Before we discuss Accessible Technology it is a good idea to look at the word Technology and what it means. The word Technology means tool. A device or process that helps someone accomplish a task. When a carpenter uses a hammer to drive a nail into a board or a saw to cut a piece of wood, they are using technology.
The time we live in dictates what accessible technology or tools of the day used look like. In the early part of the 20th century someone who was blind or visually impaired might use tactile devices like a slate and stylus for writing braille, a braille writer for typing braille or magnifying glasses to enlarge images. The earliest talking book player was a phonograph record player with recordings of people reading books. This was the accessible technology of that era was mainly mechanical and required manual processes to accomplish tasks.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and you get a new definition of accessible technology that encompasses many more things, such as digital devices like computers, smartphones, smart speakers and artificial intelligence. The new term used for this kind of technology accessibility in the digital age is called Adaptive Technology, because the technology more than assists someone, it now helps them adapt to things.
A new and more up to date term used for Accessible Technology is really what we call Adaptive Technology. This is part a new era of use for what is now known as Digital Accessibility. Digital Accessibility encompasses many more concepts beyond physical devices. It's a means for all people to interact in a fair and equal way with online resources, the Internet, social media and the physical computer hardware used with digital technology. It's the place where all of these tools or technology converge. When you have digital accessibility you have a level playing field for all.
The Curb Cut Effect is seen when accessibility updates are put into effect for one group but used by others for other purposes than originally intended. It's easy to understand how this works with wheelchair ramps to buildings being used by delivery people or automatic opening doors are used by people with their hand full to open doors. But beyond this, the Curb Cut Effect happens when without hearing impairment used closed caption to read the words for dialogue in television programs or in films. When a someone just prefers larger text on their computer monitor or when someone uses Siri on their iPhone or Google Assistant on their Android device to compose or type text messages and emails. All developed for some group of people with some kind of impairment and all used by other groups, maybe for similar or different reasons. The Curb Cut Effect being adopted for digital technology illustrates how digital accessibility is good for everyone.
In this section we'll look at ways to make what you provide online more accessible. Whether it's your website, online public access catalog, social media accounts or any online resources you offer, having an accessible online presence means they are readily available and anyone can use them regardless of how they access them based on their ability. To help you think about accessibility in the online realm, we first will look at a basic understanding of the standards that make something online accessible, by the authority on online accessibility, the WC3 Web Accessibility Initiative or WAI.
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has developed standards and support materials to help anyone who creates and publishes online content understand and implement accessibility. The WAI Web Content Accessibility Guides, also known as WCAG, are broken down here in very basic steps just so you can better understand how to make your content accessible. The complete more comprehensive WCAG Guide is available online from - https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/.
In this basic overview, we will just look at the WCAG basic overall concept steps. Each definition has an example of what is considered accessible to help better illustrate the meaning:
Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language. Examples:
Alternative forms of CAPTCHA (if necessary) using output modes for different types of sensory perception are provided
Descriptive labels for audio or video player controls
Decorative images can be ignored by assistive technology
Provide accessible alternatives for time-based media. This is a way to provide information in a synchronized media presentation. Examples:
Providing a transcript of dialogue presented.
Closed Captioning of dialogue that is synchronized with audio presented
Distinguishable - Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background. Individuals with visual and hearing disabilities have much greater difficulty separating foreground and background information. Visually this means making sure that information presented on top of a background contrasts sufficiently with the background. Audibly this means making sure that foreground sounds are sufficiently louder than the background sounds. Examples:
Using readable fonts
Making sure any text in images of text is at least 14 points and has good contrast
Providing a highly visible highlighting mechanism for links or controls when they receive keyboard focus
WCAG uses a rating system to determine how close each of these 13 facets meets the top level of accessibility, designated by ratings of A, AA and AAA:
The WCAG are the main guidelines to follow. They are easier to implement from the beginning, but if you want to make some quick improvements that follow some of WCAG, here are things you can do right now to make the online experience, whether it's your library's website, online public access catalog (OPAC), online documentation or social media more accessible:
Creating Captions and Transcripts - You can use automated tools to generate transcripts and captions. One free alternative is to use captioning in YouTube and exporting a text version. Then performing some cleanup. Another way is to pay for software, like Adobe Premier Pro or Otter.ai and have it help you create your transcript and captions. A third way, If at all possible, for scripted content, is to ask for a copy of the script to use for transcripts.
Making text accessible should be the goal. This goal is often not met because optimizing legibility and readability don’t necessarily go all the way towards making text accessible. Both legibility and readability are important for accessibility. But they are two independent facets of the same goal and you should strive for both:
Legibility is the measure of how distinguishable individual characters and words are to the eye of the reader.
Readability is the measure of how easy it is to read the text overall.
One thing that will help is choosing an easy to read font and making it an appropriate size for all. When selecting a typeface—especially a sans serif—it’s useful to assess the similarities or differences between the uppercase “L,” lowercase “l,” and numeral “1” characters because these letters and numbers look very similar.
Structure of content in important for readability and accessibility. On the web that means ensuring that the HTML is marked up with the most appropriate elements, headings have the right level (h1, h2, etc.), and that the hierarchy looks as expected in the web browser before we do anything else.
Using headings and other elements for semantic and well structured HTML, and not for style, means your content is readable by adaptive technologies. A screen reader, one type of adaptive technology that allows text to be dictated to users with visual or cognitive impairments, such as Apple’s VoiceOver on Apple or Freedom Scientific’s JAWS for Windows, uses semantic HTML to let the reader have critical information about structure that they cannot see visually. Many text-to-speech tools, such as Microsoft Immersive Reader and Snap & Read, provide visual and audio supports together by either a braille display or reading text aloud. They rely on semantic HTML to determine how things are interpreted to the user.
The intention of social media posting is to have a quick way to share thoughts and other information to a connected group of people. In the effort to foster posting quickly, social media interfaces have generally been built around speed and timeliness more than accessibility.
It may surprise many that visually impaired, hearing impaired or mobility impaired individuals are on social media based on how we navigate these plaforms. From an accessibility perspective, social media sites are web content, so the same rules apply as websites, like the use of alt-text, good color contrast, captions for videos and allowing users to navigate posts using their keyboard.
Fortunately developers on many of these platforms have begun to build tools to aid in making posts accessible. These are positive steps.
Even with modern automated tools that can help do much of the work, the best way still of ensuring your content is accessible is taking a little bit of extra time and care in constructing your posts to make them a more meaningful experience for all of your users.
One easy way right now that you can make this experience more accessible is using CamelCase for Hashtags. CamelCase allows screen readers or screen magnifiers to read the words connected in the hashtag as separate words, instead of as a block. This also makes it easier for everyone to read your hash tags at a quick glance and know them quickly.
As mentioned previously, Alternate text or Alt-text provides a way to describe images to those who can't see it. The minimum requirement of alt-text is inserting some kind of wording to describe what is being displayed. Many modern software programs use artificial intelligence to automatically generate alt-text based what might be there, using shape and pattern recognition. This is a best guess image on-the-fly based description. This method will technically meet the requirement, because some words have been placed with image to let someone know something about an image being present and what it may contain.
No discussion of Alt-Text is complete without first understanding that there are essentially two different types of Alt-Text that can be used based on the situation and type of image being used:
Generally which type is used has to do with the context of the image and how it's being the used. Why the image is present? A good illustration of how context of images plays a part in whether they are functional or descriptive is provided by WebAim in the article Alternative Text - Context is Everything.
Leaving description to something automatically generated versus a human provided description is often the difference between just knowing something is there and experiencing it.
Alt-Text created thoughtfully and carefully can make it a very rich experience for someone who can't see the image. Often going beyond the very bland and simple description of a photo or picture.It can be something that gives a person a greater sense of what’s in the photo or picture. Automatically generated alt-text has a hard time picking up the theme of a photo or the nuances of a picture. Think about the reason why you use photos and pictures on a webpage. Isn't it's purpose to offer an extra piece of description or detail, beyond words expressed, about what the page offers.
“If anyone ever tells you alt text isn’t important, show them @NASA’s alt-text for the #WebbSpaceTelescope images,” Kate Meyers Emery tweeted. “They are able to convey the wonders and beauty of these in words, making these breathtaking views accessible.” This quote is from a Washington Post article about the James Webb Telescope. The photos sent back to Earth from the telescope were a marvel. The photos themselves are awesome, but it’s the descriptions that have accompanied them that people are also marveling on.
This is where alt-text can mean the difference in just knowing something is there and experiencing it. One immediate impact you can have right now is taking time and care to work on making your alt-text descriptions rich and vibrant.
Going back to the article, here is the auto generated alt-text - "A picture containing star, mountain, outdoor object."
The one created by the group of scientists, “The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion,” reads one. “Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is bluish and has wispy translucent cloudlike streaks rising from the nebula below.”
It’s easy to look past this feature for every day descriptions, but it make all the difference to some one who can't see it.
The conversations that the NASA photos have encouraged are important, because they show how with a little bit of time and thought alt-text can be so much more than a requirement and become a way to bring more people into an experience.
In most cases, an image on a web page or online resource, won't require more than an Alt-Text description of what is there. It is considered a best practice to keep alt-text brief and concise, no more than 140 characters. Hand-in-hand with the concept of alt-text that offers more of an experience to the user, comes the practice of long description of complex images. This is appropriate for complex images that require lots of detail to describe what the image represents. This would be for images that have substantial amounts of information. These are typically detailed graphs, flow charts, organizational charts, illustrations where page text relies on the user understanding the image, and maps showing locations and other patterns.
This is where a two-part approach makes sense:
You can provide the long description itself right below the image, but due to length, to make the page easier to read, you may want to provide a descriptive link to the long description, located on another page, below the image. This allows someone to see the detail in the complex image or choose to skip it and go back to it afterwards.
An older practice has been to use what's called a long description or longdesc attribute as part of an image. This is not recommended because screen readers make it difficult to determine if the image has a longdesc attribute in addition to alt-text.
There really is no way currently to just push a button on a website or online resource and make it accessible. There are companies that offer accessibility consulting that offer a kind of push-button accessibility solution or what are called Website Overlays. These are based on using some kind of code inserted into your website that offers all kinds of accessibility options. The code gets embedded and all of a sudden you have a way to make changes on the fly to correct issues.
Often you will see a kind of symbol of accessibility (the person with arms stretched out in a blue circle), that’s probably indicating some kind of overlay in use. On the surface this seems like a very easy way to implement accessibility and make your website compliant. But in reality it's different.
While these bits of code do offer some extra features and work in the short term, these are kind of a band aid solution.They don’t really fix the issues they just kind of mask them from being there. One very bad outcome is that for anyone with user preferences setup already in their assistive or adaptive technology it will interfere with their online experience.
These “solutions” capitalize on organizations wanting to make their sites as accessible as possible with the least amount of effort. It would be great if there were such a magic solution, but in reality there isn't one. The best "solution" is time and attention to correct issues that exist and make the experience better for all.
In this section we talk about how to make the personal devices we carry around and the technology implemented around us by others to automate things more accessible.
Assistive and Adaptive Technology refer to any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. Assistive Technology is defined now as manual or analog pieces of hardware that aid people do everyday tasks generally. Adaptive Technology is the updated modern term for this kind of technology that encompasses digital adaptations.
The terms may be used interchangeably and often are to keep terminology consistent and simple. For the purposes of this guide, we will mainly look at Adaptive Technology.
We'll start with more broad implementation of one standardized suite of Adaptive Technology software. Apple employs an Adaptive Technology suite called VoiceOver for both desktop, as part of MacOS, and mobile devices, as part of iOS. VoiceOver has tools that support speech, magnification, braille and transcription services. The mainstream component of VoiceOver is Siri, the voice assistant. Because these Apple Operating Systems, for both desktop computers and mobile devices, are very controlled and standardized, VoiceOver operation is standardized and consistent across desktop computers and mobile devices. The experience for the user is therefore consistent and makes learning to use the software adaptations fairly easy. The actions across devices are the same and a user who has used one device in the family can pick up other ones and understand how to find the adaptations and how to use them. This is one of the main reasons why a majority of mobile Adaptive Technology users choose Apple products. They are easy to understand, easy to learn and are consistent in how they work. To access VoiceOver on an iOS device go to Settings, scroll down to Accessibility and then turn on VoiceOver. This will activate the Adaptive Technology in the device. Once you have VoiceOver turned on, you navigate around each feature using gestures made with finger motions. It is important to pay attention because once you turn it on you will want to be able to turn it off if you don't intend to continue using it on your own device. Here is a handy guide for gestures that can be used as a handout to teach staff how to navigate a mobile device using VoiceOver.
The Android mobile operating system uses separate apps or software to mix and match what accessible functions are needed by each user to carry out the same functions as the whole suite of VoiceOver. In this way Android is very customizable in offerings. This also means typically Android is a lower cost mobile device option but also means it requires the user to take on more of downloading and installing their Adaptive Technology software. There are many different options for Android and most are free. To keep things more standardized a good focus would be to go with the most used options of TalkBack or Google Voice Assistant for audio navigation. BrailleBack is one of the few Android options for braille support, but Google has updated Android to no longer require it's use for braille devices, as long as you have TalkBack. Other tools would include Voice Recorder to record memos and built in enhancement for Android for high contrast and inverse color text options. To use any of these apps or software you access them by going to the mobile device's main settings, scrolling down to Accessibility and then selecting from the available options what pieces of Adaptive Technology you want to turn on. Once you have them turned on, you navigate around each feature using gestures made with finger motions. It is important to pay attention because once you turn these features on you will want to be able to turn them off if you don't intend to continue using them on your own device. Here is a handy guide for gestures that can be used as a handout to teach staff how to navigate a mobile device using using Android's TalkBack app.
Windows Adaptive Technology is confined to desktop computers only. Because of this there are many options available. Out of the box a Windows computers have a suite of tools called Ease of Access Center. These include Narrator, Windows Speech Recognition, Windows Magnifier, color contrast enhancements and such. These are very useful and workable on workstations in libraries. They offer a basic level of accessibility that makes it possible for them to be usable.
Another avenue for Windows users offers a few more tools in its suite. This would be a paid solution like JAWS for Windows. Because it's feature-rich there is a cost associated with licensing the software. The advantage of having JAWS on a computer is that many users coming to the library will have a familiarity with the software since it is one of the most commonly used pieces of assistive technology software by rehabilitation counselors and such. Often users are trained to use JAWS. In order to use a braille display on a computer, Adaptive Technology, like JAWS must be turned on.
If you can't afford a paid piece of Adaptive Technology software another avenue for Windows is a piece of software called NVDA or Non-Visual Display Access. This is an open-source Adaptive Technology solution developed by two fully blind men in 2006. They went on to found the not-for-profit organization NV Access to support the development of the NVDA screen reader. This is solution that was created to be something useful for those who can't afford higher-end Adaptive Technology solutions like JAWS. NVDA has a suite of tools that help users navigate their computer and all of their accessible hardware, like a braille display. Best of all it's free and it can be portable by installing it to a USB flash drive. This allows a user to move from computer to computer with their settings in tact. Because it's free, it's a good option for those who want to better understand or learn how Adaptive Technology works on a computer.
A Kiosk is a piece of hardware with software built in to allow someone to interact with the device to perform a task or service so they can serve themselves. This is a growing part of technology for all as more and more companies and organizations move to having people serve themselves. To ensure easy self-service, a kiosk usually has a simple user interface that can be used without training or documentation. They are designed for unattended operations by customers to conduct transactions for things like bank ATM devices, fast food self-ordering stations and library self checkout areas. The point of a kiosk is to allow anyone to be able to perform self-service without assistance.
With such a simple concept it is not surprising that industry has many specialty vendors supplying custom built interfaces, that often don't operate consistently the same. This means that there is no one self-service solution that might simplify achieving accessibility.
Free-standing kiosks often prohibit someone from attaching Adaptive Technologies. Many public locations mandate that a user cannot install their preferred screen reader or screen enlargement software, nor bring a keyboard or pointing device. The technical term for this is “self-contained,” or closed functionality. What this means is that many of these devices aren't accessible as installed. So accessibility accommodations are necessary and required for self-service kiosks to be truly self-service.
One easy kiosk accommodations is providing wheelchair access. This can be performed by placing the kiosk in a level place, offering a ramp, as needed based on placement, placing the controls within easy reach and positioning the screen in the middle so it can be seen by the most people using the kiosk.
While ensuring that the physical standards for clearance and maneuvering are met is essential, what is often overlooked is that the digital content or operations must also be accessible and inclusive. A kiosk or ATM owner is responsible for providing accessibility for both the hardware and software.
When people who cannot see or interact with touchscreen displays are left out of the kiosk user experience, they are blocked from the service. Offering some auditory cues allows the kiosk to be more accessible. For example at SLNC-ABLS we have a self-checkout and check-in station that is located at the front of the library by the reception desk, on an adjustable wheelchair height table, has an eye-level screen and offers audio feedback. We primarily serve vision impaired patrons, but we do have a small group of patrons who have mobility issues also. These types of built-in and designed accessibility are useful in our situation.
Two ways you can help people with no or low vision access your self-service library check out stations:
With so many meeting being offered remotely, it's good to have some guidance to help you make your online meetings more accessible.
In response to the needs of staff for library meetings and the public for online events and programs, SLNC-ABLS has created an Accessible Online Meeting Guide section in it's accessibility resources for working page that offers links to how to use the accessibility tools offered for most commonly used online meeting platforms - https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/blind-print-disabled/accessibility-resources/working#online-meetings
Can You See Me is a simple tool that offers guidance on webcam placement to people with limited amounts of useful vision. Based on simple verbal feedback given by the tool, blind people are able to independently position themselves appropriately in relation to their webcam before attending online meetings such that other sighted participants are able to see them.
Constant site maintenance for accessibility is important. To help you make your online content accessible and maintain it, here are some tested and useful tools and resources to help you stay current in accessibility.
Here are some tools for checking your online content so you can make it more accessible:
Here are some good resources to consult for staying current in content accessibility: