RE: Make Facebook's live chat accessible to blind screen reader users?
- From: "Michael Malver" <mmalver@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:14:18 -0500
Thanks for doing this.
I am frustrated by people who argue that workarounds equal accessibility.
A reader is a work around to having accessible books. Should we write to
congress and tell them to stop producing books for the blind because there
is a perfectly good work around out there?
Social security is a work around to successful employment.
Should we encourage companies not to hire disabled people since there is a
way for the disabled to make money?
Going sighted guide is a workaround for traveling independently. Should we
encourage everyone to use sighted guide all the time?
If I can't use a product out of the box without having to use specialized
features, such as the mouse cursor, it is not accessible.
People who confuse useable with accessible frustrate me as well. You might
be able to make a script to cause an inaccessible program to be useable, but
that script in my view doesn't negate a company figuring out how to make
their software to run out of the box. A script is only good for the
specific screen reader for which it was designed. Accessible software makes
the tool useable for everyone.
Just because you may choose not to use something yourself is no reason to
deny other people having access to it. If you want to use AIM instead of
facebook to talk to your facebook buddies, that's great, but please help
those of us who want the ability to use facebook chat and don't understand
how to make the chat automatically speak gain more access by signing the
petition which will grant us the kind of access we expect to websites in the
21st century.
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bryan Garaventa
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 7:35 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Make Facebook's live chat accessible to blind screen reader users?
Hi, I thought I'd pass this on since it may be of interest to fellow screen
reader users.
Since there really is no reason why Facebook can't add screen reader
accessible functionality to the live chat feature, and it would be nice to
be able to communicate with family and friends using the same features that
everyone else uses, I created the fan page at
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Make-Face-Books-Live-Chat-Accessible-to-Bli
nd-Users/109349762439299?ref=ts
In the hope that, if enough people become fans of the idea, it will act as a
petition to get Facebook's attention. So if you use Facebook, and would like
to see live chat become an accessible feature, please consider becoming a
fan of the page.
The UI implementation that I've proposed through the fan page does the
following:
1) Automatically announces the latest message as soon as it arrives,
regardless where the focus is positioned on the page;
2) Is fully accessible using JAWS 11 with IE7-8 and Firefox3;
3) Is fully accessible using NVDA with IE8 and Firefox3;
4) Can be visually modified using CSS to fit any display without
impairing automatic accessibility.
Best wishes,
Bryan
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