[WEB4LIB] Re: Non-A.D.A. compliant software woes (Docutek)

[Richard L. Goerwitz III]

Dan Lester wrote:

> Realistically, ADA isn't being widely enforced, at least on the web.

With all the hoopla over people with disabilities, including low
vision, it's amazing to me that university public relations staff
(and generally those in charge of the "look and feel" of the web)
manifest so little concern for ADA issues.

There are a few programs out there that massage web pages into a
simpler format for people with low vision (or who use screen text
to voice technology).  They work halfway.

Somebody at Brown University had the neat idea of putting up a
form that would provide easy access to one of these services
(so they could run arbitrary web pages through it).

I had the thought that what we really ought to be doing is hook-
ing one of these programs up to a rewriting proxy server, so
that we'd get, in essence, a real-time ADA-compliant mirror of
our main webserver.  It wouldn't be 100% effective.  But the
proxy software I wrote for Brown actually has an API for adding
extension modules (for additional rewrites).  So it would be a
comparatively easy task to take software like, e.g., Betsie,
and make it into a module that ran under an instance of our
proxy.  What's great about this solution is that, unlike Betsie
on its own, a proxy-ized Betsie would work with cookies and
with pages requiring authentication.

I just wish that there were software out there that did a better
job of massaging web pages.  It wouldn't be tremendously diffi-
cult to write software like this - if the goal were, say, 95%
effectiveness, or perhaps even 99% effectiveness.  Even that
would be a godsend for people with low vision.

-- 

Richard Goerwitz                               richard at Goerwitz.COM
tel: 401 438 8978