(theme music playing) Welcome to our show at Information Technology. You know, Dave, we're living here in Austin with some of the greatest information technology accessibility groups there are. We've got Sharron Rush, Jim Allen, Jim Thatcher. In fact, you know, Jim Thatcher been around long before the super information highway. In fact, people who know him well since is saying he is so old that he's been around since before information. We'll go to Glenda Sims at the University. So, uh, what a great opportunity for us to do a show on information technology. It is like accessible information technology seems to have been born right here in Austin. Everybody who's anybody in the field seems to be right here in Austin. So what an opportunity to talk to the folks, the pioneers of the programs and bring it here to our show. Now, I had to get him to speed-dial this interWeb thing, so Dave did some research for me and this is what he showed me. >>The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. Yeah that was the former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was the former Chairman on the Senate Committee on Technology. So who better to explain the internet than him. Well, Dave, thank you for that research. Shall we start off with Sharron Rush? Sure, what a finder for people over there at Knowbility. Sharron is the Executive Director of Knowbility. Dave, we had a great time with Knowbility at the South by Southwest Conference. And lucky us, we get to interview Sharron again here at Knowbility, so Sharron thanks for having us. Oh, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for being interested in this. Sure. Now Sharron... What a great bunch of people, let me just add, what a great of bunch of people at Knowbility. We went to met them, I met them first at the South by Southwest Conference and could not believe what was going on there. They had all these booths set up with people with different abilities being able to use different equipment and actually showing and showcasing what was out there for people to use and going to Web sites and things while all these other people were running around wondering what to do with their business for accessibility. And I even saw other booths with people advertising, you know, to make your Web site accessible but they just didn't have the punch that Knowbility did because they had people there actually with disabilities using equipment and showing off what Knowbility does. And I just think that was great. And then after that, just a couple of weeks ago, we were invited to participate in a conference. Right at AccessU. And it was great, I learned so much about accessibility and I've been working on our Web site ever since. To try to do... Yeah, yeah. ...at least some of the things that was part of the conference, which is to... That's the challenge, isn't it? As you learn more, you want to do more. Right. And I think it's really great when people who are already interested in technology find out about accessibility and it becomes another cool new thing. They get very excited about... "Wow, I can reach all these all these other people and I can do..." You know, it's not a limiting thing, it's actually an expansive thing so I think a lot of people have that same reaction that you did, Dave. Yeah and one of first things that they talked about in the conference was making it accessible, you know, for people with disabilities just makes it more accessible for everyone. And the example that the speaker brought up was the ramps on the sidewalks, where 20, 30 years ago there were no ramps anywhere, they were all curbs and it opened up a whole new world for people not only in wheelchairs but people with strollers, people pulling or pushing mail bags, carts, just...you know... Kids on bikes. People with strollers. Dragging their suitcases. Oh, and you know that guy who's unloading his beer truck on 6th Street is very happy about the curb... That guy's happy too. That guy's happy too. Well, with Dave and I, think about accessibility we're also thinking about ramps and things of that nature, maybe push buttons for doors. But when we talk about accessibility for the internet, what exactly does that mean, Sharron? Well, I think the analogy to curb cuts is a good one. And when you think about ramps that are there on the Web, often have to do with providing an alternative to any content that is purely visual so if you have say, a piece of navigation, like a button, we think of the buttons on the Web. Well, often those aren't actually words on there that say home, or about us, or contact us, they're actually images of words. So if someone is blind or visually impaired and uses screen reading technology, those words aren't read by the screen reader. So what's needed is to put just a little bit of code behind the image that says, what is this image? what is it doing, where is it going to take me in the case of a navigation button. Or if it's a graph or a chart, what is the data that's embedded in that image that I need in order to use the Web in the same way as anyone else. So that's one really very important thing, is an alternative for content that is purely visual. But another thing that's really important is to make sure that any kind of function on the Web site is... that you can operate that through the the keyboard, that you don't just depend on a mouse. And there are many, many different situations and techniques for it. But really, the idea that you don't want any of those very dynamic things where new page opens or new menu opens. You know those controls where a menu drops down, You don't want those to be operated solely by using the mouse. You want to put the code in there that allows to also be operated by the keyboard. Now, those are two things that sound very simple but they encompass many, many different situations and techniques. There are some other things like contrasts, the amount of color contrast between a letter and the background of that letter. That are important for people with low vision. Um, there are hearing for people who don't hear content. If there is an audio track or a video file or just you know, something is just delivered as an audio bit of information. You wanna make sure that there's a transcript or something for someone who doesn't hear it. So, really, I think the issues of accessibility are to make things as multi-model or universally designed. Universal design is a concept that we hear a lot now as we talk about Web design. When you were at South by Southwest, have you learned about how... "Wow, you make it accessible and it's easier for everyone." Right. There's a lot of people using them and not just for accessibility but people nowadays are loading up Web pages from their cell phones. And that is something that is simple and easy and accessible and it works much better even on the cell phone for some people who doesn't have a disability. And those navigation buttons that I mentioned, if the code is behind them that says this is the button to go to the homepage, this is about us, this is contact us then those words are what's gonna appear on the screen on a mobile device. Right and we'll go downloading a quarter of the time. Right. Oh. Let's say I'm a small businessman or maybe I'm just an individual and I do want to make my site accessible, what's the first thing I need to do? Well, what I would recommend, you know, there are many standards for accessibility out there. Several States have laws, there's a federal guidelines out of Section 508, but the ones that are the most recently passed, the most coherent of modern technology are the W3C standards called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines with the lovely acronym of WCAG. So WCAG 2.0, it was just released in December. And it's a very wonderfully usable document because you can go there and you could say I'm gonna use style sheets, you know, you can say these are the technologies that I want to use on this Web site. And it will give you the list of the kinds of standards that you need to be thinking about. and from those standards it will link to techniques documents that'll tell you how to do it, it's a very, very use... I think that, that would be my advise to anyone who's just starting out. Go to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Part of the Web Accessibility Initiative, at the W3C, which is, you know, the W3C is the global developer of all the standards, HTML and all the other standards for the web so you just can't go wrong. Okay... Folks can also find out about this stuff from your Web site. Uh-hmm. At knowbility.org., it's right there on the bottom of the screen - knowbility.org. Now if someone is just a little bit afraid of regulations or they're just a little bit lazy, is there another way they could make their site accessible, or mostly accessible without having to try to use a lot of guidelines. Well the... making sure that you have some kind of text alternative to video and audio content. That would be the first thing. So video content like captioning that Dave and I do for our show. You would caption your videos and ... And audio describe. And audio describe. If it's a very high active, you know, if there's lot of action, if you just have three people sitting around you might not need audio description. You know, just sitting around chatting like we are. Right. A handsome guy in a cowboy hat meets two beautiful women and some other person. (Laughter) Don't talk about the cameraman like that. Okay and, and I, years ago, I started to make my site accessible before I even knew about it, any of these standards. And it's...some of it is easy to do. Say if you've got pictures on your Web site, there's an auto-text command that you'll probably find in a software unless you're using a builder Web page where you could describe the picture that's at your Web page. And it just helps folks out a lot and it's just a good way to let folks know that you want to include them in your audience. And then, equally important, is the keyboard access. You want to make sure that any kind of function... When people say "oh, do you need 508 standards? Are you WCAG 2.0 compliant, level A, level B?" And for me, the thumbnail definition of accessibility is to say, can a person with a disability get the same information? Can a person with a disability perform the same functions as any other person? And so if you make sure you have keyboard accessibility and that there is text alternative to any nontext content, you're in pretty good shape. Now, Dave and I occasionally put PDF files on our Web site. We've got a health segment coming up, where we've got a great chef on. He's gonna post some recipes on our site. We wanna make sure the PDF files are accessible. How do we know that they're accessible? I mean when I look at a PDF file, it's just text, I'm assuming it's accessible. Am I wrong? You could be very wrong. And I think one of the things that you really want to take advantage of is that of more current versions of the Adobe Acrobat Software, now includes accessibility features and you can turn on the accessibility features which will allow you to tag the reading order. So, for example, if you have a PDF file that's like 200 pages long and all the texts can be read but it has chapters and maybe the chapter is, you know, on your chef example, Cajun recipes or Italian recipes or how to buy the right kind of cooking utensils or something. If you have those chapter titles designated as a certain header level then the screen reading software can also identify that, and so instead of having me need to read 200 pages to find that Italian recipe that I'm looking for, I can scan through using the headings and actually, you know, get to where I need to go more quickly which to me is an accessibility issue. You don't want someone who's dependent on a screen reader to have to read through, you know, many, many, many pages, if you provide the designated divisions in the same way that a cited user would use a chapter heading. Can you tell us a little bit more about Knowbility and what you do here? Oh sure. Well, Knowbility is a 501C3 non-profit organization. We were founded in 1999 and basically, we started it because we didn't find an organization that really addressed that intersection of technology, disability and the greater community. And as more and more of our life functions are moving to the Web, interactions with Government, with employers, with education, consumer activities, social activities, it now longer is just an issue of, you know, here's a cool thing that I might do every once in a while. It's become a necessity of life. And so for our organization, accessibility is really a basic civil right. You have to have access to the Web in order to have equality as a citizen. And so it became a really a passionate undertaking for us because, mostly, people don't sit down and say: Well I'm gonna just lock all the blind people off my Web site, you know, they do it because they don't understand. And as you educate people and raise awareness of what the barriers are in the technology that exist and as people learn about that, they really are so willing to make the changes that they need to do. And so we started a contest called the accessibility internet rally where we challenged technology professionals to learn about accessibility and then use their skills to build accessible Web sites for non-profit groups. Well, I mean, you talk about win-win-win, the technologist learned this whole new field, non-profit organizations got Web sites that in 1999 when we started many had never had a Web site at all. And now, non-profits are still struggling to find the funds to devote to the technology that they need. So, it's very useful for that organization or those organizations. And then also it just raises awareness of the general issue to the general public in a way that's... You know, it's fun. It's not like: Oh, the Government passed another regulation and you to do this, it's like, wow, I can win a contest, by doing this really, you know, really smartly. And then you mentioned the excitement at South by Southwest. We were very, very pleased to be invited to talk about this on some panels at South by Southwest in 2001, I think... 2002, and we've been part of it ever since because it's a great way to get this issue out into the technology. You know that all the cool groovy people go to South by Southwest. Right. It's International, you get, what, 12,000 people. Yeah, yeah. And so when you're in the middle of South by Southwest with a big booth and like you said, some of that is just a technology people have never ever seen before. And so, you know, they are out there looking at this assistive technology going: Whoa! I didn't know people could do that on the Web. And then you bring them to their Web site that they've designed and they see that the assistive technology goes all cat-a-wam-pus when you try get on their Web site and they say, you know, and they don't like that. Dave: Yeah, wow I thought I had a good site. Sharron: Yeah, I thought I had a really good site. So that, South by Southwest was a really great opportunity for us to get the message out again. And then, from there we started getting more requests for training because part of the accessibility internet rally was to train people. So we started doing more training. We worked in the schools with the, in K thru 12 schools with a project that we have called ATSTAR. And that stands for Assistive Technology Strategies Tools Accommodations and Resources and it's an online training where we help teachers, K thru 12 teachers who have an obligation to provide assistive technology to their students but often don't know anything about it. And so, the ATSTAR program helps them understand what assistive technology is, how to apply it and it also connects them to a greater community in practice. So, they have forums where they can talk to their peers and talk to assistive technology experts. And then, from all of these programs, Knowbility has really been organic in its growth because as we put more information out there, more needs are kind of brought to us. And so, recently, oh, probably in the last four years or so, we've developed services where we can actually offer consulting and training and Web site assessment and remediation to businesses and government agencies who need it. I think we should mention too that an accessible Web site does not mean a boring Web site. Accessible Web site can be graphic intensive, movies, movie graphics but as long you code it right, it could still be accessible. Yes, absolutely. That's a good point to make. Because people forget that. They think in order to make their Web sites accessible, they have to make them dull and that's absolutely not true. A lot of the techniques that are, since the W3C passed or finalized the WCAG, there's also been a set of guidelines. I know Gene that you're not fond of guidelines but I think these guidelines are absolutely so helpful for accessible rich internet applications or ARIA. And so, if you do a search for ARIA techniques it will tell you all those cool widgity, flashy, page-changing kinds of buttons and things that you can do on your Web site can be... You don't have to give them up, you just put in the code and make them accessible. Also there are some JavaScript toolkits like the Dojo toolkit that just build the accessibility right in. So, you can just use that and you have the accessibility features built right in. That's fantastic, looks like we've got our work cut out for us, Dave. Absolutely, we sure do. And when I say "we," I mean you. You, me, yeah that's usually what you mean. I appreciate it. Thanks for being on the Dave and Gene Show. That's Gene and Dave Show. Oh, yeah, right. I thought this time though, it was: The Sharron and Guys Show. Yeah, we'll work on that one, too. So while spending the day at Knowbility, we also got to talk to one of their employees, Desiree, who is a delightful person. I also met her first at South by Southwest and got to talk to her more... well, where I could hear her, in that Knowbility conference room that day. Yeah, she was a real pleasure to talk with, let's have a look. Dave, remember when we were at South by Southwest we spent some time with Desiree and she offered to educate us some more, so we're lucky to be in her company again. Well, I remember spending time with Desiree when I couldn't find you 'cause you were out chasing the beer girl at South by Southwest. It's how I remember it. Desiree: Is that were you where? Desiree thanks again for being on our show and... Thank you for having me. ...bringing your toys out here to Knowbility. Well, I call them toys because I think they're some really neat gadgets but really they help you get through the internet world, right. Necessities, yeah. They're more necessities than toys, I think. But they could be toys too. Now Desiree a lot of people out there have no concept how a person who's blind could read in the internet, read their e-mail perhaps or read anything for that matter. Talk to us like we're newborns or we're just kids. How can you access information? Okay well there's a couple of different ways but the root of it is to have what's called a screen reader. In my case, it's Jaws for Windows manufactured by a company called Freedom Scientific. And what that does is that it enables the computer to talk. So everything that you're doing on your computer, the screen reader's following you and telling you, you're in Outlook. And it'll read you your e-mail, you're in Internet Explorer, and it'll read you your Web sites. And then, through Jaws or whatever screen reader you're using, there is... there are other drivers that will run what's called the refreshable Braille display. And with that, the Braille is actually, it's like an electronic machine that hooks up to your computer and then the screen reader runs that machine so that you can actually read the Braille and read the content that's on your computer whether it's Outlook or Internet Explorer. Well, that's great, can we hear an example of how you read the Web? Sure. This is Jaws for Windows again. >>If you haven't ever tried operating a mouse without the use of your arms, read a Web site without your eyes, or listen to a webcast without hearing it, you may never have considered the challenges made on people with disabilities trying to access information and services from the internet. For ten years, Knowbility has worked with communities across the country to raise awareness... Wow that's fantastic. So if a Web page is coded correctly, you can read it just as well as anyone else. Yes. Now it was just saying something about Knowbility. Is that from the Knowbility Web site? This is actually the blog that's linked to the Knowbility Web site and I actually am the main poster on the blog. Oh, okay. It's universallydesigned.net and it's, basically, my experiences with Web sites technology, I've got stuff about iPods and iPhones and access to books, different things like that on there. And this is basically through Knowbility. Like I said you can link to it through their site but it's also a separate site right now. Now you also mentioned refreshable Braille, what exactly is that and how would you use it? So I don't know if you can see this machine here? Yes. Yeah, that's fine. So this machine here is called the Braille Sense. They have several other types of machines. This is running independently of the computer but it does have a refreshable Braille display, and what that means is that as I push this buttons, the Braille is moving. Well, what exactly happens when you push the buttons? Is that another word or what? I'm advancing lines. And you can do it by word, you can do it by sentence. Any of that. And then, this top part here, is actually, you can enter in information like it has a word processor so you can type in, in Braille. It's a Braille keyboard rather than a QWERTY keyboard. And you are able to add a document, send e-mails. This actually has it's own Web browser. So you can access the Web with that. Yes and it actually does better with the same sort of site that like a mobile phone would use. So for instance I use Facebook, I go to the mobile version on here because it's got smaller processor and can't load big Web sites very easily. Wow, when I think of Facebook, I think of something that, I mean, like, you really have to have vision to see around it, got all these graphics and pictures and whatnot but you can navigate there fine. For the most part, they recently did a redesign of the site. And I actually have some comments on it on the blog. It originally was... That happened when we were at South by Southwest, right? Yes, yes it did. You woke up... I woke up one day and you know went to bed, it was fine, got up and tried to get on there and it was a totally different entity. It was just like, what happened? And so now I've kind of resorted to only using the mobile site, the mobile version of the site on the computer because it's so much easier and so much more compact. Which instead of www.facebook.com, it's m.facebook.com right? Yes. And other Web sites work the same way? I'm assuming are better for the machine? The mobile versions? For the mobile... Yeah. Twitter? The mobile version of Twitter works better although, it doesn't work as well because you have to run Firefox to run the mobile version of Twitter. Oh, okay. Twitter's a little tricky. But most, I mean most, like, my banking site will run on here, it's just slower. It'll...it'll work but it's very slow because the processor just can't keep up. Desiree, were there some things that you were demonstrating at the South by Southwest conference that our audience should know about? You also had your iPod with you. I did have my iPod with me. And you were showing me how. It's just a standard Nano...iPod Nano. Apple has actually added a feature on that you can make it talk so you can make all the menu items on the iPod talk by just checking a box in iTunes. And then iTunes loads these voice tags so that as you're scrolling through on your little quick wheel on your iPod, it's reading to music, movies, you know, podcasts, whatever you're looking at. So other, I mean I would not have probably owned an iPod, originally, but once they came up with that, I just could not resist having 16 gigabytes and you know, two fingers this tiny. So, it's awesome. And then I was also demonstrating Jaws for Windows that which you just heard. I had this machine and I did have an independent Braille display that's...that hooks to the computer as well. It's not working right now so I didn't... But people have questions, Desiree, can they reach you through Knowbility Web site or... Yes they can go to the Knowbility Web site, they can also go to the blog because I'm always looking at... anybody can comment on the blog, put their e-mail on there, whatever. I'm always looking at those comments. And I'm interested in a lot of discussion that I haven't had as much as I'd like, yet, about accessibility and other people's experiences and feelings about somebody with disability. Everybody pretty much knows somebody with a disability. You know, I mean, nowadays, you know, somebody knows somebody who's dyslexic or has any kind of disability. Sure, oh, absolutely, yeah. So, I would be interested to hear a lot of discussion on the blog and... What you would like me... Oh, you know, try using this thing or what do you think about this? Then, I can write or post about it, you know. Fantastic. That's, probably, the best way but I do have contact information on Knowbility's Web site also. Good deal. Thank you very much, Desiree. So I learned from the conference, Desiree, that I went to that the Gene and Dave show's Web site is not quite up to par. Have you had a chance to look at it? I... Yeah. I looked at it. Were you able to get anything out of it? Oh, yeah. It's not terrible. You just need to add some headers and some little coding things. It's really not...you know, I can give you examples of worse Web sites. Great, great. There's a lot of Web sites that are completely flash-driven which in itself isn't bad. But when they don't code their buttons, then they just get One button, two button, three button and you don't know what they do. Do they play it, do they rewind it? What does this button do? And half of the content isn't read at all because it's not, it's not all tagged or anything. Maybe with your tutelage and if it ain't too much of Knowbility we could make our site fully accessible. Yes, yes. That's our goal. Definitely. We'd love to help. Alright. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your time. No problem. You know Dave for people going to school, and they need some type of information technology tool, they gotta get assessed by someone that knows about those kind of things. And I understand you did an interview with Kate... Kate May. Right she's been a dear friend of mine for a long time and when we started doing technology, I just knew we had to go talk to her because she uses technology in her daily life everyday. And, also helps students in the Austin School District to find out what technology is best for them and what ways that they can advance their learning and also eventually, their careers. I went to her home office and it was a great experience. And she showed me a lot of things with her communication device and computer. So let's take a look. Come on in. And today I'm with Kate May, who has invited me into her home, to her home office here. She's showing me her communication device and some of the peripherals that she uses on her computer to make it accessible for all kinds of different applications. I'm sure she's gonna tell us about it. But first why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, Kate. Thank you. >>Hello my name is Kate May and I work for the school district's assistive technology team. If you want to know something about technology, you go to the school district. So what do you do at this school district team, Kate? As part of the assistive technology team, I support students who use communications devices such as the one I am using to speak with now. I also assist with the assessment process in determining what assistive devices are really best for students. Wow, that's got to be pretty hard, like, some are able to point with their fingers and some that have troubles moving their head or... I'm sure you work with people with all kinds of disabilities. Who really makes the ultimate decision in choosing the tech devices? I believe that the students are the best person to make that decision on what technologies are really best for them. Wow, also I think you're involved in some type of organization or you've started an organization to help people, not only students, but adults such as myself, find out what type of devices are out there and we can use. Is that, is that correct? Yeah. I am also an Executive Director of Texas Technology Empowerment Resources Advocacy and Advocacy Incorporated. Texas TERA. That's hard to say. That's hard to say. What's your main focus for Texas Tera. Our mission is to support people with disability to achieve and maintain an independent, adaptive and really effective use of assistive technologies and community support networks. So how do you go about doing someting about like that? I mean, you can't just take all this huge equipment out to somebody's house right? Let them try it out? Well... A few things, you could do that. Yeah. The organization was founded by a group of young adults with disabilities. The groups are in need for a facility that will located in a house where people with disabilities and limitations where they've got ...assistive devices in their user settings. and have the opportunity to apply and then compare them. Cool so you're going to get a house. The internet is a network of computer that allows the world to exchange information, purchase items and services, manage money and communicate with one another. So, far what you've said, it's, uh, things that everybody uses. Not just people with the disabilities but everybody in general uses their computers for banking and Interneting, everything from making purchases to sending e-mails and videos to their friends right? Yeah. But there's ways you help people to access all that stuff? Yeah, yeah...but people with disabilities ...technologies... people with disabilities a chance to be on an equal playing field as everyone else. Alright. Most people with disabilities are able to access computers and the internet just by using the standard keyboard and mouse. Some people with disabilities may need an alternative means of interfacing with computers such as keyboards with larger keys or a unique QWERTY keyboard with extra keys can be selected using the standard mouse or a specialized mouse. So if they can't use the keyboard... Specialized mouse allow you to have limited or uncontrollable movements to control mouse functions. Yeah well that's where I was getting to. You must have read my mind Kate. I'm a mind reader. You're a mind reader. So you have some devices here I see. Yeah. You have a special mouse device? Yeah, it's a joystick mouse. And it works just like a joystick on a wheelchair. Oh, okay. Or video games. Just move the mouse around these words... And you just happen to have the Texas Tera Web site open... Kate: Yeah. Dave: Your company there and the address on that I see... is www.texastera.org and that should be showing up right now down there on the bottom of your screen so you can go grab a pen and paper and write that down. Yeah and what's really nice about it is you can actually scroll down. Just push the speed. If you can't control... If you can't control it, ... You can scroll down. Oh, you slowed it down, I see. Okay so the mouse isn't moving quite as fast now as it was. If you've got to get something tricky. Yeah or you can go back... Go back to your earlier speed. Yeah. Wow, that's pretty convenient. There's also ones which let users control with their heads. They wear a reflex dot on their forehead and receive a fix on their head movements. So they can just move their head and it makes the mouse go to a certain point. And yeah we'll... One of the newest exciting technology is "eyegaze." Just by moving their eyes, a person can select things on their computer screen. This is fascinating piece of technology that has opened up the road for people with very limited movement. Well, thanks, Kate. I really appreciate you taking the time out to show us some of your technology devices here. And it was really great meeting with you. I also noticed on the TERA site, there's a picture of us on the homesite of us on the beach. So, it brings back good memories of us playing on the beach and getting out and about. And hopefully we can do that again someday. Yeah. And thanks a lot for your time. Really appreciate it. And we will see you next time. Alright, Dave. Alright, thanks. That was great, Dave. You know, you talked about the, um, where the computer can detect your eyes and you could scan your eyes across the letters or words or whatever, and the computer would pick up on what you're gazing at. Right. But they call that some... They call that eye gaze technology. But you know, back in the day when I first started off, we had what we call an eye gaze board. It was a big Plexiglas board with either words or letters written on them. And you would hold it up, and the person that you were talking to would follow up certain... they would stare at certain letters or words on the screen, and by that way, you could tell what they were trying to say. And I took that concept one step further and developed a way to communicate underwater for quads like myself. And in fact, I posted a story on it, "The Urge to Submerge," which is on my Web site at www.GenosPlace.org. Let's get on to one of our friends that we've also met at the conference, Glenda Sims, who've taught us about programming in HTML to make Web pages accessible. That's right. So, all you people that are doing your own Web pages, check this out for just a little bit of information on how to program your Web pages to make it a little more accessible for everyone. Well, I should say I'm using Dreamweaver software, but you could use just about any kind of software for this. That's right. We're focusing today on the main concepts. You should be able to use your software to do any of these things that we're talking about today. Alright, Glenda, we're at my personal Web page: GenosPlace.org. How do we test this to know if it's successful for folks with disabilities? There is a tool inside Dreamweaver that allows us to test any page or an entire site that we have in our Dreamweaver application for developing Web sites. If you'll go up to the site menu and select reports, I'll show you this really nice report feature. It's defaulted to report on the current document, which is exactly what we want. We're testing your home page. We're not testing your whole site right now. Okay. And down in the select reports area, you'll notice that there's a checkbox for accessibility. I'd like you to check that checkbox. And then, as you check that box, another button highlighted down at the very bottom, it's not real obvious, but you see down at the bottom left where it says report settings, this is an important feature for us to click into because it's gonna give us the options as to what we're gonna test for. Dreamweaver has added this feature. It's been in there at least three versions now. And they cover both the United States 508 accessibility guideline as well as the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And while it might be tempting to leave them all on, I tend to find that it's a bit overwhelming to deal with them all at once. So, what I do is I actually come down to the disable button, and I disable everything. So, that's now turned all of them off, then I take my cursor to 508 and just click on the words 508. Over just a little bit more, click on the words 508. To say, you know, I just want the whole 508 standard and come down and select enable. And you'll notice that over to the right, it says 508. There's a triangle to the left of 508. If you can click on that triangle to open up 508, you're gonna see all the checkpoints that are being checked. And while Glenda said there are only 16, there are 16 defined checkpoints, but some of them have multiple ways of being tested. So, if you wanted to, you could come in here and turn pieces of 508 on or off. For me, I'm just really focused. I wanna us to take 508. Let's leave it all on. So now that we've done that, we've selected 508, if you'll go to the right blue button that says okay. And it will save that setting, so you'll only have to run in there once if you always want to do 508. Very good. So at this point, we really... We went to the site menu, we selected reports, defaulted to current documents, we clicked on the accessibility link, we wanted in the report settings to do the 508 test, now we're ready to go. If you'll press that run button in the top right-hand corner, it will do an automated accessibility test on this one page and show us the results in the bottom window. Let's look at some of the issues that we're seeing reported down in this window. Alright. Okay? The first one that I see there is avoid causing the screen to flicker, okay? Could that be from my blinking... It would be, and you happen to have a flicker. But honestly, this testing tool didn't even know how to see that. The human eye knows how to see it and can say, "I see flicker, or I see nothing that's flickering." The computer isn't quite sure how to do that. So, what it does is it prompts you and says, "Hey, Gene, intelligent Web developer, you didn't do this, did you?" And notice on the far left of that line, you see where it has a question mark? See that question mark over there? Yes. What that's saying is that this issue cannot be automatedly tested. Oh, okay. You, intelligent Web developer have to make a decision, okay? But there are some further down that are red Xs, and they say failed. Oh, my goodness. I failed. Okay. This is some of the 25% that can be automatedly tested. So, when I use this tool, what I will tend to do is I'll go over to that column with the question marks and the Xs, and I'll actually sort on that column. So, you see that little gray box above that question mark? That's a sortable button. Yeah, right there. If you'll click on that. What that did is that brought all our red Xs together. Oh. And I would know that all of those, according to this testing tool, are absolute failures. Let's look at the very first one. Sure. Non-space image with valid alt is the issue. It's failed. There's no alternative to find for a particular image. It's saying that's for sure failure. But if you've never been to any accessibility training before, you're like, "Well, thanks for telling me. But what do I do about it? I don't know." And this is what I love about this tool. If you will click on that line, and let's try double-clicking. What it's gonna do is it's gonna take you to the exact line of the code... that the problem is in. And I'll probably have to look around a little bit. There is a way for us to also get to an explanation of how to solve the problem from here. It might have been right-clicking on that particular item down on the report. But this is taking us to the exact area. Now, you recently attended an accessibility conference and training on how to make Web sites accessible. Yes, ma'am. And do you remember some of the discussions about images and what makes them inaccessible? I believe that unless there's some sort of description, ALT text tag attached to the picture, someone using the screen reader would only know there's a image there but wouldn't know what the image represents or what it's of. That's exactly right. If a person is visually impaired, can't see the screen for whatever reason, then pictures are black boxes to them. There's no concept of what's in there. There might be some really important information. And the most the computer could tell is that it looks to me... Did you win a Dewey award? I was nominated for a Dewey award, yes. Awesome, awesome. So, I happen to notice that the name of the JPEG is Dewey award. Yes. And I'm familiar with the Dewey award, so I know a little bit about that. But most people coming to this, if all the screen reader had was, "gifts/Deweyawardjpeg," it wouldn't mean much to them. And so what we can do is on that particular line, if you'll come in... And I usually do it after the JPEG. You can do it anywhere after the JPEG piece. You can do it before the width. Yeah, that'd be right there. We'll just get our cursor right in there. And if you'll type A-L-T equals... And then, an open quote. And then, let's think about what you would say about that particular image, but briefly. So, no more than 150 characters, just something really short and brief. Well, here's Sharron Rush... Sharron Rush. ...George and myself. Uh-hmm. There's a Dewey award there. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, that's gorgeous. That's gorgeous. So, I want to say that the... Let's see. Where did I go? Here we are... here somewhere. Uh-hmm. The most critical thing for me when I see this picture is Gene accepting Dewey award or nomination or whatever you wanna say. End quote? And then, end quote. And then, you wanna have a little... one space between there. And then, that's resolved that issue. So, the nice thing about Dreamweaver here is that it's allowing us within the development tool to run these tests, it'll show us errors that it knows are wrong. If you double-click on one of the errors, it will take right to the spot in the code where you could fix it. But you notice that it's not doing a lot of work for you. It's just helping... I think of it as helping point my eyes and my brain in the right direction. Alright. So, where... We found the area and the code that needed correction. Uh-hmm, uh-hmm. It brought us up here to the Dewey award. Right. We clicked right after Dewey award. Uh-hmm. Typed in alt equals, then open quote, description of the picture, end quote, and then left a space. Now, when a screen reader comes to this picture, it'll just read out, "Gene accepting Dewey award." It will. And most screen readers, the most commonly used screen reader in the United States is called JAWS, Job Access with Speech is what that stands for. It probably has more than 75% market penetration in the United States. And it would actually come to that image. And it would say, "Image. Gene accepting Dewey award." And then, it would pause. And then, it would move on to the next thing that it needed to say. The other really neat thing about that is while adding an alt attribute helps you pass schedule 508 standard and helps people using screen readers, it also is going to help search engines, because search engines like Google cannot see what's in your picture, either. So, if we were to Google, say, my name, and a Dewey award, you would come to this page? Yes, yes. And it would know, it would know specifically that that image is about you and the Dewey award. So, it's not just a random picture on the page and those words somewhere else on the page. It knows that that picture is about those things. You know, Glenda, I've got to tell you, this is very exciting to me. The one thing that you're telling me was it's better to make Web pages accessible because when you do it right, it's easier for people with mobile devices to pick up on Web sites and such. Right. That was one of examples that we've talked about at the conference. The little handheld cell phones that everybody carries now, and they can cruise the Internet. The simpler, the better on those. And by making it accessible, in turn, a lot of times it makes it simpler. So, you can use it on the... Use it with your mobile device. And you know, Web pages that are accessible don't have to be boring. That's right. And Glenda showed us some examples. And if you go to Zen Garden, you'll see the one page that has all the information that's perfectly accessible. And then, we styled it up with a couple of Cascading Style Sheets. And you could see what a huge improvement it is but it has the same information, a screen reader will read it the same way, and a mobile device will pick it up easily. And so, we wanna thank you for showing me that. And I'm glad there's just so much to learn. We better get busy. That's right, that's right. You know, Dave, I can do a couple of information technology conferences around the country, and there's three that people really need to go to. The first is the CSUN conference out in Northridge, California. That's in March of every year. And then, there's the Closing the Gap conference, which is another great conference on information technology. We have the South by Southwest conference here in Austin, but information on all those conferences will be in a PDF file on our Web site. That will be good information for you to pull out. I also have some Web addresses that Glenda gave us and information on free Web checkers. So, make sure you go to our Web site. And you know, Dave, you'll find accessibility information all over the place. In fact, I was on iTunes, and I found a woman named Cynthia Curry in the state of Maine who has a number of podcasts on iTunes that are all free. Just look up Cynthia Curry, and that information again is on our Web site. She's got some great information on there. Check that out, as well. Well, that's it for this show. Thanks for tuning in. Well, you know, Dave, before we go, since this show is on technology, I got a present for you here. A present? For me? You bet ya. All for you. Hey, this looks like some super-duper remote control. But what does it control? Well, all you do is press that red button there, buddy, and you'll see what it does. This red button right here? Yup, press that one. You got it. What do you mean? You got it. What's happening? (alien noise) We'd like to thank you for joining "The Dave and Gene Show." Hope you've learned a lot. That's it. So long, folks. Thank you for joining us.