[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Visually Impaired accessibility?

[Jason Etheridge]

> Have there been any tests of Evergreen regarding this issue?

There were positive yet informal and undocumented tests of the
Evergreen OPAC with Jaws early on during development, but nothing
rigorous or sustained that I'm aware of.  In general, I don't think
Evergreen is section 508 compliant(*), though the Basic HTML version
of the catalog should be particularly friendly to screen readers
(there is no Javascript and it is built completely from stylesheets
and REST-style API's).  One problem there, however, is that the user
services part of the OPAC (placing holds, renewals, etc.) does not
have a "Basic HTML" counterpart.  That said, the existing interfaces
may be amenable to screen readers, but I don't know in this case.

The staff client is built on the same framework as the Firefox
browser, and in Windows is about as accessible as any other Windows
application.  The bulk of the application can be driven by keystrokes
and menus, and there's really only one piece of functionality that
requires a mouse currently (and that's activating the column picker
for lists).  There is interest in developing a text only staff
interface for the purpose of machine interaction with some legacy
software, but such an interface could double for human use.

Anyone out there have more recent experience with this?  Greg, does this help?

* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com