According to the Department of Health & Human Services, 285 million people in the United States live with some sort of visual impairment and 275 million people live with moderate-to-profound hearing impairment. This doesn’t account for the millions more who live with physical, speech, cognitive, or neurological disabilities or a limited understanding of English.
Assistive technology and accessibility features such as eyeglasses, hearing aids, canes, ramps for wheelchairs, and closed captioning on television are used or accessed every day. Specific assistive technology software, such as text-to-speech converters, screen magnifiers, and on-screen keyboards, are now common.
However, did you know that not all web-based or media content is accessible to people with impairments and disabilities?
Alternative Text
Text-to-speech software is quite literal, reading everything on the screen as-is. If it was a standard, text-only book, this would be easy for the program to digest, but this is not typical for digital content. Areas that cause difficulty for these programs include: images, captions, color, data tables, forms, navigational elements and links, and interactive elements.
Alternative text, or alt text, provides a textual alternative to nontext content on webpages and other media. Because screen readers cannot analyze an image and determine what it presents, alternative text is provided that explains what the image means. Alt text helps make the content and function of the image accessible to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities.
Alt text can be generated by software, but most applications need a human touch to ensure the alt text correctly matches the content and context that are being read. This includes concise but descriptive text. For example, an image of a child studying for a history test would include the alt text caption, “Child sits in the chair with his text book open, reading a lesson in preparation for a test.”
Section 508
Section 508 is part of a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It requires all federal electronic content to be accessible, regardless of disability. Electronic content includes electronic documents, websites and pages, applications, multimedia, and agency-wide emails.
Due to this mandate, federal employees are trained on how to properly create content that is accessible, whether it is redesigning graphics to be better understood by all parties, simplifying websites, or adding alternative text to graphics and images. Departments in the federal government use software such as Accenture Digital Diagnostic Engine, WAVE, screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, Window Eyes), voice recognition (Dragon, Siri), and tools in programs such as Adobe to check for accessibility. Private-sector companies can use these tools, too, to ensure that their content is thoroughly accessible.
Progressive Publishing Services strives for excellence in a variety of publishing and content services, including accessibility. We can convert content that is better accessible for those with disabilities. Please contact us to see how we can help your project be accessible.