Thane Pullan talks about switch input and CAPTCHAs

Thane tells us that CAPTCHAS with time outs are the worse. He types very slowly and sometimes he can't type the CAPTCHA in time. And the picture ones can be difficult to solve on occasion. Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcripts for this episode. Tenon provides accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training, and tooling to help fix accessibility, fast! My guest today is Thane Pullan. Thane is nonverbal. So we did the interview via email, he typed his answers and recorded this text to speech software reading his part of the conversation. Thane, let's start with our first question. What's your disability or impairment Thane Cerebral palsy. I use eye tracking and a knee switch to operate my computer, I can move the mouse to a specific area of the screen then make small corrections to the position with my knee switch scanning system, I type with eye tracking and word prediction. Nic For those of us who aren't familiar with eye tracking and switches, could you tell us a bit more about the specifics of relying on that assistive software? How does eye tracking work specifically? Thane With eye tracking, I look at letters and hold my gaze and then to type and the cursor follows my gaze too. I click with a big button on my tray. Right clicking is done through my knee switch scanning system. A menu pops up on my screen and I can choose from dozens of functions that I want the computer to perform. Nic What is the greatest barrier you experienced on the web Thane The worse, CAPTCHAS with time outs. I type very slowly and sometimes I can't type the CAPTCHA in time. and the picture ones can be difficult to solve on occasion. One more thing popup menus are horrible for eye tracking, most eye tracking users probably can't use them. you have to keep your mouse in an area from then not to close. What's ridiculous is some disability websites use them. on another note it always makes me cringe when I see companies offering services to the disability community and they have ambiguous links etc. Nic What do you mean by ambiguous links? How's that a barrier for you? Thane Ambiguous links aren't a barrier for me but horrible for blind users. They're links that say click here, read more etc. they're basically non descriptive links. When scanning through links on screen reader a link saying click here without any other context tells the screen reader user nothing. I'm just amused by sites offering services to the disability community that can't follow very basic accessibility guidelines. Nic What is one message you have for designers or developers Thane I guess go to https://peoplewithdisabilities.com/accessible_websites.html and read the article. It have has some great information. Just research the best accessibility practices really. Also don't create infographics without some sort of alternative for blind people. marketers be like infographics are great, well not if you're blind . A tool I use for my sites is the web accessibility in mind scanner. It probably doesn't detect everything but it's good enough. Nic Automated testing is certainly a good start and better than what most web developers do in terms of checking accessibility. Thane, thank you for being such a great guest and we'll catch you up on the web.