词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Web Accessibility

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": August 22, 2002
Rebroadcast on VOA News Now: August 25, 2002

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble has the week off. This week on Wordmaster -- making the Web more welcoming to the disabled.

John Slatin is director of the Institute for Technology and Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. He travels near and far, promoting ways to make the Internet more accessible to persons with disabilities.

His fellow frequent flier is Dillon. Dillon, a golden Labrador retriever, is a guide dog for the blind. John Slatin was an adult when he lost most of his sight.

Professor Slatin says the key to making a Web page more accessible is what he calls "principled redundancy."

JOHN SLATIN: "Rather than just providing the information in one form, say a paragraph or a complex image, you're providing both things. So there's both an image that illustrates¹ a process or an idea or whatever, and a prose² description of that same idea, a prose explanation -- so that, for example, a blind person who can't see the image can read the prose description.

"Whereas³ somebody who for whatever reason can't read the prose -- perhaps they have dyslexia or a brain injury that makes it difficult for them to process information in text form, or perhaps they're not familiar or very comfortable with the native language in which the explanation is written -- the image can help them. And you might go even further and add a sound explanation, perhaps somebody saying the same thing or explaining the same idea, and yet a slightly different form."

AA: Since the late 1980s, John Slatin has concentrated his teaching and research on information technology. That was a switch from his earlier passion: twentieth-century American poetry.

Ironically, John Slatin says the elements that go into making a Web page accessible go against his conventional training as an English teacher.

JOHN SLATIN: "We would have talked about that as redundancy and meant something negative about that, whereas now in Web design we're looking for principled ways of allowing the use of multimedia⁴, different media and different formats⁵, to help different people with different needs get to the same idea."

AA: "In general, how accessible is the World Wide Web to the disabled?"

JOHN SLATIN: "The short answer is, not very. The longer answer is that it depends partly on what kind of disability you have. For people with visual impairments, in particular, it's still a very, very difficult environment to operate in, because it's a very visual medium and a lot of the people who design for it are primarily visual thinkers, and that's what they're focused on.

"And so a lot of the work to provide alternatives in text form that the assistive technology that people who are blind use, such as screen readers or talking Web browsers⁶, doesn't have material to work with as often as it should. Or the material isn't of the quality that it needs to be yet."

AA: "How difficult is it for a programmer to add some elements that make it more accessible?"

JOHN SLATIN: "In many respects making a Web site more accessible to people with disabilities is quite simple. There are easy techniques for associating text material with images, so that, again, screen-reading software or talking Web browsers -- or what are called refreshable Braille displays that some people who are blind, and some people who are both blind and deaf, use -- read the text instead of coming up against a blank wall in the form of an image that they can't process. As the techniques become more familiar, I'm confident that more and more sites will be more accessible."

AA: John Slatin heads the Institute for Technology and Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. Now meet one of his assistants, "Reed⁷."

REED: "Designers sometimes, quote, slice, quote, large, comma, complex images into several smaller images in order to speed up the time it takes for the complete page to appear on the screen, period. This technique has some important advantages, comma, but there are potential disadvantages from an accessibility standpoint, period."

AA: Reed is one of the voices on a screen-reading program called JAWS⁸ which John Slatin has on his laptop computer. As you can tell, Reed verbalizes whatever is written in a document -- punctuation⁹ and all.

Now if he sounds a little fast to you, you can slow him down:

REED: "There's a difference between what users see on their screen and what screen readers, comma, talking browsers, comma, and Braille displays, quote, see, quote, when they process the HTML source code, period."

AA: If you're still not happy, with a few more clicks ...

SHELLEY: "There's a difference between what users see on their screen and what screen readers ... "

AA: You can let "Shelley" do the talking ... another example of a way to make information technology more adaptable¹⁰ to persons with disabilities.

And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is。。。。。。。。。and our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi Arditti.

 

1 illustrates   

给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
• Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生，他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分

2 prose   

adj.散文的；n.散文

参考例句：

• His writings include poetry and prose.他的作品包括诗和散文。
• He has a taste for purple prose.他喜欢风格华丽的散文。

3 whereas   

conj.而，却，反之

参考例句：

• They want a house,whereas we would rather live in a flat.他们想要一座房子，而我们宁愿住在一套房间里。
• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。

4 multimedia   

adj.多种手段的，多媒体的；n.多媒体

参考例句：

• Multimedia is the combination of computer and video technology.多媒体是计算机和视频技术的结合。
• Adam raised the issue of multimedia applications and much useful discussion ensued.亚当提出了多媒体应用的问题，从而引发了许多有益的讨论。

5 formats   

n.（出版物的）版式( format的名词复数 )；[电视]电视节目的总安排（或计划）

参考例句：

• They are producing books in all kinds of different formats. 他们出版各种不同开本的书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A true GUI includes standard formats for representing text and graphics. 真正的图形用户界面包括表示文字和图形的标准格式。 来自互联网

6 browsers   

浏览器

参考例句：

• Three-layer architecture is a model made up of browser, web server and background database server. 这种体系结构是由Browser、Web Server、Database Server组成的浏览器／Web服务器／后台数据库服务器三层模型。 来自互联网
• Another excellent approach is to abandon the browser entirely and, instead, create a non-browser-based, Internet-enabled application. 另一个非常好的方法是干脆放弃浏览器，取而代之，创建一个不基于浏览器，但却是基于互联网的应用。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

7 reed   

n.芦苇，芦丛，簧舌，簧片

参考例句：

• The river banks were overgrown with reed.河岸长满了芦苇。
• They inhabit reed huts built on stilts above the water.他们住在建于水中木桩之上的芦苇草屋里。

8 jaws   

n.口部；嘴

参考例句：

• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。
• The scored jaws of a vise help it bite the work. 台钳上有刻痕的虎钳牙帮助它紧咬住工件。

9 punctuation   

n.标点符号，标点法

参考例句：

• My son's punctuation is terrible.我儿子的标点符号很糟糕。
• A piece of writing without any punctuation is difficult to understand.一篇没有任何标点符号的文章是很难懂的。

10 adaptable   

adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的

参考例句：

• He is an adaptable man and will soon learn the new work.他是个适应性很强的人，很快就将学会这种工作。
• The soil is adaptable to the growth of peanuts.这土壤适宜于花生的生长。