A Case Study on Web Design and Navigation Challenges for the Blind

This case study examines the difficulties blind individuals face while navigating the internet due to inaccessible web design. It highlights how common website elements, such as image-based links and complex layouts, create significant barriers for users relying on screen readers and other assis...Read More

Often Web sites' designs hinder navigation by the blind
By Abigail Tucker
Sun Staff
March 16, 2005
Ellen Ringlein of Baltimore clicks efficiently with a cane through strange hallways.
She tours alien cities without the help of a seeing-eye dog or anyone else.
And, yet, in the comfort of her own office, Amazon.com seems impossible to
navigate. Earlier this month, Ringlein spent a half-hour on the Web site trying to
locate the audio version of the book her church club was reading, but the speech-
synthesizing machine she and other blind people use to surf the Net just rattled
minutes of gibberish.
Imagemaplinkrefequals! it barked.
And, blankblankblank!
The Web site offered no easy way to avoid this nonsensical spiel, which was mostly a
narration of the links at the top of the page, Ringlein said. And even when she finally
discovered where to type in the title she wanted, the results were hard to decipher.
"OK, now they're talking about delighting your valentine," she said, as the computer
spat out an advertisement. "I just want to know how much the audio book is. I know
it's here, but I can't find it."
Actually, the screen wasn't even displaying the correct page.
Frustrating experiences like this are why one Towson University professor recently
partnered with the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind to map the
struggles of the blind online. Jonathan Lazar is studying how the Internet fails blind
users and will share his findings in the summer with Web masters and software
designers who aren't legally compelled to make their products accessible, but could
change lives by doing so.
The study follows 100 or so users in Baltimore and elsewhere as they perform
everyday functions online: buying additional cell phone minutes, checking e-mail,
browsing CNN.com, downloading music, researching medical problems, looking for
Delta Air Lines tickets - basically, stuff that everyone else does on the Net.
But navigational problems eat huge chunks of blind people's time, Lazar is finding,
and technical nuisances like spam, pop-up advertisements and security checks
hinder searches.
"What is annoying to a visual user becomes impossible for a blind user," said Lazar,
who is the head of Towson's Computer Information Systems Undergraduate Program.
Faulty design
Most of these obstacles can be overcome, he said. "It's not the disability that causes
the hardship. It's the way the technology is designed."
His study identifies precisely when Web sites fall apart for blind users and how much
time and energy they waste figuring out problems.

Because the Internet allows for electronic commuting, communication and
commerce, it has opened doors for most disabled people, but threatens to close
some for the blind.
"The Internet is designed for visual people, fundamentally," said Betsy Zaborowski,
who runs the NFB's research and technology training institute.
Only about a quarter of the 1.1 million blind Americans use computers, and of these
many experiment with the Internet only in limited ways, Zaborowski said. Partially
this is because blind people are often older and not techno-savvy, but it's also
because the graphic-centric Internet is not designed for them.
And yet it's vital that everyone have access, she said. Already there is a 74 percent
unemployment rate among blind adults. If the blind don't adapt to the Internet,
they'll lack vital job skills.
But first the Internet must adapt to them. Unintentionally, Web masters often shut
blind users out of their sites. Of 50 Baltimore-based Web sites, 49 had accessibility
problems, Lazar found in a 2003 study.
Yet accommodating blind users is neither expensive nor difficult, Lazar said,
especially if provisions are made in the first stages of Web site design.
How blind navigate
To navigate the Internet, blind people use screen readers - speech-synthesizing
machines that narrate text at auctioneer-speed - or Braille keyboards, which transfer
information into bumps that rise and fall beneath the user's fingertips.
Though useful, these devices have online limitations. They can't interpret graphics
like pictures and logos, and they can't scan. Instead they read every word of text,
rattling off links that a sighted user could dismiss with a glance.
But site designers can layer captions beneath pictures and add shortcuts that bypass
superfluous links. These sanity-saving adjustments are usually encoded "behind the
scenes" and don't change the Web site's look, Lazar said.
Web companies that service the federal government are now compelled to follow
accessibility guidelines, and the sites of some states - Maryland included - must also
comply with appropriate captioning, page organization and other elements.
Easy adjustment
The reconfiguration wasn't hard, said Kristen Cox, secretary of the state's
Department of Disabilities.
"Nonvisual accessibility is not a problem if people are clear about the specifics to
make sites compatible with screen readers," she said. "In most cases, if it's built-in
there's really no new costs."
In the private sector, though, it's usually up to individual Web masters to embrace
the accessibility guidelines, because federal courts haven't ruled definitively on
whether or not the Internet is a public space that must be available to everyone, said
Daniel Goldstein, a lawyer for NFB.

Thus awareness-raising must fuel reforms, and Lazar said that his research will alert
designers to trouble areas.
Progress has been made already. Some companies, including Amazon.com, offer
alternative versions that are streamlined for the visually impaired, although many
blind users - Ellen Ringlein, for instance - don't know they exist. Other companies
have applied accessibility guidelines to their main sites.
But across-the-board accessibility is necessary, according to James Gashel, the NFB's
executive director for strategic initiatives.
Something to build on
"The electronic infrastructure is being built today," he said. "If we miss this, we won't
have jobs, we won't have opportunities, we won't have normal lives."
It's disturbing that some of the least-accessible sites are operated by Web
companies, Lazar said. But he believes that the changes that make Web sites
navigable for blind people will also benefit the sighted. For instance, he said, many of
the accessibility modifications will also help display Internet information in alternative
formats, like cell phone screens.
More importantly, though, the modifications are "the right thing to do, the respectful
thing to do," he said. "This is something we can do to make people's lives better."
To doubters, he offers this challenge:
"Turn off the graphics in your browser and try browsing your favorite Web site."
Copyright (c) 2005, The Baltimore Sun
Link to the article:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.blind16mar16,1,1345515.story