12 Accessible Information: An Overview

Learning Objectives

Increasingly complex media and technology are being used to transmit information. However, a degree of familiarity with new technological developments is required to make the best use of information media and technologies, so it is important that this area remains accessible to the visually impaired and blind community. It should be noted that there are currently many people who either do not have access to modern communications and information technology or do not wish to use it. It is therefore important that information continues to be provided in other lower tech and more traditional ways.

This chapter opens with a review of the principles and technologies of low vision aids that are used to access print. Sections on audio transcription and Braille as access routes to print information then follow. However, it is the recent developments in speech processing and speech synthesis technology that are the drivers of the wider use of audio as an information interface for visually impaired and blind people. Major sections of the chapter describe the accessible computer and the accessible Internet. Both are extremely important in the processing and provision of information and there are many interface options to make these systems accessible to visually impaired and blind people. Finally, since telecommunications is an important information channel and mobile telephony is increasingly obtaining computer and Internet capabilities, the chapter closes by reviewing accessible telecommunications technology.

The learning objectives for the chapter are:

•Understanding a taxonomy for low vision aids.

•Appreciating the assistive technologies that are used for the audio and tactile transcriptions of print materials.

•Understanding of the different input and output devices that can be used to make computer systems accessible.

•Understanding how the World Wide Web can be made accessible to visually impaired and blind people.

•Studying technologies for accessible telecommunications.

386 12 Accessible Information: An Overview

12.1 Introduction

Access to information is becoming increasingly important and the term Information Society is often used, with a particular stress on electronically transmitted information. Most of this information is obtained via the visual and auditory senses and therefore, unless it is available in alternative formats and/or appropriate technology is available to make it accessible, people with sensory impairments will be unable to access a large part of this information.

Electronic transmission by information and telecommunications technologies has become extremely important in the industrialised countries. The term digital divide has been used to describe the gap between those who do and do not have access to computer technology and the Internet in particular and it has been suggested that those on the wrong side of the digital divide will be the new havenots.

Access to computer technology is generally through a graphical user interface and therefore not easily accessible to blind people. Screen reader technology (see Section 12.6 and Chapter 13) is fairly well developed, but can only be used if documents are appropriately designed. The issues are particularly complex in the context of the World Wide Web with its multimedia, multimodal potential for the presentation of information using text, speech, animations, photographs, video, colour effects and sound effects. However, as well as complicating accessibility, this multimedia potential also enables the Web to be made accessible. This requires attention to the accessibility of both web authoring tools and web content. As will be discussed in Section 12.7, guidelines for both areas have been drawn up by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative.

In the area of telecommunications, simple accessibility features can be used to enable blind and visually impaired people to use telephone handsets. Voice dialling and voice caller identification are also available. The increasing popularity of ‘texting’ or sending short messages in text form using mobile telephones requires more sophisticated technological solutions based on screen readers. An overview of accessible telecommunications for blind and visually impaired people is presented in Section 12.8.

Despite the increasing focus on information and communication technologies, print media continue to be an important and frequently used means of conveying information. In addition to text, print media include tables, graphs, pictures, photographs, maps, musical notation, as well as several other types of graphical representations. Access to the different types of print media for blind and visually impaired people raises both common and distinct issues. These issues and the associated technologies will be discussed in this chapter and in more detail in Chapters 13–16.

An important and frequently forgotten group of technologies are the so-called ‘low vision’ aids. They are designed for blind and visually impaired people with some useful vision. Low vision aids to support access to print media will be discussed in Sections 12.2 and 12.3. The chapter will then continue in Sections 12.4 and 12.5 with an overview of information access based on two of the main sensory modalities blind and visually impaired people use to access information, hearing