Hi there!  I'm Heather DeMarco at the business desk and I'd like to end this week on a note of warning to all those who are seeking opportunities in markets that are explosive, growing, safe, and above all markets that are going to be around for a very long time to come.  For as long as we are unable to find solutions and remedies for leading causes of blindness and loss of vision, this particular market is going to be around for a very long time.

The number of blind and visually impaired persons around the world is growing at an alarming pace and right here in America it is ballooning.  Loss of vision and blindness is being fuelled by such factors as:

A rapidly growing group of hundreds of millions of diabetics around the world.

Loss of vision due to a rapidly aging population worldwide.

Loss of vision due to genetics.

Loss of vision due to other types of disabling diseases.

These are all very sobering factors yet for all of this literally hundreds of thousands of Internet websites are still not able to accommodate the needs and demands of this rapidly growing group.  Many would ask why and as the experts see it, it may simply be due to the fact that many are either just choosing to ignore this market, or they are just simply unaware of the existence of this particular market. 

I think that it is time for you to discover this market.  It's time for you to wake up and start paying more attention to a market where demand vastly outstrips supply, where consumer demand is very real, consumer income is on the rise, and above all our government is looking for businesses of all sizes to step up to the plate.  I'm going to publish an article to help enlarge the picture for you.  Hopefully you'll find it interesting enough to set you thinking.

Have a great weekend and please pay attention to the following article.

 

As Web evolves, blind left behind

 

By Tim Spangler
Chicago Defender, IL, February 09, 2007

 

The last time Ray Campbell tried to buy Cubs tickets online, Tickets.com
asked him to enter the text in a distorted image in order to prove that he
was not a robot programmed to automatically buy tickets  for scalpers. .

 

The only problem: Campbell couldn't read the text in the image. In fact, he
couldn't see it at all - he's been blind his entire life.

 

"All I want to do is buy tickets and I can't do that, because there's this
verification and they have not provided an audio link to it," Campbell said.

 

For America's nearly 2 million blind or visually impaired Internet users,
problems like these can prevent them from taking advantage of all the Web
has to offer.

 

"The two challenges with Web accessibility are not just being able to access
the site, but being able to use the site," said Leah Gerlach, director of
counseling at the Diecke Center for Vision Rehabilitation in Wheaton.

 

Gerlach said the growing use of multimedia video on Web sites creates a
significant accessibility challenge, saying that Internet video can confuse
the screen reading software that blind and visually impaired people use to
browse the Internet.

 

Blind Browsing

 

Blind and visually impaired people use special software called screen
readers that "speak" to them in a synthetic voice what is happening on the
screen.

 

When browsing a Web site, a screen reader examines a page's code and
determines how the page is laid out and what links are on it, then reads the
content of the page to a user.

 

Screen readers rely on explanatory text, defined by webmasters, to interpret
images. Because of this, the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets Internet
standards, requires developers to define alternative text for every image on
a page.

 

Multimedia content, like Adobe Flash, is unintelligible to screen readers
and is skipped entirely when the page is read. Sites that rely heavily on
Flash should be sure to offer accessible, text-only versions of their pages.
 
Screen reading software uses text-to-speech conversion, machines that
translate on-screen text to Braille or a combination of both to present a
Web page to a blind or visually impaired user.

 

The challenges

 

Campbell is a technician at the assistive technology help desk at the the
Chicago Lighthouse, an organization for the blind and visually impaired. A
former software engineer at Lucent Technologies, he now takes calls from
blind and visually impaired people across the U.S. and Canada and helps them
solve computer problems and navigate Web sites.

 

Campbell identified what he said are the Web's three major accessibility
problems: graphics without descriptive text, required plug-in installations
and visual registration tests, called captchas, an acronym for "Completely
Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart."  Captchas
are particularly troublesome when it comes to  accessibility.

 

Why captchas?

 

Many major sites require users to verify that they are actually human - not
automated robots. By presenting the browser with a captcha - an image of
distorted text that is difficult for a computer to decode - and asking the
user to enter the text they see in the image, robots can be blocked from the
site while human users who can see the text are given access. Campbell said
that captchas can be made accessible by using audio clips in addition to
images to verify users as human. Some sites, like LiveJournal.com, already
do this.

 

What works, what doesn't

 

Blogging, a growing Internet phenomenon, is still largely text-based and
tends to be more screen reader friendly than other applications.

 

"My experience has taught me that [blogging] is pretty accessible," said
Campbell, who keeps his own blog on LiveJournal.

 

"Screen readers can handle a lot of the current techniques that are being
used in Web design," Campbell said, as long as designers take extra care to
make their sites accessible. These include avoiding the use of images to
display text, providing audio narration for videos and offering text-only
versions of pages with multimedia content.

 

As interactive, multimedia Web sites become more prevalent, blind and
visually impaired users might find themselves behind the curve as designers
forgo accessible pages for glitzy ones and screen reading software lags
behind, said Leah Gerlach at the Diecke Center

 

"We don't drive change. We have to follow it and keep up with it," Gerlach
said. "We're always six months behind cutting edge because we have to be."

 

Tim Spangler is a reporter for the Medill News Service.

 

http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=8439

From the business desk I'm Heather DeMarco at www.untappedwealth.com