Disabled Web-users flex their muscles
There’s a nice little article in the Toronto Star about web accessibility which covers the basics about what accessibility is about and how blind/visually impaired people are, ironically, helping business leaders to see the light. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Though he sees only shadows and light, Larry Marcotte is leading RBC Financial Group employees out of the dark. His job: adapting software code so that visually-impaired call centre workers can interact with their monitors using a talking screen reader called JAWS.
Marcotte, who was in a car accident that all but obliterated his vision at 13, helps JAWS understand some of RBC’s oldest systems - systems that were designed long before developers realized blind people would ever need to use them. When he’s not writing code, the 54-year-old IT consultant likes to surf the Web. Often, he finds elements of a company’s site that JAWS, which translates on-screen text into synthesized speech, can’t interpret.”