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How a blind person will "see" your Web page – audio comparison of inaccessible and accessible Web pages
The two Web pages in the following table appear to be similar. But to
a blind person who has to listen to your Web page there is a great difference.
How you construct the pages can mean the difference between a tedious
and obscure rendering of the information in the page, and one that gets
the message across. To hear the difference, listen to the audio files
for each of the pages.
Note that the illustrations of the pages here are probably too small
to read. Reading along with the audio often provides contextual cues that
make a page easier to understand. The true audio user who cannot see the
page does not have these cues, so to get the best understanding of their
situation, it is much better to not read along when listening.
| Inaccessible Web Page |
Accessible Web Page |
- Web page audio file 90sec
Excerpt (750 K)
- Web page audio file - 192sec
Complete Page (2 Megs)
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- Web page audio file 94sec
Excerpt (710 K)
- Web page audio file - 254sec
Complete Page (1.5 Megs)
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| The inaccessible Web page illustrated in the first column is representative
of much current practice on the Internet. Graphics were used for some
of the text, and tables were used to provide layout. Clear blank images
were used to help stabilize the layout. HTML structural syntax is
ignored. The page HTML is invalid. |
The accessible page illustrated in the right column is constructed
using text for all text elements, a single image for the one needed
graphic. Standard HTML elements were used to construct the page -
headings, paragraphs and definition lists in this case. Additional
information was also coded into the page to provide some additional
information to the listener. The page was validated against the HTML
4.01 standard. |
For information on accessibility please visit the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.
Note: The audio examples were created using the pwWebSpeak audio browser from
the IsSound Corporation. |
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