Philip Ramsey Consulting - eCommerce and Web Accessibility Solutions

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The technologies that enables mobile devices like PDA and internet enabled cell phones to access eCommerce web sites are based on the same technologies that allow blind people to access the web

In 1999 Gartner Research reported there were 750 million blind or visually impaired people online who were denied or experienced restricted access to web sites. These people had a combined disposable income of approximately $7.5 billion. These figures has grown since then. If your eCommerce web site is not accessible to these people, you are missing out on your share of their spending power.

Web designers have told me they do not or have given up on making accessible web sites because it take too much time and effort to create and maintain two sites - one for normal sighted people and an all text site for the visually impaired. The reality is you only need one site that uses a combination of javascript to detect whether a visitor is using a regular web browser like internet explorer or mozilla or is using a mobile device, text-to-speech (TTS) screen reader or a text-to-braille (TTB) screen reader to determine which CSS to use. The CSS will control the visual appearance for regular sighted visitors using a computer. Another CSS will control the appearance of the site for visitors using mobile devices. Other CSS are used for visitors using TTS or TTB screen readers.

Other ways to improve web accessibility to people with disabilities is the use of alternate text for images, links and embedded objects and assigning access keys to links, form fields and submit buttons.

Below is a short list of software and resources used by PWD for accessing the web as well as software used for evaluating accessibility and compliance with laws in the United States, the European Union and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) recommendations

Bobby from Watchfire.com

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Home

Bobby^™ v. 3.1 from Center for Applied Special Technologies CAST, www.watchfire.com/products/webxm/bobby.aspx

The Bobby software checks web sites for compliance with WAI rules and protocol. I find it slow on my machine (a 486 100 Mhz machine with 32 MB RAM and Windows 95). However it is a very powerful application that will require a bit of time to understand properly. It not only identify WAI compliance errors but also suggests how to correct the errors. It is not perfect but it is good enough for me to recommend it as a must have tool for web developers.

pwWebSpeak32^™ from SoundLinks Limited (formerly Productivity Works)

A simple yet powerful web page reader. I strongly recommend this software for people who are visually challenged. The only features I would like to see in this software are: it being voice enabled i. e. responds to voice commands and it supporting ACCESSKEY shortcuts.

Conversay Voice Surfer^™ from Conversay

This software has a lot of potential. It is the only voice powered browser I have tested so far. I would like to see more features in it like text-to-speech (I am lazy, what can I say!!) and more voice commands. It's obvious it is meant to be used on a more powerful machine that mine. This software is being developed not to assist the visually challenged but to enhance the e-commerce experience. As it is developed you will be able to tell this browser to go to your favorite shopping or financial site then tell it to place your order.

IBM Home Page Reader^™and Accessibility Center from http://www-03.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/

IBM's Accessibility Center, bringing together product and service information for people with disabilities, and for Human Resource Professionals who are proactively seeking knowledge about solutions or empowering persons with disabilities to ensure a productive working environment. Check out the Accessibility Center Newsletters and special offers from IBM..

Oxford Brookes University's BTalk^™ from http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/computing/research/advancedinterfaces/Projects/projects.htm

This software tries to be both pwWebSpeak and Conversa. The end result is that it is neither. In my opinion it will require a lot of improvements before it is useful to the visually impaired. I would recommend pwWebSpeak or IBM Home Page Reader over this one. Sorry Guys, in this case simpler is better. Note This beta software really requires a more powerful computer than mine and is it a work in progress.

N. B. The above software's will perform better on a more powerful machine (Pentium^® or better and 150 Mhz or faster machine with at least 64 MB RAM).

Future technologies include accessing commercial web sites via a regular telephone using a combination of the telephone keypad and your voice. Can you imagine what that would mean to a visually challenged person who would like to purchase say Wailers concert ticket at Madison Square Gardens. He or she will be able to call the web site for say Ticket Master, go through the menu of available seats to find the ones near to "Handicap access ramp" order the ticket/s and pay for them using his/her voice and the telephone keypad.