Thursday November 17, 2005

Rich's/Orca's first "blind" e-mail

My team-mate Rich Burridge is one of the developers of Orca, an open source, scripting screen reader for UNIX systems. In his blog of today, he talks about his work on Orca, and reaching the point where he turned off his monitor and wrote his first e-mail "blind" using Orca.

For developers interested in ensuring their software is accessible, going "blind" or "without hands", or otherwise using your software for a while as someone with a disability would use it - through an assistive technology - is absolutely critical. While this isn't a substitute for users with disabilities testing and using the software themselves (and telling you what you need to fix), it makes a huge difference, especially when done early in the development process when it is easiest to fix accessibility problems.

Oh, and Rich's story is a good read too! (2005-11-17 17:40:42.0) Permalink