Deborah Friese, Susan Jensen, Pam Boehmer, Libbi Cecchi, Barbar Karyunkon, Katie Ware, Richard Sit, Laura Zastrow, Peggy Sanchez, Roni Cimperman, Roy Neal, Peter Eisenberg, Caryn Josephson, Delight Demulling, Lyle Kantrorich, Dave Bender, Royce Shin, Alice De La Cova, Amy Beiggs, Andrea Halverson, Debbie McConnell
Universal Design, Adaptive Technology and Integration Nick Giudice discussed the limitation and misconceptions of web design for those who are visually impaired. When using software such as JAWS which actually talks through a website for you, items such as Links, Click Here and PDF files are hard to interpret or navigate.
Nicole Tollefson introduced the JAWS software to the group and demonstrated a few of its capabilities as well as a few of its limitations. JAWS is a screen reader tool for the visually impaired.
One interesting point from the presentation: When designing web pages, innocent design decisions can cause real headaches for screen reader users. For instance, if you create a drop down box that automatically acts on the first thing you click on, this isn't typically a problem for the person who is using a mouse to click the drop down arrow and pick the option from the list. But it's an absolute nuisance for people using the down arrow key to navigate the list: the first item you point to will automatically activate that action-even though you are just trying to browse the list. Solution: do not design your drop down lists so that the action happens on "mouseclick" or "on selection"- allow them to make their selection and then have a separate button there to "go" (invoke the action they have just chosen from the list).
Deborah Friese