ARIA For Google Reader: In praise of timely information access
Posted by T.V. Raman, Research
Scientist
From time to time, our own
shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a
technologist who cannot see — tips that sighted people, among
others, may also find useful.
The advent of RSS and ATOM feeds, and the creation of tools
like
>Google Reader for efficiently consuming content
feeds, has vastly increased the amount of information we access
every day. From the perspective of someone who cannot see, content
feeds are one of the major innovations of the century. They give me
direct access to the actual content without first having to dig
through a lot of boilerplate visual layout as happens with
websites. In addition, all of this content is now available from a
single page with a consistent interface.
Until now, I've enjoyed the benefits of
Reader using a
>custom client. Today, we're happy to tell
you that the "mainstream" Google Reader now works with
off-the-shelf screenreaders, as well as
self-voicing extension to Firefox. This brings the benefits of
content feeds and feed readers to the vast majority of visually
impaired users.
Google Reader has always had complete keyboard support. With the
accessibility enhancements we've added, all user actions now
produce the relevant spoken feedback via the user's adaptive
technology of choice. This feedback is generated using
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (
>WAI-ARIA), an evolving standard for enhancing
the accessibility of Web-2.0 applications. WAI-ARIA is supported at
present by Firefox — with future support forthcoming in other
browsers. This is one of the primary advantages of building on open
standards.
We originally prototyped these features in Google Reader using the
AxsJAX
framework. After extensive testing of these enhancements, we've
now integrated these into the mainstream product. See the
related post on the Google Reader Blog for additional technical
details.
Looking forward to a better informed future for all!
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