Not blind to the Internet

Wong explaining the problems faced by sight-impaired Internet users.

Do the sight-impaired use the Internet? You better believe it. In fact, they are so savvy they can tell you what’s wrong with your website. RIDZWAN A. RAHIM writes.

Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act requires web content to be made accessible to people with disabilities.

WHEN it comes to computers, Toh Wooi Seong is just like your average Malaysian youth. He e-mails, chats with his friends on MSN, reads the news and e-books, listens to music, is on Friendster and knows a thing or two about porn. The only difference is, he’s vision-impaired.

The 23-year-old Universiti Malaya TESL student totes his laptop around campus. He spends a lot of time in the library for its free Wi-Fi connection.

Sometimes when the reception is bad or when he’s out and about, Toh whips out his Maxis wireless broadband. He is, however, not very happy with its speed.

“It should be faster for the RM138 that I pay every month,” he says.
Like many Internet users, Toh knows a good website when he sees one. Good here means being accessible to as many users as possible, including but not limited to sight-impaired people like him.

It bugs him that too many websites try to impress with fancy Flash animation.

“I hate Flash animation. It moves my cursor around when I’m trying to read something. It goes up and down. It’s distracting,” says Toh, adding that he often turns Flash off altogether.

Loud noise is another irritant.

“Some people try too hard to make their websites interesting. If it’s soft music, it’s okay but when they use loud music, it’s terrible,” says Toh.

He wishes people would just do a better job at designing websites.

His wish is about to be granted. A conference called “Web Accessibility — Bridging the Digital Divide” will be organised tomorrow in the city.

Organiser, the National Council For The Blind Malaysia (NCBM), hopes to highlight the plight of sight-impaired Internet users to decision-makers and the general public.

“ICT has become a very potent tool for anyone to become successful in this modern age,” says conference organising chairman Ben Wong.

“Unfortunately, due to many obstacles placed in their path, those who are vision-impaired are in danger of being left behind.”

He says there exists a worldwide Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to improve the accessibility of the Internet for everyone.

“For the business sector, accessibility makes sense as you would be extending your market reach beyond the sighted or abled communities,” he says.

At the moment, the blind are unable to make full use of the information on many Government and corporate websites.

“A classic example would be websites with lots of pictures. But because they are not labeled with alternative text, which is something like a caption for the images but not seen by the eye, the screen reader will read them out as link1, link2, graphics1, graphics2 and so on,” says Wong, who is also chairman for Sabah Society for the Blind’s IT committee.

“It might as well be a blank screen.”

Websites that refresh automatically is another big problem, says Wong.

Each time the page refreshes, it will trigger the screen reader to read from the beginning again.

“You will never hear the end of the story,” he chuckles.

Making a website accessible doesn’t have to cost much. Alternative text, for example, is the easiest to implement and most useful to the sight-impaired user.

It is now a matter of getting the word out to people like web developers, website managers, business owners, Government officials and students, says Wong.

The first day of the conference is fairly light and covers the basics, the situation in Malaysia and how an accessible website benefits everyone.

The second day is more technical. It introduces subjects such as integrating accessibility throughout development process and working with software such as Dreamweaver, Flash and Ajax.

Aside from the conference, visitors can also check out an exhibition and demonstration of assistive devices like screen readers, notetakers (essentially, laptops without screen) and screen readers for mobile phones.

There will also be sales of Braille/talking watches, talking calculators and screen magnifiers, plus the book Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design by Shawn Lawton Henry, from W3C, who will also be speaking at the conference.

NCBM is hoping to see a big cross-section of the Malaysian public at the conference.

NOTE: ‘Web Accessibility — Bridging the Digital Divide’ begins tomorrow and ends Friday at the auditorium, 5th Floor, (NIO Building), The Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital, Lot 2, Lorong Utara B, Petaling Jaya. Admission is free but pre-registration is required. Visit accessibility.ncbm.org.my.


How do they do it?

TOH Wooi Seong is a sight-impaired Internet user but there’s nothing remarkable about his computer setup.

Most people would think the blind require a Braille keyboard or perhaps some sort of futuristic input device that has mind-reading capability, complete with R2D2 sound effects.

Not true.

Toh uses a normal HP laptop with a full-size QWERTY keyboard and Wi-Fi connection, and has mastered touch typing.

He, however, relies a lot on the speakers. In the absence of sight, Toh uses a screen reader programme called Jaws (Job Access With Speech) to describe to him, in spoken English, what’s happening on the screen and to read aloud contents of web pages, e-mail messages and documents.

And boy, does the programme talk. Every single action will trigger a robotic speech.

And because Jaws is meant for English, things become comical when it reads content in Bahasa Malaysia. Words like seorang becomes see-yo-rang, makanan becomes mack-nan and Wak Aji becomes whack-ah-jee.

It doesn’t just talk funny. Toh’s Jaws does so at a speed two or three times that of a normal human being. It’s like a whole different language in itself.

“I call it Americlay. As in American Malay,” jokes Toh.

What if there’s a computer class with 20 students, each with his own talking computer plus one instructor giving orders?

“We can handle that. We are able to decipher audio instruction coming from different sources,” says Toh.

God takes away their sight but He also gives them bionic ears.



What is WAI?

WAI, or the Web Accessibility Initiative, is an effort by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to improve the accessibility of the Internet for people using other than standard web browsers.

The idea is that websites should be made accessible to the broadest range of people, including those with slower Internet access, users of older computers and people with a range of disabilities such as poor eyesight, blindness, motor impairments, seizure disorders, deafness and cognitive impairments.

Accessibility also extends to users of graphical browsers, text-only browsers and hand-held devices.

Accessibility policies vary from country to country, but most countries, including the European Union, have adopted standards based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the W3C.

In the United States, Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act mandates that web content maintained by the federal government must be made accessible to people with disabilities.

In Malaysia, the recently passed Persons With Disabilities Bill 2007 states, among others, that the disabled shall have the right to access to information, communication and technology on equal basis with persons without disabilities.