Hi All,

The past few years have been witness to helpful advances in web
accessibility for people with disabilities.  On the technical side screen
readers and web browsers are getting much better at presenting a very
functional and friendly web.  Quality guidelines on how to construct web
sites have also made progress thanks to efforts by many associated with the
W3C and similar groups around the world.  However at times I can't avoid
the feeling that those of us interested in web access are a bit like the
people who set sail on the Titanic so many years ago.

Take a browse to <http://turbotaxweb.intuit.com> and you might see what I
mean.  This is Intuit's online version of their popular Turbo Tax product.

The combination of design and technology that Intuit is using virtually
eliminates any of the advances made in web accessibility over the past few
years.  Those using screen readers and web browsers incorporating
Microsoft's Active Accessibility might as well turn that feature
off.  Aside from a few links to leave the Tax return and such, the Online
Turbo Tax site does not use any links that you can use to navigate the program.

The opening screen of the web site is just one example of what can be found
throughout Turbo Tax Online.  You are asked whether you want to start a new
return, continue and existing one or transfer data from last year.  However
the only links one finds on the page are for information about privacy and
copyrights for the web site.

To successfully choose any of these start points, screen reader users must
turn on whatever commands their program uses for mouse navigation and issue
actual mouse clicks on the text associated with each feature.

Attempting to use Turbo Tax online reminds me of trying to use Netscape
when that browser first came out and lacked any keyboard navigation.  You
must ask for the font of text on the screen to determine what is a link
that you can select.

Microsoft Active Accessibility and Internet Explorer make using Turbo Tax
online a bit easier.  You can review the onscreen text in a screen reader
fashion but when moving the mouse pointer to issue actual clicks, you are
navigating the screen reader unfriendly version of the page.

As an example, choosing the Start New return option takes you to a page
where you must read and acknowledge a usage agreement.  You can read this
with the JFW Virtual PC or Window-Eyes MSAA mode on but then must find text
near the bottom of the page indicating that you Accept or Do Not
Accept.  These are not links so you'll have to issue mouse clicks on the
text.  And so it goes with the rest of the program.

I have not used the web site enough to know whether one can successfully
complete a tax return with the limitations I've described.  The help for
the web site talks about being able to navigate from section to section of
the Turbo Tax Easy Step Interview for example but once I've started a
return I haven't found a way to do that with a screen reader.  Following
step-by-step I have been able to enter basic demographic and tax filing
status details about myself.  The income screens come next and my initial
impression of those was that they were quite cluttered because again it is
difficult to know what's a link and what is not.

I and I suspect others will write to Intuit asking them to address these
issues.  The fact that their software programs like Turbo Tax, Quicken and
alike get more and more inaccessible with each new release doesn't leave me
much hope that the online version of their programs will be much improved
for next tax year.  For this year it is more of the trial and error of
assorted software that's unfortunately all too much of the reality of
accessing the computer with a screen reader in the year 2000.  While I
don't desire the days of DOS again, I do wish the state of accessibility
with the computer would return to one where we are asking: "How do you use
that program?" more often than "Does that program work with a screen reader?"

I'm a realist though and by no means am I discounting the advances that
have been made in accessibility.  For anyone, access technology user or
not, it is plainly obvious that one can do much more with a computer today
than one could five or ten years ago.  However, as a percentage of the
total one can do with a computer, I do believe that what screen reader
users can successfully do has declined as computing technology has advanced
in the past several years.  As a comparison, suppose at the zenith of
computing accessibility what someone not using a screen reader could
accomplish was worth $1,000.  I'd estimate that screen reading access in
terms of a percentage was worth $800 or eighty percent of the computing
applications were available to a screen reading user.  Let's say that today
the total one can do with a computer is worth $10,000 I'd honestly say that
what one can access successfully with a screen reader is worth about $5,000
or at best fifty percent of the total available without a screen
reader.  Obviously we are all better off today than in the past but my
point is that screen reading users are falling behind.

Kelly


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html