Accessibility

The first Blog that I looked at is cited as follows:
"Web Accessibility – What You Need to Know." Bureau of Internet Accessibility. October 18, 2017, https://www.boia.org/blog/web-accessibility-what-you-need-to-know
This blog focused on web accessibility guidelines for different web platforms. The blog focused on how there are different variations of the Americans with Disabilities Act that can apply to web based platforms. Netflix has a laws suit pressed against it because of it inaccessibility to the deaf community. The court ruled against Netflix because even though Netflix is a web based business it is still a business and must apply to the same standards and follow the ADA. There were also several other major businesses that have had lawsuits pressed against them. These companies are as big as Apple and Amazon. This article is mainly based toward business that are looking to be web based or have a web presence. 

The next blog was cited like this;
"Addressing Problematic Trends in Web Design" Bureau of Internet Accessibility. August 30, 2017, https://www.boia.org/blog/addressing-problematic-trends-in-web-design

The blog talks about how there are accessibility standards that are encouraged to be followed by website designers.  The Blog gives a list of the ways that website designers can aid people with disabilities. "Provide text equivalents for every non-text element
  • Provide captioning for audio presentations
  • Assign text to elements
  • Synchronize alternatives to multimedia presentations
  • Design webpage for colored and uncolored formats
  • Organize documents to be readable without an associated style sheet
  • Include redundant text links for active areas of server-side image maps
  • Title frames to allow easy identification and navigation
  • Ensure screens don’t flicker at a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz
  • Identify scripting languages used to display content with functional text to be read by screen readers
  • Provide a method for skipping repetitive navigation links"
    • From what I understood from the blog the suggestions above are not law but they are highly suggested for all websites even if the website is not based for a business. No one should fear for a seizure every time they click on a page and everyone should have equal access to websites.
    The blog also stresses the importance of constantly looking out for target issues with the website to make sure the website is usable for all people.

    I used Accessibility features on my iPhone. The Accessibility feature I used was the text to speech and the magnified font. I started off using the text to speech and I used it for a few days and it became so annoying. Even though I could change the voice to what I preferred it was still really robotic and it read EVERYTHING on the screen which was even more annoying. I stopped using that after a few days. I started using the Magnified font accessibility feature which I liked a lot more than the text to speech. I think that the increased font size is definitely something I will continue to keep on. I found it easier on my eyes to have the font larger and reading was much easier both on my iPad and my iPhone. For my students I would encourage them to listen to an article and read it if their voice didn't annoy the student. With the increased size of text students would be able to see online articles easier and have less eye strain.

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