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Talking websites improve accessibility and sales

Peter Abrahams By: Peter Abrahams, Practice Leader – Accessibility and Usability, Bloor Research
Published: 21st July 2008
Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Textic Limited, the text to speech solutions specialist, recently announced the commercial launch of Talklets, the Web 2.0 service that ‘voice-enables’ text-based Web content.

So why should you want to voice-enable your web site? The simple answer is that it adds an extra level of accessibility to the site and further ensures compliance with existing and proposed legislation around the world; but that is only part of the answer. Continue reading “Talking websites improve accessibility and sales”

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Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama – The Closed Captioning Page

Screen grab of the Captioned page

Since the blog article was published, we got some feedback and reactions from the web community as well as the Barack Obama camp. They fixed the video caption page. Well… issues of accessibility remain:

  • Why “ghettoize” or create a “digital divide” on the video page, and why can’t the videos be captioned (or have an option to turn on captioning) already? This is synonymous to a “text-only” page.
  • Why Lightbox? It is NOT accessible!
  • Also, when the script is turned off, so is the capability to access the videos.
  • And, when the style is disabled, the links to the video player disappear.
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David A. Paterson, New York Governor, Accessibilista?

According to the following NY Times Article:

“A Blind Governor Adjusts, and So Does Albany”

“Although Mr. Paterson often says he does not want people to go out of their way for him, he says society should recognize that he and other blind people cannot do everything on their own.

As one of his first acts as governor, he added instructions to his official state Web site on how to enlarge the type on the screen:

“It’s just being more sensitive to people who feel that government and institutions ignore them,” he said.”

Well… I didn’t waste any time, I went to his Web site! Continue reading “David A. Paterson, New York Governor, Accessibilista?”

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Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama

Sen. Barack Obama\'s homepage

Part Two: is another possible candidate for the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s website structure is no different than his counterpart Senator Hillary Clinton. This blog took out all the politics, all their policies, the tears and hair, the compelling stories. Just condense your judgment into the topic of Web Accessibility. I ran an automated scan using AccVerify/Repair® scan of the Barack Obama website (www.barackobama.com). And here are my findings. Continue reading “Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama”