Three Dimensional Web Interfaces
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- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:39:50 -0400
Blind Confidential (Blog)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Three Dimensional Web Interfaces
By Will Pearson and Chris Hofstader
Thursday, September 27, 2007
A couple of days ago Will watched Intel CTO, Justin Ratner make his keynote
address to the Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Ratner addressed the "3D web" during
his speech.
The "3D web" is basically virtual reality environments, such as Second Life,
simulations, etc. Justin showed three "3D web" applications during his keynote:
one that was aimed at businesses and two that were aimed at medical training
and simulation. The "3D web" is nothing new, people have been working on
collaborative virtual environments for years What makes it interesting now, is
that it has caught the attention of the CTO of one of the leading chip vendors.
What makes the "3D web" really interesting from an accessibility perspective is
that it is totally incompatible with the concept of a screen reader. The
language of the "3D web" is based around simulations of real world or imaginary
objects and not text. So, the "3D web" is fundamentally incompatible with a
current generation computer access program like a screen reader. . To make a 3D
web application compatible with current access technology will require changing
the concept of the 3D web so significantly that it really just becomes part of
the 2D web.
We think this is going to be a massive headache for the screen reader vendors,
and something that will be much more of a problem than Capcha as, while the
Turing tests may be the "Whites only" sign of the 21st century, one can get
help from a friendly sightie to get into a site, clearly a sub-optimal approach
and one that requires a degrading lack of independence but an approach that
will work in a pinch. The 3D web must be addressed by web accessibility
researchers, human factors experts and, of course, commercial vendors of access
technology. If the predictions made by industry pundits are correct, a lot of
the community activities that are currently run on things like email lists and
web forums will move into the 3D web.
There will also be a lot of training and simulation programs built using the 3D
web. So, it looks as though it will be essential that we blinks gain access to
the 3D web.
In conversations we have had with people at various commercial access
technology companies, Mike Calvo of Serotek seems to stand alone by having
committed to a major effort to support dynamic web sites delivered through AJAX
and other Web 2.0 technologies. neither of us, believes that any vendor of a
current screen reader has even started working on a presentation model for the
3D web but I (BC) do think that I heard that some research dedicated to finding
a non-visual solution to the 3D web started at one of the really large companies
(probably IBM but I do not remember exactly).
A number of years ago, an article called "The Guru of the News" a parody of
"The Wizard of Oz" got passed around various news groups, email lists and was
emailed directly to a lot of people as is the case for many amusing Internet
creations. The gist of the story was that Richard Stallman, the legendary
hacker, was actually the man behind the curtain and that he worked to maintain
a text only Internet as all of the pictures and such simply distracted from the
serious information. As I said, this was a parody and written in fun.
Stallman never worked against the advances of the graphical web but the story
provides a few laughs anyway.
As recently as 2004, though, I have attended conferences in which blind people
and advocates for people with disabilities argued strenuously against any web
standards that did not conform to a purely text presentation model. These
people tended to use the Lynx browser or the W3 emacs plug-in to read web
sites. While these people represented a small minority of computer users with
vision impairment, they shouted quite loudly and, in many cases, convinced web
developers to provide blind-guy-ghetto, text only alternatives to web sites that
worked quite well with JAWS or Window-Eyes. I think that the text only people
also caused a slow down in the adoption of web accessibility standards and
guidelines as, although the people who worked on the WAI committees and other
standards bodies around the world devised many excellent ways to deliver text
alternatives to graphical information, the ghetto dwelling, text only ludites
continued to push for text only pages. My answer to those people who, in 2004
still used Lynx or W3 was that they had the damned source code to their
browsers and should fix the problems with graphical presentations themselves.
So, as we move toward a 3D web, will we hear the cries of blind people using
JAWS, Window-Eyes, System Access, HAL, VoiceOver, orca, NVDA or any of the
other current screen readers to provide text only or 2D alternatives to
interfaces exposed by sites like Second Life?
To date, I (BC) have not spent much time thinking about a non-visual
presentation model for 3D web interfaces. I don't know if anyone has even
started exploring a user experience for accessing 3D web sites that one can use
without any visual clues. I would like to hear from anyone who has started
thinking about this problem and would enjoy reading anything that may have been
published on the subject.
Afterward
I've very much enjoyed the lively discussion in the BC comments area lately and
thank everyone for their constructive posts.
I would, however, like to point out to the anonymous commenter who claims to
having never seen such a "dysfunctional" group before. I suggest that anyone
who makes such non-constructive comments could look in a mirror and see the
single most dysfunctional person in his or her life.
-- End
posted by BlindChristian at 8:47 AM
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21014642&postID=2709829949802629442
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