Web site designed for the blind

["Wolf-Dietrich Trenner" <taubblind_bEi_post.de>]

zur Kenntnis

Wolf-Dietrich Trenner
Foerdergemeinschaft fuer Taubblinde e.V.
http://selbsthilfe.seiten.de

-----Urspruengliche Nachricht-----
Von: James A Ansley <jansl_bEi_world.std.com>
Datum: Montag, 6. April 1998 21:34
Betreff: Web site designed for the blind


The attached is excerpted from the 5 April 1998  issue of Edupage, a
summary of news about information technology, from Educom. Educom is "a
Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities
seeking to transform education through the use of information
technology."

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WEB SITE DESIGN FOR THE BLIND

There are a steadily growing number of the half-million blind people
nationwide who regularly use computers for work, education and pleasure,
and
technological breakthroughs are occurring almost daily in text-to-voice
scanners, Braille printers and specially designed software to help
overcome
the barriers of icons and other graphics of the visually oriented World
Wide
Web. Recently, Blind Industries and Services of Maryland in Baltimore
opened
a fully accessible site -- including graphics -- that  contains
information
for both blind and sighted people --  http://www.bism.com/ .

The site was specifically designed to include graphics:  "We didn't want
just a plain boring screen because sighted people use the site as well."
Creating the graphics-friendly site required "a lot of major revisions"
of
conventional Internet design concepts.  (Washington Post 4 Apr 98)