Internet with a Human Touch - By: Susan10

Web designers, software and hardware developers are all working on ways for people with disabilities to navigate the Internet more easily. All audio options help the blind users to find their way around and the captions makes the Web video accessible to the deaf people. The new devices help people with its mobility impairments to move the cursors.
How would you feel when will not be able to use your mouse to open a Web browser or your keyboard to type an E-mail. Despite of all technological advances which always aims at making the Internet easy to use for us, the World Wide Web is not wide open for many people.
As people with disabilities is growing more and they are trying to do everything online, companies are finding it as a good prospect for business sense to make their sites more accessible. They are hiring some consultants and training programmers to make this happen.
Web sites nowadays pose as the virtual front door of a business. If you can't get in to it, you can't get your business done and you loose one of your customer.
Approximately there are more than 50 million people in and around U.S. with disabilities, which include blindness, hearing-impairments, cognitive, mobility difficulties and neurological problems.
The World Wide Web Consortium develops some standards for the Web, which has issued some guidelines for designers which helps them to create more accessible sites. They provide text labels for images, captions on audio and video and also make the keyboard shortcuts for people who cannot use a mouse.
While most federal government Web sites are required by law to be accessible, companies have no legal obligation to incorporate the features. The first step to make the Internet accessible is to know how disabled people use the web. In the Yahoo headquarters in Silicon Valley, the "Accessibility Lab" allows programmers and developers to try various technological software and hardware.
Their goal is to make people feel more at ease with disabilities and to make the technology work for people. The lab is available to Yahoo employees as well as developers from other companies.
Guy Thomas, of San Leandro, has little arm movement because of neuromuscular disability, but he plays a lot of games on Internet, using a trackball and mouse stick. He quoted that there are some games that have made adaptations for otherwise challenging moves. Those improvements are essential to let him enjoy the new games on the Web.
Expert says that accessibility features make a better Internet for all. For example, the ability to zoom in on a map or magnify the font size was conceived for people with low vision but it is helpful for everyone.
Yahoo recently upgraded its home page to add labels will makes people easier to use screen readers to jump around the page on Internet. The company also added audio CAPTCHA image verifications for all those users who can neither see nor comprehend the distorted words. Google whose programmers used the Yahoo lab, introduced automatic machine-generated captions for all those videos on the You Tube site so that to make them accessible to the deaf and hearing-impaired. From now all those people with disability can also keep a contact with their friends through Email also.

About the Author

Susan Brown, Seattle, is thoroughly equipped with latest technological development. Her articles are attuned to technological development and modern solutions to age old computer-related problems. She talks about remote assistance and its benefits. She is working with Online PC 24x7 for more than a decade as an expert technical writer.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Susan10/71248

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