Ames resident Clay Gurganus rarely spends time searching for information on the World Wide Web.

For many other people, surfing the Web has become a part of their daily routine. They may begin by searching for a piece of quick information, but the multi-color page layouts and graphics, both standard components of today’s Web pages, keep their eyes glued to the computer screen for hours.

But Javascript effects and colorful tables fail to catch the eyes of Gurganus — he is blind.

“Most people who make Web pages don’t think about blind people,” said Gurganus, enrollment services adviser for the Financial Aid Office at Iowa State. “They just want to make their pages look pretty.”

Most Web designers rely on graphics to differentiate their pages from the millions of others on the Web and to grab users’ attention. However, these same designers are neglecting a large audience of visually impaired Web users.

Ron Grooms, systems analyst at the Computation Center, works with disabled students and staff at ISU to help them learn the computer technology they need for class or work. Grooms said he has noticed a trend toward integrating more and more graphics into computer interfaces to increase their user-friendliness.

“For [the visually impaired], the world of computers has gotten less accessible,” Grooms said. “Everything is graphical, which is great for you and me, but really tougher than the old text-oriented stuff for someone who is blind.”

Software and hardware options

The computer industry continually is trying to repair any accessibility problems it creates. Software and hardware tools are available to help visually-impaired computer users maneuver around the graphical user interfaces, Grooms said.

Screen magnifiers help people with partial blindness or with poor eyesight by enlarging graphics and text. The magnifiers are about the same size of the user’s computer screen and are fastened onto it.

Screen readers are used by many people with little to no vision to interpret information on the Web. The readers are software programs that audibly “read” users what is on the computer screen. For example, the screen reader alerts the user when a window is closed and when a new page is loaded. It also reads text displayed on a Web page.

Gurganus uses a screen reader called JAWS, an acronym for Job Access with Speech, created by Henter-Joyce, Inc. Though it reads text, JAWS cannot identify graphics or text that appear within a graphic.

“I don’t do graphics, that’s all there is to it,” he said. “I just skip right over them unless someone has identified them [on the Web page] in some way.”

When Gurganus navigates the Web, he must directly type in a Web address for the browser to find rather than using links. If he uses links, he can lose his sense of orientation within the Web, he said.

Gene Collins, systems analyst at the Computation Center, is a regular Web user who also is blind. He uses the Web browser LYNX because it only displays a Web page’s text and eliminates the troublesome graphics that confuse the screen readers.

“It helps [visually-impaired] people deal with things people do that are not very user-friendly in Web pages,” Collins said.

Creating accessible Web pages

“Left-bracket-one-right-bracket-left-bracket-is-not-right…,” the screen reader’s monotone voice read to Collins as he moved his cursor onto one unidentifiable link on the old ISU home page.

The reader Collins was using was getting stuck trying to interpret graphics. Even if the graphic displays text, a screen reader cannot read the text because it is part of the whole graphic.

Collins said he doesn’t think most members of the World Wide Web community are aware of the need to make their pages accessible to disabled persons. Although many pages present few difficulties to disabled users, more could be done to improve the availability of information to everyone, he said.

“It’s not a form of deliberate discrimination on most people’s part,” Collins said. “It’s just a case of not being aware of the problem.”

Collins said it is important for Web designers to keep their pages as simple as possible.

He recommended designers use mostly text, especially for links. Picture links are often not understood by screen readers. Javascript commands, because they create complex graphical elements on Web pages, can also cause troubles for visually-impaired users.

If a graphic must be added to a Web page, Collins said alternative text descriptions of the picture should accompany the graphic. Web designers add alternative text by including within the HTML image tag the word “alt”, followed by an equal sign and then the text description inside quotation marks.

Non-disabled users can see these alternative text descriptions as pop-up text near the cursor when they hover their mouse over a picture.

Another suggestion Collins made for Web designers is to avoid multi-column page layouts, frames and tables when possible. Multi-column page layouts “really drive screen readers up the wall” and make it difficult for them to read text coherently, Collins said.

“It would be like if you are reading a newspaper, and instead of reading down the column you just read across all the columns… [You would] read one line across a column and then read one line across the next column,” he said. “It would be a gobbled-up mess. You would have no idea what you are working with.”

ISU recently redesigned its home page so it is more accessible to disabled users. The page now includes “alt” tag text descriptions to accompany the few graphics that are displayed.

Diana Pounds, manager of university internal communications at University Relations, said accessibility to disabled persons is a priority for ISU’s Web site.

“We try to keep it as simple and as fast loading as we can, and I always try to test the site with LYNX before we use it,” Pounds said.

Americans Disabilities Act and the Web

Grooms said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will make the Web more available to disabled persons in the near future.

“Now disabled people can’t be just channeled away from doing what they want. If they want to do something, the ADA says they have a right,” he said.

Recently, the federal government announced plans to step up its accessibility requirements. Companies doing business with government agencies soon will be required to make their Web pages accessible to disabled users.

ISU has many computer labs that are accessible to disabled people. The computer lab in 117 Durham Center is equipped with computer technology designed to help people who have visual, hearing, mobility or learning impairments.

Pounds said she is working with the Iowa Department for the Blind to distribute information about Web accessibility to the many designers responsible for ISU’s Web site. She said each department and college creates its own Web page, which explains the many differences in the individual pages.

“If there are people out there who are having problems with the site, they can always contact me,” Pounds said.

As for Gurganus, he said he probably will use the Web more in the future once he receives further instruction on how to navigate through the Web.

“The more I practice, the more I will use it,” he said.