Web page designers and those looking to expand market share should remember to cater for blind or sight-impaired people, said delegates at a conference dealing with the blind and the Internet.
The Cape Town conference, organised by the Internet Society of South Africa (ISOC-ZA), is considered the first of its kind, and included board members of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the World Blind Union.
ICANN finished its five-day meeting on Sunday and the World Blind Union kicked off its sixth annual summit in Cape Town this week.
"The main issue of the Internet for blind people is that of accessibility," said David Williams, head of ACB Radio, a Web-based radio station for the blind. "For instance, alt-tags must be used on Web pages otherwise blind people have no idea what the image means."
An alt-tag is the text alternative to a picture or graphic posted on a Web page. Software used by sight-impaired people uses these tags to tell the user what the picture is of. Often these graphics are used to mark indices that help one to navigate a site.
He noted that any content posted on the Internet should cater for blind people. "After all, there are more than 180 million blind people in the world and many do have disposable incomes."
Williams also pointed out that more and more people would become sight-impaired in the future.
"Many countries have aging populations as people live longer; however, their eyesight will deteriorate in time and so they will be more dependent on technologies that make the Internet accessible to them," he said.
Hein Wagner, an account executive with Internet verification group Thawte and who is blind, called for regulations to be implemented that would make navigating the Internet easier for the sight-impaired.
"There is a major problem when sites do not use proper HTML (hyper text mark-up language) tagging, because the voice synthesisers cannot accurately portray what is on the pages," he said.
SA online publishers don`t comply
A snap survey done with this reporter and ISOC-ZA chairman Alan Levin of several South African online publishing sites - iAfrica, M-Web, Business Day, Independent Online, News24.com and ITWeb - showed that only ITWeb used alt-tag marking with its graphics.
"The lack of using proper HTML standards by online publishers is contrary to the community spirit of the Internet as it excludes people," Levin said.
ITWeb`s policy is to use alt-tags with all its body content, but these are only included in banner advertisements if the advertiser specifically asks for them.
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