review of "How People with Disabilities Use the Web"

I think this document is really coming along!  Lots of good info.

A few comments:

the title "How Different Disabilities Affect Access to the Web"  might be 
easier to read as, "How access to the Web is affected by different 
disabilities."

There seem to be some formatting errors.  I don't think the bullets under a 
few of the disabilities should be  highlighted. For example, the bullets 
following "Barriers that people with blindness may encounter on the Web 
include:" are bolded.

"Alternate keyboards or switches" needs to include people with cognitive, 
or neurological disabilities as well as a couple other types of keyboards 
like so:
Hardware or software devices, used by people with physical, cognitive, or 
neurological disabilities, that provide an alternate way of creating 
keystrokes that appear to come from the standard keyboard. Examples include 
on-screen keyboards, eyegaze keyboards, large key keyboards, symbolic 
keyboards and sip-and-puff switches. Applications that can be operated 
entirely from the standard keyboard , with no mouse movements required, 
support single-switch access or access via alternative keyboards.

In the description of "Scanning Software" do we need to be more specific 
about the different types of scanning?  The "cross-hair" method doesn't 
seem to fit in this definition, although it *could*.  By cross-hair I mean 
the kind where you have a horizontal line that moves down the screen (like 
RJ Cooper's crossScanner).  when you press a switch, it stops and a 
vertical line then starts moving left to right until you press the switch 
again.  The item selected is the one at the intersection of the two 
lines.  There are also other methods that I am less familiar with.

In the scenarios..

I suggest at least one scenario for each time of assistive technology 
used.  Currently there are no scenarios for alternative keyboards, 
switches, or scanning software.  I think just one more scenario would be 
good.

this sentence is a little hard to understand: "She uses the speech output 
for rapid review of the text in a document, and has become accustomed to 
listening to the speech output at a speed that her co-workers cannot 
understand at all."
perhaps, "has become accustomed to listening to speech at a speed so fast 
that her co workers can not understand it at all."  ??

"Suddenly Kam finds that he has no idea what up to half of the 
instructional material is about, and his performance in the class starts to 
slip." might be easier to read as "Suddenly Kam finds that he has no idea 
what most of the instructional material is about, and his performance in 
the class starts to slip."

"Then she sends the URI of the virtual tour to friends, to see if they 
share her interest in trying a particularly good-looking new restaurant 
downtown that weekend."  use "interesting sounding" instead of "good-looking."

Received on Monday, 25 October 1999 14:09:23 UTC