ARE YOUR DOORS OPEN OR LOCKED FOR CALLERS WHO ARE BLIND?

                      By Charles Crawford - Sysop - The MCB BBS.

               Imagine calling an electronic bulletin board and seeing a
          listing for a door that makes your mouth water!  Yeah, just the
          one that you would love to play and upon entering it you find a
          blank screen!  No, not one of those problems we all know when it
          shows locally but not remotely.  What is being sent is not able
          to be read on the screen.  Could never happen huh?  I mean what
          developer in their right mind would put out a door that nobody
          could see?  For thousands of callers who are blind and rely upon
          synthetic speech output to read the screen - this is exactly what
          is happening.  Let me explain and then offer what we can do about
          it.

               To understand the problem, we need to understand how speech
          output for blind callers works.  Essentially, it is a system
          whereby what comes through the communications port is captured
          and interpreted by software on the way to the screen.  The text
          is analyzed and converted to speech by the software and sent out
          to a speech synthesis device that vocalizes it.  Not any
          different than average text to speech software using hardware to
          vocalize the text strings.

               So far so good!  So what is the problem?  Well it is simply
          that graphic characters cannot be understood by the interpreting
          software and simply are not spoken.  The user then has no idea of
          what is on the screen and cannot take advantage or use the
          application presented.  This is not much different then the
          problem with graphical user interfacing that has plagued blind
          users for some years and is now being addressed aggressively at
          MicroSoft.

               Besides the loss of revenues for door developers and sysops
          who charge for access, the basic motivation for curing the
          problem really is that it is the right thing to do.  We seldom
          hear of the hacker ethic anymore, but universal access to
          information is at the heart of enlightened computing.  If these
          reasons in themselves are not compelling enough, then of course
          there are the potential legal issues under the Americans with
          Disabilities Act, however there are not likely to be any
          challenges raised under that law since the priorities of the
          blindness community are hardly at the level of access to BBS
          doors.

               So how do we correct the problem?  Basically, the issue is
          to ensure that a door has sufficient text interface to allow the
          user to know what is happening through reading it.  This is not a
          problem with most doors since many are text based, however there
          are a growing number of doors incorporating ANSI maps which do
          not report locations in a text format.  The caller usually either
          views a static map or navigates through it by using the number
          pad or arrow keys.  When the curser gets to a place of interest,
          the graphic is highlighted (I would imagine) and pressing the
          enter key or clicking activates the associated program sub-
          routine.  So all that really needs to happen there is to have a
          text string label that is highlighted at the same time.  If door
          authors don't want the sighted caller to have to look at the
          labels, then they could simply have the program pass a command
          line parameter telling it to display the text labels when the
          parameter is true.

               By simply doing the above and giving text prompts for the
          activities activated, the door can be accessible to end users who
          are blind.  No big deal to do in program development but harder
          to accomplish by retrofit.

               Congratulations are in order for some developers like T&J
          and Seth Able for trying to meet this standard without even
          knowing it.  I run a number of T&J doors that really are very
          accessible and Seth has made an effort to understand the problem
          and see what he can do to keep accessibility in mind.

               If we all ask for the features indicated above and if
          developers take the time to think through the problem and
          incorporate access into their programs, then all of us will be
          that much better off!  After all, aren't we all in the business
          of trying to provide entertaining and accessible online
          applications to our callers?  Besides being fair, it really is a
          question of why we all got into this in the first place.  Yeah, I
          suppose there is some money to be made, but more important to the
          folks that I know; - there is a sense of community to bulletin
          boarding and accomplishment to making our systems accessible to
          as many people as we have the capacity to serve.

               So come on fellow Sysops and Developers, let's get this
          access issue resolved so that we really can be a community of
          equal adventurers in this wild world of electronics we call home!

               The MCB BBS is a service of the Massachusetts Commission for
          the Blind for primarily blind callers and can be reached at
          (617)-451-5327 on 5 nodes.  Also Fido 1:101/170!  You can also
          reach me on the Internet - CHC@DELPHI.COM.


þ