Thanks, I meant to mention here so as not to go off-topic, but forgot to, that iNat staff is aware of much of this. I was told that the site would require a lot of redesign to make it accessible, and that was 3 years ago. I think the app (and making that accessible) and other projects might be more pressing at the moment. I would love to see a timeline of actual steps regarding the website, but I recognize this will happen gradually because of how complex iNat is. But yes, I made a forum topic about this last year.
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This does not make me happy. This is a massive platform, meaning a massive public venue and public venues are supposed to be accessible according to the ADA. Do they at least provide a list of their priority changes (preferably arrived at in consultation with national advocacy groups for people who are blind), and the order in which they intend to address them? I know that iNaturalist is always short of money and staff time but that can (and should) be addressed by fund-raising. This is a crowd-sourced platform, crowd funding should be a no brainer. Accessibility is the law, not some low priority issue.
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Iām not happy, but I understand why itās taken so long. And I agree they need to be more publicly transparent about their process for making the site accessible. To their credit though, they have fixed specific issues Iāve brought up relatively quickly. The bigger issue that takes longer to work out are the more systemic design problems. It goes back to iNatās initially being a university science projectā¦ Accessibility wasnāt even considered. But Iām with you that things need to change. Iām just not familiar enough with how the visual features work to suggest how.
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Should note that no, no such list of changes suggested by blind people exists. To my knowledge there isnāt even an accessibility statement. Accessibility is still unacceptably ad-hoc.
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So, what can we do about this? Coincidently, I just read Haben, a memoir of a Deafblind woman who became a disability lawyer. The organization she worked for sued Scribd for not making their site accessible and they won. I can research national organizations for people with blindness and disability rights organizations but I think probably you (as a person with blindness) should contact them once we have that information. If it comes to money I would donate $1,000 to the cause and would work on fund-raising, but I donāt have expertise in that. Iām sure you are not the only blind person who would like to use iNat, and even if you were, this is a civil rights issue.
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Hi, to help give your topic the merit it deserves (rather than be buried in a topic about social media), I reopened the one that had automatically closed and moved your discussion here.
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Thanks for this. It really wasnāt my intention to go down the accessibility rabbithole in the other topic - I just wanted to give some context in my broader iNat criticisms, which go beyond accessibility. But I appreciate you doing this. I may have more to add here shortly.
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Iāve heard a lot about that lawyer, but didnāt know about the Scribd lawsuit. Will have to look into that. Iāll also look into what blindness/disability rights orgs might be able to help. I would also like to know exactly what the graphic search, identify mode, etc. do that I canāt, so we could even potentially brainstorm some solutions collaboratively with iNat.
Now that this topic has been reopened, and the way I use iNat has changed from January 2023, Iāll be updating my āguideā on how to use iNat with a screen reader, above.
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Universities are also subject to accessibility laws.
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Studentsā science projects are not necessarily subject to the same legal consequences as if it had been a project of the university itself. And itās certainly not enforced the same way (in reality the ADA has absolutely no enforcement mechanism besides lawsuits), and especially not in 2008. This is not an excuse, itās just a fact. Also, winning lawsuits based on web accessibility claims has only started happening fairly recently, because the ADA, passed in 1990, wasnāt designed to deal with the Internet.
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Yes, she talks about that in her book since the suit they won against Scribd set a precedent that online businesses are āplacesā as mentioned in the ADA. She was working for Disability Rights Advocates in California. Where are you located? I am in Oregon.
Is there some way I can help?
In the DC area.
There is indeed, and this goes for others reading this as well:
I donāt want to do anything drastic unless I have to, so my first thought is to figure out exactly what sighted users can do here that I canāt. This would include things like graphic search, identify mode, the observation uploader, and there are probably others. Then I will make specific requests as to what to fix so we have full functionality. Not everything can be made accessible (maps, for example), but I would like some help isolating the most important areas for improvement.
This is where sighted users come in: I would love for someone, preferably experienced in functionality like identifications and projects, to collaborate on some conversation, testing and brainstorming with me to try and isolate these major problem areas for blind accessibility and find feasible ways to address it. This might involve explaining how certain things are supposed to work, and responding to my feedback on what actually seems to be happening on my end. If anyone would be willing to help in this regard I would greatly appreciate it!!
@JaneBP Also do you happen to have any experience dealing with accessibility issues? I do, but I was just curious.
I have not yet read Thomas Mesaglio 's PDF - but he has one mention of Accessibility in his References.
Now I cannot find the link again on iNat. @thebeachcomber ?
Sorry, Iām confused - what is it youāre referring to?
I am not experienced in accessibility issues, but I do have one suggestion - not sure if it is a good one - which is that many of the features of iNat are available via the API or various coding packages. In fact, there are features of iNat that are really only accessible via editing of api/html (though those admittedly are rather niche).
Any inputs to and outputs from the API are inherently machine-readable and accessible to screen readers and the like. They also donāt include or can be instructed to exclude many aspects of iNat that are inherently inaccessible without vision (like maps or the content of the images themselves) or where the visual info is translated into code. Working with this could provide a way to interact with many (though not all) of iNatās features currently.
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Iāve thought about thatā¦ Iām terrible at coding and Iād have to learn a lot about what itās possible to do with the API. Everything Iām seeing so far is useful but, again, ad-hoc.
Most of the core functionalities of iNat are accessible in some way via coding:
adding observations, adding IDs, making comments, getting data from iNat, etc.
One other thought is that the āpartā of iNat that is currently most under development is the new app. I donāt know how accessibility of apps compares to websites. However, given that it will be newest piece of iNat, I would guess (though have no personal knowledge) that it would be more accessible than older elements. If you are interested in app usage, once a full beta version comes out, you could try becoming a beta tester and seeing whether accessibility aspects work there and giving feedback. Since it would have dedicated, active development during that time, any changes that can be implemented might be made quickly and have an impact for other users.
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As for the app, I have heard from the iNat team about accessibility work there, and it sounds like itās more of a priority.
No, I donāt. My awareness of accessibility issues have mostly been related to wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches, i.e., irritation when I see curbs without cuts and buildings without elevators. Also irritated to see doors and bathroom sinks with round knobs which are hard to manipulate and things like that. I picked up some Signed English because the church I went to years ago had some Deaf attendees. So you might say that I am clueless, but motivated! LOL!
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