Accessibity
of the
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Martin M. Morandell Evang. Studentenheim
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Accessibility of the VOICE Web Site As a member of the International Computer Camp 2000 and a representative of a group of visually impaired specialists of Computer Science for the blind, I have been asked by Dr. Klaus Miesenberger from the University of Linz to test the VOICE Web Site on accessibility and to improve it in form of a stage from 5th to 27th of July 2000 at JRC Ispra / Italy. The VOICE Web Site The Web Site is divided into four parts:
A short overview is given by the SiteMap (http://voice.jrc.it/website/_map_e.htm) All important pages of the Web Site are available in English, French, Italian, and German. Some pages which are not that important - or just for a certain language area - are not available in all languages. Accessibility at the beginning During my preparation for the stay in Ispra I surfed through the Web Site with other visually impaired and blind Computer experts to find out some specific problems. For this, we tried it out with the most used enlargement program "Zoomtext" with Internet Explorer 5.0 and Netscape Navigator 4.5. To find out the problems for blind users,
we used LYNX. We also surfed on the page with WebWizard (a special
add on for Internet Explorer) with VIRGO and of course with the
most commonly used technology among blind users: Internet Explorer
with JAWS. Most parts of the Web Site were accessible.
This was also shown by the Bobby Approved logo on the bottom of
every page. My work on the Web Site After creating this list of problems I searched
for different possibilities to solve them. At the beginning of
my stay, I discussed them with the Site's webmasters. I told them
the problems and some possible solutions.
After these changes I did some translation into German and added them to the Web Site, so more information is now also available in German. Almost all the information which is in the Voice Web Site is now accessible for all users. For normally sighted users via graphics, for visually impaired and blind users via "alt tags" and special graphics descriptions [D]. http://voice.jrc.it/access/webacc_e.htm gives special information about "Web Accessibility." There are links to some pages with rules and Tips&Tricks for creating Web Sites for all kinds of users. So this Web Site is really a good example for a well designed page which is also accessible for visually impaired and blind users. December 2000 |
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