tuesday,may4,2004
news
the university daily kansan 5A
Screen-reading software helps the blind
'Jaws for Windows' provides way for students to access Internet
Chikako Mochizuki, a Shizuoka City, Japan, graduate student, typed on her computer last Thursday with the aid of audio reader assistive equipment. Mochizuki is blind and is majoring in history.
Kit Leffler/Kansas
By Jesse Truesdale
jtruesdale@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
Rachel Magario usually doesn't turn the computer monitor on in her office at the Research and Training Center on Independent Living. That's because her computer reads text aloud that would otherwise appear on the screen.
Magario, a Sao Paoio, Brazil senior majoring in communications and geography, is blind. She depends on audio screen-reading software for both her duties as a research assistant and her schoolwork.
"My computer is my temple," Mauargio said.
With the screen reader she can check e-mail, surf the Internet and edit documents. The software Jaws For Windows, is one of several brands and has been around since the early '90s.
Unfortunately, the software does not make all Web sites accessible.
slow.
The software allows the keyboard's arrow buttons to move the cursor over a Web page, replacing the mouse's function. The cursor hits each link or field for text to be entered, then the computer voice prompts the user to either press "enter" or to key in data.
Most Web sites are still not compatible with screen-reading software, Magario said.
software. Under a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act, all federal government Web sites must be accessible to everyone. Kansas state government web sites, including all University of Kansas Web sites, must likewise be accessible under a law passed by the Legislature in 2000.
Legislation Information Technology Policy 1210 provides for a commission to determine the state information accessibility standards. The law incorporated the federal
"My computer is my temple."
Rachel Magano
São Paolo, Brazil, senior
law's standards, but also set higher ones, said Anthony Fadale, the coordinator for the Americans with Disabilities Act for the state of Kansas.
Designing accessible Web sites is a challenge, said Jack Hope, Web developer for the University of Kansas Center for Research. One of the biggest hurdles is accommodating older Web browsers, which many disabled and older users have. These browsers can't handle flashier Web sites as well as newer browsers do.
"They'll read some stuff as gobbledv-gook." Hope said.
bready-gook, Hope-
There are no federal or state laws that require private companies' Web sites to accommodate assistive technologies, unless employees' jobs require them to use the company site. But companies such as Amazon that depend on the Internet for their business have already built in such features, Hope said.
Internet accessibility might improve a lot in a year or two, when more people have upgraded browsers, allowing Internet developers to use more standardized designs, Hope said.
Some University Web sites still have a way to go. Hope said.
have a way to help.
He gave as an example a professor's Web page designed by a student who graduated two years ago. The professor's subsequent student assistants might not understand how the original site was done, let alone how to improve it with new techniques.
Some faculty members don't take Web sites seriously, Hope
added.
"They just see them as 'cute, and not anything important,' he said, so they don't worry about making the sites accessible.
making the screen readers into account presents another challenge, said Tim Sears, assistive technology trainer and consultant to the states of Kansas and Missouri. Sears is also the information systems manager for The University Daily Kansan.
Tables and links must be specifically designed to accommodate screen readers. If they aren't, the screen-reading software will read figures from two different lists as one, or worse.
Another difference is that links — especially graphics-
based ones must have text tags incorporated into them for the software to read.
software to read "Probably the biggest challenge is convincing web designers to do it," Sears said.
The University's "Enroll & Pay" Web site is not up to snuff, said Chikako Mochizuki, a Shizuoka City, Japan, graduate student majoring in history who is blind.
To enroll online, Mochizuki said she needs to have a sighted friend help her.
In e-mail, spam presents an even bigger nuisance for her and Magario than it does for sighted users.
Even with the University's new spam-rating system, Magario
said she often finds it necessary to open e-mails in order to discern their nature. And then it's too late, because opening some spam messages triggers more from the same spammer. Magario's e-mail account inbox receives multiple obscene comes from peddlers of sexua enhancement pills and get-rich quick schemes daily.
Magario said that she now asks friends to put distinctive subject headings in their e-mails to her. She also warns them she might discard their messages when in doubt, because six serious viruses have infected her computer in the last year.
Edited by Joe Hartigan
Sharon looks for alternative Gaza plan
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday he will come up with an alternative withdrawal plan after his proposal to pull out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank was resoundingly rejected by members of his Likud Party.
Israeli officials suggested the original plan — which had U.S. backing and was popular with Israelis — would be slightly scaled down and the new version would not be put to a Likud vote
Sharon had proposed his "disengagement plan" as the best way to obtain security for Israel in the absence of peace moves and to defuse international pressure for greater concessions.
Members of Sharon's traditionally pro-settler party disagreed, voting against the plan 60 percent to 40 percent in a nonbinding referendum Sunday that the Maariv daily labeled a "crushing defeat" for the premier.
Residents of the Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, who had energetically campaigned against the plan, symbolically declared victory Monday by laying the cornerstone for a new neighborhood.
But government officials scrambled Monday to figure out a way to sidestep the Likud voters and proceed with some form of withdrawal anyway, arguing that with peace efforts frozen and violence with the Palestinians continuing, Israel can't afford to sit back and do nothing.
Sharon's original plan envisioned an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, home to 7,500 settlers in 21 settlements, and the evacuation of four small settlements in the West Bank by the end of 2005.
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