The
Sound of Surfing
Listening to Web sites through a screen reader such as Jaws is
the best way to appreciate the challenges and issues that lie
behind Web site accessibility. Here's a sampling of what you'd
hear on a visit to the high-traffic Web sites for the New York
Times (http://www.nytimes.com)
and public broadcasting giant WGBH (http://www.wgbh.org).
Hard Times at the Times
The New York Times on the Web immediately gets off on the
wrong foot. The ad graphic in the upper left corner (A)
has no alt text, so Jaws reads its link aloud--and because sites
serve most ads dynamically from databases, these links are
incomprehensible. In this instance, the Jaws surfing experience
begins as follows: "Page has 131 links. Link graphic hst
one-dash-side-dot-gif slash
six-six-hundred-ninety-six-d-six. . . ." This
numerological gibberish continues for several more seconds.
Simply adding alt="Advertisement" to the image tag would have
eliminated that agony.
Things improve only slightly from here. The site's designers
also fail to specify alt text for the left-hand image map (B),
so Jaws reads the links thus: "Image map link slash index. Image
map link front slash index. Image map link day slash world.
Image map link day slash national." And on and on.
Finally, the links for each of the main front-page articles (C)
read simply "Go to article." A blind user surfing from link to
link won't know which article each link designates.
Smooth Talker
The Web site for WGBH in Boston does it right--no surprise,
given that WGBH is headquarters for the National Center for
Accessible Media.
The first thing a Jaws user hears is "Page contains 39
links"--less overwhelming than The New York Times on the Web's
131 links. From there we hear "Link: D vertical bar. Link: text
version and access instructions. Graphic: This week." (Thanks to
an alt attribute, Jaws doesn't read the whole file name.) "Link:
site map. . . ."
You'll notice that the text links at the very top of the page (A)
enable a blind user to jump quickly to a text-only version of
the site and get instructions about the site's structure and
accessibility features. The d link (B)
leads to a page containing a description of the home page
graphics--how many there are, what they look like, and so
on--making the site a bit more inclusive.
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