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IBM Launches Social Accessibility Project

IBM has long been dedicated to investigative work in the disability space, as evidenced by improvements in multimedia browsing and the aDesigner disability simulator. Yesterday, Ars Technica reported that the company has launched a new initiative intended to make the Web more accessible for users who rely on screen readers.

The Social Accessibility Project, available as a beta from IBM’s AlphaWorks, was created as to report sites that have accessibility issues without altering the existing content. Volunteers collect and publish metadata while contributing to a rich collaborative network of shared knowledge. This could be an important resource, since many development teams overlook accessibility features within the project lifecycle due to time constraints or lack of understanding:

Unfortunately for most blind users, a majority of web developers in the world aren’t so detail-oriented and leave out those elements—either out of convenience or ignorance of their importance—which makes it even more difficult to get (improvements) added later. The Social Accessibility Project hopes to circumvent the entire problem of dealing with developers by allowing users with screen readers to automatically report problems with various web pages back to IBM. Volunteers can then sort through IBM’s database of accessibility issues and create their own metadata for each element. When users with screen readers return to that site, or go to other sites visited by project participants, they will simply load the latest information from the database and be able to navigate the web with greater ease.

“This idea came from my own experience with inaccessible Web sites,” IBM researcher (who also happens to be blind) Chieko Asakawa told IDG News Service. “As users we face a lot of problems every day, but currently we don’t have any mechanism to report what we have found. Every day we find images without alternative text, but there is no way for me to say ‘I want to have a description for this image.’ It’s a simple motivation, but if we can report this kind of problem without difficulty and have it easily understood by sighted people, I think it’s going to be great.”

The software is currently available for JAWS screen readers using Internet Explorer, as well as a Firefox plug-in. For more information, you can read the FAQ or sign up for the service.