Hawai'i Tech
Disabilities can impede access even online

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Greg Taylor • The Honolulu Advertiser

Krysler is someone who is used to hurdles. For 11 years the Manoa resident has dealt with the repercussions of a spinal injury that left him in need of a wheelchair to get around and with only limited use of his arms. Technology triumphed: Krysler has developed a deft command of computers through voice-recognition software that translates speech into typed words, and an infrared pointer that functions as a mouse.

But this particular Web site used a kind of animation tool called Flash in one of its interactive features, and that tool responded only to keyboard entries.

"I had to make an issue of it with those people," said Krysler, a former pilot who now works as a software consultant.

The brick-and-mortar world has finally come around to the idea of providing the disabled with access to buildings and services, and now the cyberworld is ramping up, too. The Web can be a less than inviting place to those with physical challenges, in ways the rest of the world can't always conceive.

For those with motor-skill impairments, sites that will log them off automatically after an inactive period can be frustrating; such features can demand too quick a response time.

For the deaf, there are video clips that aren't subtitled.

For those who suffer from light-induced seizures, some of the animated graphics that flicker too quickly might even cause a problem.

But it's the blind that face the greatest obstacles on the Web, overwhelmingly a visual media. In its earliest incarnation, the World Wide Web was simply a collection of text documents stored on computers that were linked together. Software was developed that could use a computer's sound components to "read" a Web page aloud, alongside units that translate the Web a line at a time into Braille.

Unfortunately for the visually impaired, technology also was driving the Web to become a more graphics-oriented place, throbbing with colorful, animated pictures, rife with maps and diagrams. And not enough of these were linked to any text that the blind could retrieve, said Doug Wakefield, an accessibility specialist with the U.S. Access Board, an independent federal body appointed by the president and assigned to deal with these issues.

Wakefield was in Honolulu last week to give a seminar on Section 508, part of the Rehabilitation Act that includes rules governing how the federal government handles electronic and information technology, covering everything from making equipment useable by disabled federal employees to providing video that is captioned for the hearing impaired.

His main focus was on Web sites, however, since that is becoming the broadest interface between the federal government and the people who are supposed to receive those services. The main problem, Wakefield said, is pages are frequently coded without any "tags" describing graphics and other links that page-reading software could translate for the blind Web surfer. Without the tag, the page-reader can announce only that there's a link.

And this, he said, can only make for an angry surfer.

"It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull, when a person comes in already expecting to have trouble on the Web and all they hear is " 'link, link, link, link,' " Wakefield said.

Section 508 is now enforceable, he said, which means the public can file complaints or sue for relief to problems accessing Web information.

The state is also drawing up guidelines, based on the federal regulation but not enforceable, for its own Web sites, said Francine Wai, executive director of the state Disabilities and Communication Access Board.

There is nothing prodding private Web sites toward accessibility, however, other than good business sense. That may be pretty effective, though: Anthony Akamine, a blind Web veteran who chairs the state access board, said there's lots of competition.

"People who are disabled, if they go to a place and they can't get the service, they'll go find another site," said the Nu'uanu resident. "It makes more sense for people to be proactive and willing to look at ways of making it accessible."

Akamine's successor on the board is Dean Georgiev, who is a professional trainer in assistive technology. In most cases, making a Web site friendly to those with disabilities is no more expensive than it would be otherwise; like the building that's planned with the wheelchair ramps in place, a Web site is easier to construct properly at the start than to rebuild once it's up.The people who write the coding simply have to know that.

"At this point designers have to realize that really it's not that restrictive to make things standard," Georgiev said.

Sometimes the challenge is too burdensome financially or even technically impossible, Wakefield said, and the federal law gives agencies an out. For example, he said, there is a U.S. Geologic Survey site with maps allowing the user to use their mouse to define areas within a map and get detailed information. There is no commercially available software that will enable the page to generate text on the fly from such a request, he said.

Most of the time, though, it's just a question of knowing the right way. A table of figures that's properly coded can be "read" to a blind person more intelligibly. A site that stores text documents using the correct version of Adobe Acrobat software can be read more smoothly, too.

And actually, Krysler said, improvements to the smooth operation of the Web are a boon to us all.

"In some ways I just don't like the approach of making it 'accessible,' as if it's just for those poor people in wheelchairs," he said. "If you look at sidewalks and curb cuts, are the curb cuts for people with disabilities? Or are they also used by mothers with strollers, or kids on skateboards, too?

"Curb cuts have made sidewalks better. In fact, it's actually a better system," he added. "And the same applies to the Internet."

For more information on the Web accessibility issue, try these sites:

• www.access-board.gov/508.htm provides details on Section 508.
• www.state.hi.us/health/dcab/ is the site of the state Disabilities and Communication Access Board.
• www.cast.org/bobby allows you to plug in a Web address and be informed about all the accessibility errors on that page.