How do blind and partially sighted people cope with this brave new world?
Only a tiny percentage of websites and books are fully accessible to blind and partially sighted people - the technology is there, now we need the political will to match it, writes campaigner
This is the beginning of an article by Dan Pescod, campaigns manager for the Royal National Institute of Blind People and the European Blind Union:
It is a cliché, but true, that we live in an information age. We Tweet from our mobile phones, send emails from our tablets and watch television on our laptops. But how do blind and partially sighted people cope with this brave new world? To try to put ourselves in the shoes of a blind person, let us focus just on access to websites and books. If space allowed I could fill another article explaining how television programmes, TV sets, radios and mobile phones - to name but a few - are also often needlessly inaccessible.
Firstly, the good news is that technology can overcome many of the barriers the information age would otherwise present to blind people. With more and more shops, government and information services going online - it is good to know that some websites are designed accessibly to be 'read' by 'text-to-speech' software and be easily visible to those with low vision. Guidelines for developers exist to achieve this.
