FYI: "Online Mapping for Everyone"

[Judyth Mermelstein]

Some of you will find this article of interest, I'm sure, even if you're not inclined to subscribe to the Bulletin or the Accessify forum...

Regards,

Judyth

-- Excerpted from

++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
- ISSUE 88, APRIL 2007.

Technology news for people with vision impairment
( http://www.headstar.com/eab/ ).

[[big snip]]

++Section Four: Focus
- Geographical Information Systems.

+11: Online Mapping for Everyone
by Christopher J. Andrews.
The Geographical Information Systems (GIS) profession has always
maintained a community-focused perspective that pervades both the
development and use of geospatial technology. That perspective
undoubtedly grows out of the fact that working with map data leads to
the realisation that the world is fundamentally finite and has few
insurmountable barriers.
Geospatial technologists currently find themselves in the whirlwind of
Web 2.0 technology, which has popularized web-based GIS in a
manner that threatens to wrest the concept of the GIS developer away
from the GIS community. The GIS establishment has the responsibility
to bring its heightened level of community awareness to these new
technologies and applications of GIS.
An area that has been underrepresented in GIS technology but which
addresses fundamental characteristics of GIS data openness and
sharing is making web-based GIS tools more accessible to visually
impaired and blind users.

Many writers have described the internet as a levelling technology that
improves access to information for everyone. The reality is that the
internet offers a variety of technologies for information sharing, some
of which are accessible to anyone who can read text and some which
are not as accessible. Companies are rapidly adopting web
development techniques such as Adobe Flash, graphic design and
[programming language] JavaScript to enhance the user's experience.
Unfortunately, poorly designed Flash animations, images with no
descriptive, alternative ('alt') text, and JavaScript-masked hyperlinks
(anchors in a Web page that use JavaScript to redirect the page instead
of simpler html) will impede the ability of blind users to access
internet-based information. Also, poor colour choices and fixed text
sizes may render websites useless for colourblind or moderately
visually impaired users.

The population of web users with some sort of visual impairment may
be larger than you realise. It's safe to say that at least 5.5 per cent of
the web-surfing population is colourblind (based on a calculation of the
proportion of the general public that is colourblind -
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/colorbl1.htm .
Male-to-female internet usage ratios actually suggest that the number
may be closer to 7 per cent or 8 per cent in the US). According to the
American Foundation for the Blind, approximately 1.5 million
American computer users are blind or visually impaired (see:
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=15#num ).

Furthermore, consider anecdotal evidence such as this: during a casual
conversation, a friend of mine mentioned that the CEOs of her two
former companies both needed to adjust web browser fonts to the
maximum size to read web pages. Some of the current web technology
trends include [programming tools] Ajax, user interface tools that
heavily employ JavaScript, complex style sheets that use fixed font
sizes and even mapping applications with built-in Flash and other less
accessible technologies. Because of these trends, a gap has developed
that threatens to make web-based GIS and non-GIS applications less
accessible to the blind and visually impaired.

There are compelling legal reasons for GIS developers to build web-
based mapping applications that provide access to the range of visually
impaired and blind web surfers. Numerous localities including the UK,
the US and many individual states have legislation that has been
interpreted by their respective courts to require that websites used by
government employees or served by the government to the general
public must be accessible to internet users with visual disabilities.

Once the need for creating accessible GIS websites is recognised, the
next step will be to figure out how to evaluate a website for
accessibility. For legally blind web surfers, a website needs to be
"readable," in that an assistive technology application is used to speak
aloud all of the readable text on a page with some context information
to support navigation. A combination of straightforward html element
use and nuanced page layout combine to facilitate website readability
for such users. Additional techniques improve readability for
colourblind and visually impaired users.

Although many projects may not budget the time for accessibility
development and the expense of acquiring text to speech software for
web browsing, the Lynx text-based Web browser
( http://lynx.browser.org/ )
can show the sighted user a rough idea of the website text that will be
read to a blind user. While not used heavily by the blind or visually
impaired community, the Lynx browser is free and offers sighted users
some insight as to how informative and navigable the text information
in a web page may be. Be aware that some page reading software will
process JavaScript and Flash, so Lynx is not a complete representation
of how a website reads to a blind surfer.
Once the GIS developer has digested all the tools to assess website
accessibility, the realisation strikes home that ultimately GIS has one
simple problem. The most popular representation for GIS data on the
internet is an image. Is it even possible to make an image more
accessible to blind or visually impaired users? In fact, there are many
techniques available to GIS developers to make map applications
compliant with accessibility laws and standards.

New technologies, such as the recently introduced Google KML search
( http://fastlink.headstar.com/kml1 )
may also open up the interaction between the web and the real world
for the blind mapping enthusiast. Future web mapping applications and
GPS sharing sites might keep in mind the use of technologies such as
voice- and GPS-enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs) and touch
tablet technology that open up geospatial data collection and analysis
to the blind.
The GIS industry has long recognized the levelling ability of mapping
data and technology. The industry must ensure that its traditional
community-based ethics perpetuate, even as inevitable changes in
technologies and applications take GIS in new directions. Ensuring and
enhancing accessibility to web mapping applications for blind and
visually impaired web users seem like the obvious place to start.
NOTE: Christopher J. Andrews is a Senior Consultant at MWH Global
in the US. This article originally appeared in Directions Magazine and
is reprinted here with permission, copyright Directions Media, 2007.
[Section Four ends].


++Special Notice: Web Accessibility Forum.

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All you need to register is a working email address, so come along and
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http://www.accessifyforum.com .

[Special notice ends].

[[snip]]

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##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein   "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC         <[hidden email]>
Canada H4G 1J4       <[hidden email]>
##########################################################
"A word to the wise is sufficient. For others, use more."
"Un mot suffit aux sages; pour les autres, il en faut plus."