Olaf’s Thoughts About Development

I just got postive feedback from a blind Delphi developer, Marco Zehe, that he successfully started developing Web applications - with IntraWeb.

So far I never had a support issue or consulting contact asking for accessibility options of IntraWeb. Of course I heard of it, and I know that certain projects put big efforts into making Web pages accessible for visually disabled people  - but what if you are a blind developer?  Can you “read” your own code or even design grafical user interfaces?

Obviously you can. Marco Zehe is Delphi community member and he successfully does all this. He just contacted me and told me that he successfully started with IntraWeb and that he was amazed that he can “see” the IntraWeb form designer  and the controls on it.

Marco said, that he can not use ASP.NET, neither with Delphi nor with Visual Studio, because he can not “see” the form designers. So IntraWeb is one step ahead once more

I’m excited to get more feedback from Marco, esp. recommendations  of how to design IntraWeb forms, so that they are accessible by a blind audience.

I believe there are many small things you just do not think about as a seeing person. For example these captcha/turing codes you have to type in at various web sites,  when you place an order or what ever. They are designed to prevent spam and/or fraud, but they also prevent visually disabled people from accessing these systems.

• http://juicystudio.com/article/accessibility-of-captcha.php
• http://www.einfach-fuer-alle.de/artikel/captcha/

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 1:00 and is filed under Miscellaneous.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.