Blog
November 30, 2007
Testing Flash for Accessibility
Filed under: Flash — Shilpi Kapoor @ 11:55 amWhen it comes to flash testing, due to the substantial changes happening in the movie there is some sort of uncertainty in the results. After testing the same application several times, you will come to know that the results are varying in certain parameters. Then starts the process of applying alternatives or patching those areas to get consistent results.
In order to test flash with a screen reader, we need to publish the movie in the browser environment (Internet Explorer is best with flash). The knowledge of screen readers is must if developers are planning to test the application, which I strongly believe they should do. It makes our lives so much easy if we on our own can carry out basic test of things we have made, this will reduce more than 50% of the rework caused due to the changes suggested by actual users after testing our stuff. However, always remember, users i.e. people with disabilities will have the final say after testing the flash content. We should start making it a habit of testing a small part as we develop it, so that we find the errors quickly and can fix them immediately.
Common misconception amongst people is that implementing accessibility means making content accessible to the screen readers only, which is NOT true. Testing for accessibility involves much more… checking for the color blind users, keyboard users, learning disabled etc.
So the bottom line is “Develop and test flash keeping all users including people with disabilities in mind”.
peace, veiky
No CommentsNovember 23, 2007
World Bank study: Persons with Disabilities (PWD) in India are left behind while the economy booms.
Filed under: General — Priti Rohra @ 2:58 pmThe World Bank study released on 20th November 2007 reveals a very sad story about 40 to 80 million disabled in India. Indian economy is making rapid growth but the disabled are left behind and are not able to enjoy the same benefits as other citizens.
In India, illiteracy, unemployment and poverty is high amongst persons with disabilities as compared to persons without disabilities.
As per the study, one in every 12 households has a member with some sort of disability. Often disability is attributed to ‘sins’ of the individual and their family members. This depicts a negative attitude of the society towards PWD and often results in their exclusion from the society.
Read more on World Bank study: Persons with Disabilities (PWD) in India are left behind while the economy booms.
November 21, 2007
Looking for an accessible website in India – Booking my trip Online using cleartrip.com
Filed under: Accessibility Review of Indian Websites — Priti Rohra @ 4:36 pmI was very excited, when I visited the website cleartrip.com to book my flight and hotel tickets online. I am a screen reader user and use JAWS to access the internet. By pressing “Insert + F5” JAWS read names for all the form fields for me. This is the first Indian site which has provided names for most of the elements so decided to blog about it.
Well I haven’t used different parts of the site but am surely happy with the main page (http://www.cleartrip.com/). Before writing the blog I tried to use the page and find out how effectively I can access the same. Being an Accessibility Tester I am not going in to the technicalities of things but would like to state the view point of a user.
Read more on Looking for an accessible website in India – Booking my trip Online using cleartrip.com
My disability perspective – mobility impairment
Filed under: General — Shilpi Kapoor @ 2:32 pmAfter visual impairment, let’s move to the next disability, let us discuss mobility impairment.
Most people assume mobility impaired is someone on a wheelchair. On second thoughts most people associate disability with wheelchair users.
Just imagine the disability symbol. Isn’t that a wheechair user? Let us look beyond this.
Read more on My disability perspective – mobility impairment
November 13, 2007
Register now for Techshare India: First Accessibility Conference and Exhibition!!
Filed under: General — Priti Rohra @ 10:40 amTechshare India, 2008 – Breaking the Barriers is the first accessibility conference and exhibition in India that will highlight the needs of people with disabilities and create awareness about accessibility. It will showcase the role of technology in the lives of people with disabilities, looking not just at web accessibility but also software accessibility, and accessibility on the move for mobiles and PDAs. In addition, Techshare India will also highlight the importance of implementing accessibility standards and complying with different accessibility laws.
Techshare offers workshops and presentations. In addition, it provides an opportunity to meet with other professionals working in this area from all over the world as well as browse the exhibition space. Techshare India also provides you with an opportunity to experience people with disabilities working with assistive technology in the first ever Experiential Lab at Techshare India.
Registrations are now open for the Techshare India 2008 conference which will be held on 4th & 5th February 2008 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India.
Early Bird registration offer is available until 30th November 2007!
To find out information about registration fees, booking process and to register online, visit the Conference Registration page.
No CommentsNovember 12, 2007
Accessibility in Captivate
Filed under: Captivate — Shilpi Kapoor @ 6:48 pmI wanted to show you a demo of Accessible Captivate. I’ve created a small example and tried making it accessible for screen reader users. I’ve used JAWS 7.0 for testing.
Captivate offers few accessibility options like adding an accessible description to the entire movie, to individual slides, providing captions for the movies etc…
I haven’t touched captioning in this demo, will keep it aside for the later posts. In this demo, I’ve used other features which I’ve mentioned above. I’ve paused each slide at the beginning so that the screen reader users can go through the accessible description provided for the slide. Once they are done with the description they can go ahead by clicking the button mentioned in the description.
I opted to use this method for making the captivate movie accessible for screen reader users. You can come up with some other ideas. So, let me know your thoughts on the sample and it would be great to hear your ideas on Accessibility in Captivate.
You can find the demo at: Accessible Captivate Demo.
peace, veiky
No CommentsNovember 5, 2007
My disability perspective – Visual impairment
Filed under: General — Shilpi Kapoor @ 2:58 pmMost people ask me, why I started a company working in the area of accessibility. The obvious answer is making website/products usable by people with disabilities. But the instant reaction of most organizations is that my target audience is not disabled. So who does BarrierBreak Technologies work for?
I tell everyone the same thing. So I decided to blog about it. Let me write my first blog, on what according to me are the different types of disabilities.
Disabilities include people who have some sensory or physical impairment such as hearing impaired, visually impaired, mobility impaired, and learning impaired.
In this blog, let’s talk about visual impairment.
Who are visually impaired? Is it only the totally blind?
Read more on My disability perspective – Visual impairment
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