Further Accessibility News
Following my article Who Wins the Accessibility Election? I received a call today from David Reynolds who is blind and it was enlightening to talk with him.
David made it very clear that the internet was vital for people with sight impairment as they can rely on it totally. Although David can scan written material so that it can be read to him, this takes time and he much prefers to go straight onto the internet to find what he wants however he encounters continual problems as badly coded websites cause errors with the screen reader and poorly set out pages mean that he cannot quickly scan the page using keyboard short-cuts.
David said that all websites need;
1. W3C valid coding, and
2. headings regularly down the page indicating the content of the paragraph so that by using shortcut keys he can jump from header to header to find the part he wants instead of having to wait for the screen reader to read all the way through the page.
David had read my report and spent a couple of hours checking all my findings and he could confirm the points I made. In addition he also had some fun checking out this website and our main site and we were fully accessible to him, so many thanks for that David.
Gill Keeble
Related posts:
- Making Accessible Websites
- Who Wins the Accessibility Election?
- Accessibility – Text Colour
- Blindness and The Internet = Independence
- Summary- Accessibility Election
Tags: accessibility, conservative, labour, Liberal Democrat, political party websites, screen reader