On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 4:00 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek(a)gmail.com> wrote:
We were discussing it with an association of blind
people in Poland - and
they told us - that for them the most important thing is clear and logic
structure of the website - plain main text, menu/navigation in plain text
and descriptions of media in plain text. They are using their own free
text-to-speach software to which they are used to. Such software simply
reads everything on the screen in the same neutral way. So they don't need
any other tools for voice reading - if other websites provide it - they
usually do not use it. Maybe in some other languages the situation is
different - but it would be better to discuss it with relevant associations
before investing time and money for such solutions. Fortunately, Wikipedia
actually is quite text-to-speach friendly at the moment.
Anecdotal to Tomasz's point, there was an editor on IRC the other day in
-commons that is Deaf/Blind and considers Wikimedia sites to be, in its
current state, one of the friendly- to disability-adaptive software of any
website. Mucking that up would be...bad.
What I suppose I'm challenging, James, is this: are our websites playing
well with accessibility? What are the specific points of failing? It is
subject to the disability, there's no patch to make it all right. What is
the path to make it right? How can I help? Where can we document this?
--
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Product
Wikimedia Foundation