Assistive Technology

Note: The following is testimony made by Mark Richert, AFB's director of public policy, on how copyright law affects those with vision loss. For a primer on this topic, please see All Rights Reserved—How Copyright Law Can Leave People Who Are Blind Out. Video of this testimony is also available from the U.S. House of Representatives.

Lots of websites have a real and urgent need to keep bots and spammers off their sites. One partial solution is the CAPTCHA.

I recently learned that John DeWitt passed away. He was the founder of DeWitt & Associates, an organization that provided technology assessment and training in New Jersey for persons who are blind or visually impaired. He also worked for the American Foundation for the Blind from 1978 to 1989 as a resource specialist. John's passing was a great loss to New Jersey, the blindness community, his family, and all of the people he touched through his work and volunteering.

You might be excited or just ecstatic that the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) has just launched the CareerConnect App with some of your favorite features of the CareerConnect resource center. Hold your applause and high-pitched sounds of jubilation for the full deal on this momentous occasion. Am I hyping this app? Oh, yes! But I will tell you that this launch is just the beginning of more great things to come.

Ike Presley, wearing a bioptic device, at the driver's wheel of a 1929 Model A Ford Roadster replica

Everybody who works with people who are blind or visually impaired knows those reluctant technology adopters, or complete non-technology adopters. When the Pew Research Center says 15% of Americans are not connected, who are these people? They're in my singing group.

For today, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I'll try to answer a question I get a lot: "What can I send this webmaster to give examples of how to fix a broken site?"

I was delighted to see this article from the Nielsen Norman Group on why Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful. Placeholders are those words that lurk in your online forms, frequently an almost unreadable pale gray.

The example the author provides in the article is a password field where the label "Password:" appears above the form field, and the hint "Must have at least 6 characters" appears as light gray placeholder text inside the form field.

I like to talk about technology...but sometimes the outdoors just takes over.

Last Sunday was the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, a fabulous event here in NYC, in which about 32,000 people ride bicycles through the city.