. How effective they are, of course, remains to be seen when Snow Leopard arrives. Also, with just about all the enhancements directed towards the visually-disabled, how will Snow Leopard work for those with other disabilities, such as limitations of motor skills and hearing problems?

Tags: apple, braille, mac os x, snow leopard, VoiceOver

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