IBM Tool Has an Eye for the Blind
From: InternetNews.com - 07/15/2004
By: Jim Wagner

Available for download on IBM's alphaWorks emerging technologies Web site is
aDesigner, a 4.6 MB Java-based application that shows how a site appears and
sounds to visually impaired users. ADesigner, which was developed in the IBM
Tokyo Research Lab, assesses sites on their colors and font choices, their
ability to change them upon request, how well they comply with accessibility
guidelines, alternate text for images, and link navigation. The program
splits the browser into a five-pane window: One pane displays the site as it
would appear to most people, a second pane depicts the site as it would
appear or read for people with poor vision, and the remaining three panes
list and outline problematic details of the site. The application ranks the
site's compliance, navigability, and listenability on a scale of 1 to 100,
and assigns the site an overall grade. Braille and Technology Center for the
National Federation of the Blind manager Steven Booth says site accessibility
to visually impaired users is being steadily improved by the developer
community, although hurdles still remain: "Labeling [text with images] is a
big problem, as well as having too many links per page--it's too confusing to
get through--or have forms that aren't labeled so you can't tell what field
you're in," he notes. ADesigner is only supported on Windows 2000 and XP,
although IBM officials say they are considering adding support for other
platforms in the future. IBM's Jim Chou says that "anything you can do" to
make using computers and the Web easier "is going to help a lot of people."
Chou says few such tools are currently available, but for now IBM has no
plans to commercialize the product. 


http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3381491
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0%2Caid%2C116934%2C00.asp
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/15/HNeyes_1.html