: Accessibility Advent: normal accessibility advice still applies

Published at
Monday 24th December, 2012

(Throughout Advent I’m sharing some hints as to how web developers can make my life as a speech recognition user easier.)

It’s still advent, but lots of people have already started their trips to wherever they’re spending Christmas, so I just wanted to point out that a lot of the the normal accessibility advice helps voice users too. Nuance, who make Dragon, have guidelines for speech-accessible HTML which are worth looking at, even though they’re a few years old now, and based on the Windows version which has more features than the Mac version.

For a view of Dragon from the point of view of a web developer who just wanted to learn a little about Dragon and using it, check out Jon Whiting’s article from last year, Assistive Technology Experiment: Dragon NaturallySpeaking (he links to the same guidelines as above, although curiously under a different URL).

I’d recommend all web developers spend some time using either the Windows or Mac version; although it’s a significant amount of money to spend, it’s cheaper than some assistive technologies such as JAWS. If you’d like to have me come and talk to your company about using computers by voice, then please get in touch. I can of course include a demonstration (swearing as things go wrong strictly optional; please express preference at time of booking ;-), and if desired can perform a review in advance of a web site or app you’ve built, which can drive both demonstration and discussion.