I should have also mentioned that I am happy to have conversations with you about what I do on iNat but my knowledge of accommodations for people with blindness is limited.
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He has written a detailed guide to the use of iNat (in Australia)
I was hoping he might add to the conversation - but - more so if it had come up within his guide.
His post is here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/a-guide-to-inaturalist/50517
But if the reference you mean is Roger, E., Kellie, D., Slatyer, C., Brenton, P., Torresan, O., Wallis, E. and Zerger, A., 2023. Open Access Research Infrastructures are Critical for Improving the Accessibility and Utility of Citizen Science: A Case Study of Australiaās National Biodiversity Infrastructure, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 8(1), pp.1-35. then I think the āaccessibilityā in the title is referring to being able to easily obtain and use Citizen Science data.
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Thanks! Familiarity with screen readers is unnecessary; Iām confident I can explain to you whatever needs explaining. :)
Would agree with this interpretation - accessibility also meaning low barrier to entry, I would think. The meaning of website accessibility is much more specific.
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Technically maybeā¦ But I look at it and understand nothing. Kind of negates the whole ālow barrier to entryā thing, wouldnāt you say?
I was just responding to your comment about
to clarify that doing most things is possible via the API. I think using coding is basically like learning another language. It certainly takes work to learn, and Iām not particularly proficient in it myself. But the API is definitely a powerful way to interact with iNat - many sighted people choose to use it to accomplish what they wish as it enables them to do things that they canāt do via the web interface or can only do much more slowly/less efficiently.
Iām not saying that itās a great solution for you necessarily, just making it clear that it is available and one potential avenue that is machine-readable depending on the userās goals.
In regards to finding a
I think this is probably the app for most people. The website itself with its many functions/interfaces is one of the more complex ones I interact with. Depending on what users want to do, the app may be enough for them without using the website. So depending on what you want to do, you might be able to tailor your approach to that.
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Fair enough. My point with bringing up the ālow barrier to entryā is that I, as a blind person, shouldnāt have to learn another language just to do what sighted people can do in a few clicks.
Which is not to say that the API and composing specific URLs arenāt useful, and Iāve thought about learning how to do the latter.
Thanks for continuing this conversation @daniel5. Iām not a developer but Iāll say that one of the many reasons we decided to write a new app from the ground up is to make accessibility features easier to implement. Support for screen readers is on the roadmap for the app, in addition to better support for large text display, etc. I tried it out with a screen reader on today and, with the caveat that Iām not an experienced screen reader user, it seems to work pretty well for some parts of the app, but not other parts - which isnāt surprising, the app is still in beta and it has pieces missing or broken.
Once itās out of beta and thereās something stable to work with, we would definitely like to hear feedback and ideas about how to improve accessibility.
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Thanks for this. I still think figuring out the major issue areas for the site is a good idea. I can use a good portion, I just need to use workarounds sometimes. So what I want to figure out is where my ways of using the site donāt cut it when it comes to the functionality others have. Then I can give specific feedback which hopefully devs can implement if not everyone is working on the appā¦
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