Accessibility Part 1, How does someone with a visual impairment use a computer?

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As you have probably read from my profile, I work for the online division of a large university. (I don't know if I can say publicly, so I'll let you guess.) One of my jobs is to determine how usable our online courses for accessibility for persons with disabilities.

I fell into this job; it isn't something I would have selected as a speciality. When I was a student at DePaul University in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) program (Note: it appears DePaul no longer offers an undergraduate degree in HCI - interesting), I debated taking the "Designing for Disabilities" course, but it didn't fit into my schedule when it was offered, so I passed. I finished the program and graduated in 1999 and was off to the work force with my newly minted degree.

In my first job as a User Interface Designer at SPSS Inc. (now an IBM company) I heard things in team meetings about "accessibility", "section 508", "government contracts", etc. but it wasn't part of my job. The lead UI designer on my team, Chuck P, was the contact person for any accessibility questions. I have to give Chuck P a shout-out. He was the one who supplied me with the best defense when co-workers (or anyone) asks " Why do we have to do this? Does it really matter? Home many blind students do we have anyway, it can't be that many." (I, myself asked those questions. I hang my head in shame now at the memory of it.) Chuck P's answer was: "Because its the law. And because its the right thing to do!" He was the go-to guy for this. Until he left the company. Then I get a call from the marketing department wanting to know if I could check one of our products for accessibility.

Now, at the time, I didn't know much about accessibility, neither did my department manager. We had to learn. Fast. Very fast. Extremely fast, as the product was already about 60% complete.

Accessibility Tip #1: The time to think about accessibility is at the start of the project, not at the end.

Long story short, learned fast, finished project, became a victim of the tech down-turn and got laid off, went to grad school, took the "Designing for Disabilities" course, graduated, got a crummy job, got a better job (the one I have now).

So now I determine if our online courses are accessible.

So how does a person who has a visual impairment use a computer? He or she uses assistive technology, in this case either a screen reader or a screen magnifier in addition to some of the built-in features of the operating system the person is using.

Accessibility Tip #2: It the person using the computer cannot see the display or cannot see the display very well, he or she is probably not using a mouse.

People with visual impairments ("users" - the official term we UX people use) are more like "power users" as power users tend to use keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse-centered commands like menus and toolbars. This article is from The Onion, but I know it was written by a usability person: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-knows-all-the-shortcutkeys,1566/ .

I created the video below using JAWS, the screen reader I use at work. In it I show how a person could create a Word document, complete with font changes.

Some things to note while watching the video.

My mouse pointer never moved. I'll reiterate tip #2, people with visual impairments rarely use the mouse. I worked on a project in which I had to look at the accessibility of an eBook reader. The developer insisted that the screen reader would read the menu bar of the application. I found it didn't work. The problem: the menus were read when the user hovered, with the mouse, over the menu items. I know this as I was testing the application with only the keyboard. Ask a visually impaired user how to copy something from one document to another and he will say: "Hold down the shift key and use the arrows to select the text you want to copy then hit control and c. Then alt tab to the document you want to paste into and hit control v."

Screen readers users are honorary computer geeks. The screen reader tells the user she is in the "font dialog" on the "font page". A user who doesn't use a screen reader and who hasn't done any computer programming may not know what a dialog box is. (Trust me, I was helping a friend once, a pretty novice computer user, via the phone, and I told him to "Just close that dialog box." There was a silence then he said "Close Internet Explorer?".) A screen reader user knows a dialog box is a window, a check box is a window, a list box is a window. (They even know what a list box is.) Technically, they are windows as they all inherit from the "Windows" class. If you are writing Help files for a screen reader user, go ahead and call it a dialog box, they know what you are talking about. Oh, and include that "Accessibility" help topic. Many software companies do, including my former employer SPSS.

Sloppy interface programming is inexcusable. There are standards. Both Microsoft and Apple publish them online for Windows and MAC developers. I haven't read them, but I'm sure there are JAVA, Unix, Linux and Web standards as well. Use them. The colon at the end of a label means something. The ellipse; it does as well. A tab order is important. Text boxes are not buttons. It is amazing to me to see software that is so sloppily written. Would we buy a book full of typos? Would you buy a CD full of badly recorded out tracks? The eBook reader I tested followed no known programming standard.

This is Verdona in RGB (255, 0, 0). Don't make assumptions about what someone with little or no vision can do. Don't make assumptions about what any person with any disability can do. Heck, don't make assumptions about what any user can and cannot do. I repeatably hear things like:

• "Well, a blind person can't take a graphic design class." They can. Open up any Adobe Illustrator document in notepad. You can create images by editing the postscript.
• "Would you go to a doctor who was dyslexic and couldn't read?" Well, actually I would. I know she isn't going to stop and check her old textbooks while I'm on the table in the ER.
• "How can a deaf person edit a sound file?" Open up a sound file in an audio editing program and get back to me.

In the video I was able to change the font face (I'm sighted and even I don't know what Adobe Castelon Pro looks like.), change the font color thanks to accessibility information programmed into Microsoft Word (RGB values), and change the style to "Small Caps".