New social collaboration software aims to improve accessibility
Web Design
10 July 2008
A new collaboration program that relies on interactions between web users to improve site accessibility across the internet has been unveiled by IBM.
The company's Social Accessibility collaboration software allows those with impaired vision to report flaws in web pages that mean they or their screen-reading software cannot access certain text and objects.
These reports are submitted to a website that can be accessed by other web users who can then posit amendments and improvements to overcome these flaws, which are submitted as external metadata so that future visually impaired visitors to the site in question can read the content correctly.
Chieko Asakawa of IBM Research said the software was created because "visually impaired users have been experiencing inconvenience in not having good alternative texts, which are essential for screen reading software to tell them what's showing on a web page to support navigation".
The preview follows calls from the European commission for web design companies to do more to improve website accessibility for older people and others with disabilities that mean they cannot use all of a site's features.
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