Giving the Blind Better Web Access 168
crimeandpunishment writes "Decades ago, the breakthrough for the disabled was making buildings wheelchair accessible. Today, it's making their world Web-accessible. Disabled groups are hailing new legislation Congress has sent to the President. Among other things, the measure will give the blind greater Internet access through smart phones, and require devices like iPhones and Blackberrys to be hearing-aid compatible. 'It breaks down barriers for all of us,' says Mark Richert of the American Foundation for the Blind."
New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:5, Insightful)
These sorts of well-intentioned pieces of legislation are the kind of thing that ostensibly are for our betterment and they always look great on paper. But when you're actually have to design a website and you start running into the requirements of Section 508 [wikipedia.org] and other such well-meaning laws, the feel-good shine wears off fast. Inevitably they mean considerably more work in the best case scenario, and a "dumbing down" of a website in the worst case scenario (if you follow the "suggested" best-practices). You can look at the "cultural heritage" laws in Quebec as an example of where good intentions can go. It starts off with a noble goal of not excluding French-speakers from public life, and eventually leads to something like Bill 101 [wikipedia.org], which all but outlawed English in the region, complete with a language gestapo.
I'm all for the blind being able to use the web. But wouldn't it be much better to approach the issue as a technological one on the viewer's end, and not a legislative one on the designer's end? I would much rather be asked to do something that TOLD to do it, under threat of law.
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:5, Insightful)
This used to be a really evil thing, but now it's a blessing in disguise. The right way of making a web page (nice clean <p>s and unordered lists, alts on all the images, styled with CSS) is extremely accessible. The more people do that, the better!
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> and require devices like iPhones and Blackberrys to be hearing aid compatible.
Ummm, why not require hearing aids to be Bluetooth compatible?
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Many of them are. My grandfather's hearing aid is.
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My father has hearing aids in both ears. Both are the invisible kind which fit completely inside the ear. Even phones with hear aid compatibility, he frequently has trouble hearing them so he usually resorts to using the speaker phone option and holding it in proximity to his ear/hearing aid. He wants to use bluetooth with his phone but all of the hearing aids he finds requires completely external hearing aids or the requirement of a bluetooth companion around the neck plus larger, non-invisible hearing aid
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So my question is, are you aware of any bluetooth earpieces which may sit outside the ear, which is also compatible with an inner ear hearing aid? If you do, please, please share. My father would be thrilled if I can point him toward a solution.
Fuckinggoogleit is broken so you will have to settle for this direct google link [google.com].
I mean, seriously?
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So my question is, are you aware of any bluetooth earpieces which may sit outside the ear, which is also compatible with an inner ear hearing aid? If you do, please, please share. My father would be thrilled if I can point him toward a solution.
Fuckinggoogleit is broken so you will have to settle for this direct google link.
I mean, seriously?
As if searching had not been tried. Read how specific the request.
Obviously searching had not been tried because the request was for a bluetooth earpiece which sits outside the ear and is compatible with a hearing aid, and the google search provided several of those on the front page of results. I am personally acquainted with the poster and I feel I'm qualified to remind him when google is the answer to his question.
Thanks for providing exactly what it says is not desired. Learn to fucking read and comprehend you idiot.
I provided exactly what it says is desired. Please log in so I can foe you, you stupid idiot fuck. Are you a coward I know? Your comment seems pathetically f
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Subs are universal in movies and anime. Even if you buy it, use the pirated version because the good releases always have at least soft subs, even if they're fan-made.
the "right" way (Score:1)
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%s/right/standards compliant/g
Does that sit better?
Fastest cheapest way to accessibility (Score:2)
Unfortunately the "right way" is typically the way your manager or boss thinks is the "right way" which often means the "fastest cheapest way"
The standards-compliant way is often the "fastest cheapest way" to serve your customers with disabilities.
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed: Handicapped accessible == machine readable. For too long has the Web been dominated by marketing people who care everything about controlling the "visual experience" and just don't get the concept of separating layout from semantics. If you grok HTML and CSS then I fail to see how an accessible design costs a whole lot more than a non-accessible one. Well, aside from the fact that CMS designers don't seem to give a damn about accessibility or standards compliance either.
Disclaimer: this comes from a guy who works at a company whose idea of putting information on the Intranet is to post a link to a Word document. *facepalm*
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Disclaimer: this comes from a guy who works at a company whose idea of putting information on the Intranet is to post a link to a Word document. *facepalm*
You know, that might actually be *more* accessible than trying to have the user code up the information in HTML, since whatever HTML a user like that produces is probably going be unparseable in anything other than IE6.
When humans are the product (Score:3, Interesting)
Handicapped accessible == machine readable.
Machine readability can be a bad thing when human eyeballs are the product and the information on your web site exists solely to entice humans to look at your advertisements. Watch as TV listings sites have introduced CAPTCHAs and distort the listings in ways that only a full CSS layout engine can untangle, specifically to deter machines that screen-scrape instead of paying per month for API access.
If you grok HTML and CSS then I fail to see how an accessible design costs a whole lot more than a non-accessible one.
Accessible design costs more if you incur costs per day or per view that advertisers are supposed to pay, but
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People want to scrape your site? Great! Make an RSS feed, but sneak a "Sponsored by Product X, The most fantastic thing ever!"
TV listing feeds are organized by channel and by time. To which channel would you assign this advertisement?
On top of that, you want your site to look good when pulled up on someones cell phone while looking up data
Of course it looks good when the end user uses the subscription app, now available for Android and iPhone.
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For static content, you're right. But when you're designing dynamic applications in something like GWT, you're way beyond being able to think about the semantic web.
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I wrote a "generic" metalanguage that could be compiled together with a template into any specific metalanguage with suitable formatting back in 1997. It was a bugger to write, but it was writable. In modern web languages, especially with server scripting languages (eg: PHP) and browser scripting (eg: AJAX), especially with the verifiers present in things like Firefox and the debugging tools like Selenium, it should be a cinch to write clean, elegant web pages that work well on any browser and which can ada
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it should be a cinch to write clean, elegant web pages that work well on any browser
Unless browsers are so far behind that they don't support specifications that have been widely recognized for years. For example, graceful degradation isn't so graceful if it degrades an SVG diagram to a blank box or if it degrades a sample from an instrumental recording (on a page about this piece of music) to its title.
One should NEVER mix the processing with the presentation.
How would you recommend not mixing the two in the case of a diagram of how to assemble a product, or in the case of a work of visual art or music?
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If what is presented to the browser is always pre-processed server-side, then the server can use the browser string (and any other retrievable information) to select what transforms need to be applied. In the case of SVG, you might convert the SVG into a static PNG or a VRML diagram, depending on what capabilities the browser has.
Let's take the case of a diagram. The data is stored as raw data on the server. Browser A has SVG support and gets an SVG version of the data. Browser B has no real diagramming sup
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convert the SVG into a static PNG
Oh, like Wikipedia does.
VRML
Is that [wikipedia.org] still around?
You can associate pitch and volume with height fields.
For a recording of polyphonic music, this would require some heavy DSP to discover the multiple pitches and timbres in each time window. The algorithms probably didn't exist 20 years ago and are therefore probably patented to the extent that they do exist. Real-time visualization effects in PC-based media players use shortcuts appropriate for entertainment but not for analysis. Storing the sheet music and synchronizing that to the recording can cost a lot more fo
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VRML is indeed still around and there are some excellent editors/viewers for Linux and Windows. I suggest you read Freshmeat as well as Slashdot.
CodeSourcery produces a GPL version of VSIPL, which is a library for software DSP. That gives you the algorithms you need in a non-patented form.
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A group of data related to public information/services, however, can and should be reorganized into a form that can be interpreted by both the blind and deaf.
There is a picture slideshow on WhiteHouse.gov at the moment titled This is What Change Looks Like: Passing Health Care Reform [whitehouse.gov]. There are descriptions, but to give the blind as much information as the sighted would require spending substantial taxpayer money on writing the proverbial 1000 words as a long description for each image.
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D00d, if you have either technical or philosophical difficulties making or re-vamping websites to be standards compliant, please contact me via Cmdr Taco. I've got at least a dozen coders and designers with big hearts, open minds, and insane skills who are currently under-employed and would jump at the opportunity for the work.
Seriously.
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good intentions, but as someone that has to work with it i hate it
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm at a conference about accessibility right now and I was just looking at the giant display of the history of disability, so I'm getting a kick out of your post.
Seriously, without legislative mandates pushing this kind of thing, the disabled will just continue to be overlooked by the big vendors and ripped off by small vendors. We are doing things with iOS 4 and iPad for $4-600 that a year ago we had to spend $5000-7500 on.
With a law forcing this, the tech will get cheaper and better.
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Which conference are you at? I assume you're talking about apps like Proloquo2go?
We're currently working on allowing the iPad/iPhone be controlled with alternative input devices for people with disabilities. Would be interested to hear about what in that area was discussed at the conference.
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I don't have any thing against blind people, but for about 3% of the population, we spend a decent amount to make your life better. There are even special noise making (annoying) cross walks. Conversly, we spend a hell of a lot of money to put down gays. Laws against sodomy and gay marriage. Laws like "don't ask, don't tell" which is a logical ban
Consider the blind mountain climber (Score:2)
I'm looking at the percentage of gays and the percentage of blind people, noticing they are the same and getting a kick out of it.
Because someone else can't tell the difference [youtube.com].
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And why wont someone think of the blind homosexuals?
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:4, Insightful)
The technological problem on the viewer's end is largely solved, so long as existing web standards and best practices regarding separation of content and presentation are adhered to.
Aside from technology that essentially cures blindness, though, your never going to get a technological solution on the viewer's end that deals with the choice to use inaccessible presentation as the only way of getting at the content on the designer's end.
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The only people who are whining about stuff like this are the idiots making whole websites entirely in flash or who don't know how to follow best practices for web development. Making a website accessible to text readers, etc is extremely trivial if you follow web standards.
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If you design websites, then you need to have the following removed:
* both ears;
* both eyes;
* both arms;
* both legs;
* your nose;
* your tongue;
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Yes.
Unfortunately, your average inhabitant of congress doesn't have enough brain power to decipher the words "unintended consequences" (too many syllables, I guess) let alone understand the concept.
But hey, since they've already solved all of the country's big problems, it's definitely time to move on to micromanaging web development. After all, they've been so successful with most of their technology laws and what could possibly go wrong?
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It's really not that big of a challenge, and really most of that ought to be already happening on the site anyways.
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FTFY.
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always giving your images an informative alt text
"Always" is difficult. Put informative alt text on your visual CAPTCHA, and bots will solve it 100% of the time.
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No, the alt text would be "this is a captcha". Next to it would be the audio captcha button.
Then I guess I am not a human (Score:2)
Next to it would be the audio captcha button.
I tried the audio CAPTCHA here [google.com] and could not solve it. It consisted of indistinct voices buried in layers of backwards speech. Do I need to turn in my human card?
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Your answer (legislate) to the problem (accessibility) is amusingly contrary to your anecdote. No one forced the "nice" store to comply with some arcane requirement (which would undoubtedly require a huge bureaucracy to administer and hundreds of lawyers to sue non-compliant businesses), but they did what they thought was best.
If "the blind" are really such a wealthy group of consumers, why is it necessary for government to intrude on their behalf? Surely it's reasonable that businesses who think the benefi
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You have obviously never been in Montreal in your life. You go to a store and people greet you in English first. The 101 bill requires that information be also available in French, it does not exclude English. Your comment was informative up to that point. Please stick to what you actually know from experience, not hearsay.
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Didn't we already have these discussions a month ago?
There are four camps here:
1. Accessibility will totally fuck with my Web x.0 experience
2. Accessibility will cost me money
3. Accessibility is easy, why not do it?
4. Accessibility is a necessity.
Camps 3 and 4 form an alliance and try to convince camps 1 and 2 that they're bellyaching over nothing. Camps 1 and 2 ally and talk about how small businesses will be sued out of existence.
And the unspoken camp 5, the people that require the accessibility, sit by a
Re:New blacktop for the road to hell (Score:5, Informative)
Will we all be stuck with text only websites, which is what Section 508 virtually sets up as the ideal.
No. It's called graceful degradation [edginet.org]. You can have all the fancy shit you want but your webpage should be a coded in a way that if certain features aren't available that it gracefully degrades into a simpler form.
I am all for just (Score:3, Informative)
pumping plain text to anyone identified coming to my website as impaired.
It is the safest route to follow. Any attempt by me or other others to gracefully handle it only will invite lawyers whose occupation is find those who slip up while acting on good intentions. No, take it to the minimums required and forget it. This is a far different issue than handling weaker devices. You are not up against a finite thing, that is what a device is capable of, your up against a new infinite, what the impaired user
Re:I am all for just (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's one: Tom Mundy and his lawyer Morse Mehrban both make an estimated $300,000 a year suing small businesses [latimes.com]
Re:I am all for just (Score:4, Insightful)
br> Yeah, blah blah, it's socialism and distorts the free market. Whatever.
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Will we all be stuck with text only websites,
One can only hope. I already try to use the print versions of articles to get close to that.
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What if you did it with OCR on images pulled from the GPU? Then you can literally read everything, from the text that shows up in the HTML between tags, to text in images, to text in flash. Heck, it would read street signs in people's pics on Flickr. And no one would have to make anything on their webpages special for blind people.
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Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Except that it sucks, when you get a mix of layouts. Just look at Slashdot.
Would you want to read it on a line by line basis? In my particular layout (reply) I see
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Armed rebellion? By French speakers? LOL (Score:2)
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Our French are different. The only real reason they lost the seven years war (Better known to Americans as the French and Indian war) was because France stopped sending troops and supplies, while the British stepped things up, and even then the British didn't achieve an unconditional surrender.
The FLQ liked bombs rather more than guns. During the 60s they were setting off roughly a bomb per month at locations such as the Montreal stock exchange, city hall, RCMP offices, military facilities, and railroad t
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What Quebec needs is a few million German speakers.
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Just curious, do you find that blind/low vision users generally find Flash websites hard to navigate and use? I always hear Flash advocates say that Flash is fully accessible but I'm not sure how that stacks up in practice, since I understand that the developers have to put in the effort to actually make it accessible.
Also, when you say most websites are a complete disaster, are you referring to websites which don't validate and aren't coded to web standards? There's been a web standards revolution over the
Do whatever it takes... (Score:1, Funny)
.... just stop them from putting their cane through the screen!
Breaking down barriers? (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'd love to see the numbers on that. I bet you have a good point, and that it will inconvenience more than it will help.
Re:Breaking down barriers? (Score:4, Informative)
How would it put up barriers for anyone creating web content? All blind people need is for the webpage to be correctly coded according to the HTML specs and not have the important content in a fancy JavaScript that alters the DOM after the page has loaded (although web readers can usually put up with it). It would break down barriers not only for blind people but also for computers and browser makers as well as the general public, open source operating systems (no more IE-only websites) etc. etc.
As for devices, Apple's Mac OS X is compatible with most screen readers and braille keyboards, even the iPhone has some fancy accessibility built-in, Apple does a really good job at making it accessible from the get-go. Even Windows and most Linux distro's have accessibility built-in although a lot of applications could use some shining up in that area (hot keys being one of them and again, not putting main content in obscure places).
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That sort of attitude is what encourages legislation. As someone "creating web content" you should WANT to make your stuff accessible to as many people as possible. The only additional "barrier" it puts up for you is that you have to conform to web standards, well boo fucking hoo if that's too much of an effort, you don't deserve to be in business any m
More than just the blind... (Score:4, Informative)
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And those subtitles are not only useful for the HOH/deaf, they're useful for people trying to watch foreign language movies or just let us understand actors with a thick accent.
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And those subtitles are not only useful for the HOH/deaf, they're useful for people trying to watch foreign language movies
Movie industry's response: Then wait and buy the movie when it comes to your region with an official subtitle track in your region's majority language. That's what I thought region codes were for.
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Is one of them 2001: A Space Odyssey?
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Unfortunately, not. They are: Star Trek II -> V, Total Recall, Cube Zero, Stargate: The Ark of Truth Stardust, Alien, Alien III, (Note no Aliens), The Black Hole, ClockStoppers, The Arrival, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Barbarella, The Philadelphia Experiment 2, Dragonslayer, and the War of the Worlds (1953).
Not about the "web". (Score:3, Informative)
This has nothing to do with the Web. It's about telephony in its VoIP form, broadcast content redistributed over the Internet, and mobile browsers. It doesn't affect web sites. See S.3304 [loc.gov].
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The house counterpart [govtrack.us] is worded a bit more broadly. It would extend the provisions described to cover text based messages as well [govtrack.us].
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The house counterpart is worded a bit more broadly. It would extend the provisions described to cover text based messages as well.
That version was sidelined. Real status is in Thomas [loc.gov], Congress's revision control system. Check the "related bills" link and see which version is furthest along.. S.3304's revision history ("Major Congressional Actions") reads:
For one day (Score:2)
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You mean, as a server? ;)
No seriously, I agree. Most sites/software are inaccessible crap. They really shouldn't let graphic designers/animators build sites.
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Make the dots of a braille keyboard quite a bit bigger and lots of people will browse porn in braille. You would only need two dots on your keyboard too.
Swimming without legs (Score:2)
We're not blind and don't need to.
Some of your customers are blind, and you need to understand how your customers "see" your company.
Why don't you go for a swim without using your arms or legs?
Does this video [youtube.com] count?
Screw that, give them access... (Score:2, Insightful)
...by investing in tech and science that can make them see it with their EYES! [sciencenews.org]
While it is nice to see the gov't pass laws like this, it would be even nicer to see them put up the funding for developing the tech/science further behind studies like the one I linked to. Or lifting the ban on stem cell research so that we can really get on track with giving back the senses that have been robbed from so many people, among other things.
Analytics reporting blind users? (Score:5, Interesting)
How can I get Google Analytics to tell me how many of my visitors are blind and using screen-readers?
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How can I get Google Analytics to tell me how many of my visitors are blind and using screen-readers?
You can't. Screen readers do not work the way you think they do.
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I would support an opt-in feature that allowed Google Analytics to report that statistic to websites visited by the blind.
And how exactly do you propose Google gather the data? The browser doesn't know the user is using a screen reader and, consequently, can't report it.
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Hence opt-in. Users that wanted to identify themselves could state that they are using a screen reader and Google just reports to the site that the user claims to use a screen reader.
How would this opt-in mechanism work, exactly? By what process would they tell google? How would screen reader users even know an opt-in exists?
Such a system would significantly under-report the number of users with screen readers, making the data virtually useless.
I don't think you've thought this through.
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1. access a google settings page
So... they'd need a google account and need to find the magic setting which could be in any one of the many 'settings' pages google maintains for its various services. Brilliant.
1. screen readers offer the option to modify the browser string
Think about this one. Do you know why it's completely absurd?
You know what, just read your last post and say "All this effort on the part of those who won't benefit in any way so that I can have bad data on my analytics page!"
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Maybe screen readers could add something to the user agent string to allow servers to detect the presence of one and modify the page to better suit them.
Well, you could have an alternate stylesheet that is targeted at being highly contrasting or especially suitable for conversion to speech. I don't know how a browser would know to select it, but that sort of thing would provide a good way to make a site that is adapted properly for people with multiple types of blindness. It's certainly reasonable to require adjusting a setting in the browser, if only once, and then have that information then used to improve the user's experience.
And of course a little comm
why? (Score:2)
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Isn't it terrible, how society coddles the weak, the sick, the old, the feeble, the lame, the blind? The whole-bodied majority are weighed down and forced to drag the defectives with us into the future.
Perhaps you're recommending a little racial hygiene? [wikipedia.org]
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I agree, there should be some way to use existing technology.
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One problem solved, at least two more created.
1. Size. Modern hearing aids are very small, they fit in your ear canal, rather than behind the ear. There's not much room to add a bluetooth transceiver and antenna.
2. Battery life. Bluetooth is not free in terms of power and given the above size constraint, you don't have a lot of headroom to put in more battery. You're looking at about 100mAh, 600mAh at the outside, and expected battery life of days to weeks of continuous use. Even with the brand new low
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Impossible. (Score:2)
The summary notes (and the article agrees) that:
Among other things, the measure will give the blind greater Internet access through smart phones
Laws provide nothing. They are demands a layer of government makes that are backed by a specified threat for not providing what is demanded.
Developers, researchers, and other technical people will provide this capability
And if you think this is nitpicking, consider the difference between having an idea and implementing an idea.
Government is, therefore, the original model for the patent troll. Claim that something should happen, wait until someone accomplish
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How do you have to pay more? If you are designing your webpages and using CSS2 correctly, you have no additional work. Your webpage should degrade gracefully [edginet.org] and there are no problems.
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If you can't see a distinction between those two, you're irretrievably brainwashed already.
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Re:Can't we just delay for a bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://www.apple.com/accessibility/ [apple.com]
good luck! (Score:2)
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Worst. Car Analogy. Ever.