Why do computers make life for blind living hell? Most major databases, when they generate a PDF file for download store the file as unsearchable images in a PDF. The result, screen readers for the blind don't work.

Why does this matter? Well a year ago I would have said it really didn't, but living next to a blind L.L.M. candidate made me think differently. I spent 4+ hours converting PDFs for him to a readable format so his screen reader would read the text to him. It ended up costing him $60.00 in software, 4+ hours of both of our time, and he now gets OCR'd text formats that a sighted person gets to read for free. However, $60.00 later there's still some major problems.

If you've ever read a legal treatise there's about half a page of text and then half a page of cites. The normal reader skips over the cites, but for my neighbor they get read to him by his screen reader and throw his comprehension off. The other big problem? The OCR software (the only one sub 500.00) didn't structure their menus to be navigated by keyboard, so the screen reader can't read off the menu items. The result, a sighted person has to convert all of the documents, because the blind can't use the software. Argh.

Over the years he's learned to kind of block out the citations, but it's a sad state of affairs. You honestly never consider how a blind person deals with software or data until you spend your entire night helping them out. No Superbowl, No homework done, No coding done, nothing... just 4+ hours spend making something readable for a friend. Seriously, for everyone who hates XML take a lesson from this. If the documents were sent out in a well formatted XML, the reader could be configured to ignore cites while reading, not generate UNREADABLE images (or at least provide text descriptions), and a billion other formats.

We as software developers really need to put more time into accessibility planning. I know it's a seemingly small percentage of users, but for the ones it impacts it really makes a huge difference. So in the future, turn off your screen, turn on a screen reader and see if you can navigate your software, read the data you’re pumping out, get around your website, if you can smile. If not, try again.

Cheers,
Tyler

P.S. Next project after CRUD updates and when I get free time (read: 2015ish) I'll add the RIFE/Accessibility framework