Information Gift

508 State

Most web developers by now, especially those who have clients in education & government, have at least a passing familiarity with the Section 508 guidelines designed to provide "disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others."

However, few of us really understand what it's like to experience sites as a visually-impaired person. Here's a mp3 recording (4.19MB, @15min) of a screenreader user commissioned by Upmystreet.com to review their site and relay his experiences while doing so.

Note: I've mirrored the file to offset any bandwidth costs incurred by the original poster, a blogger and employee of the company at the time. Much thanks to Stef Magdalinski and Upstreet.com for sharing.

Stef also points out the Accessibility study of BBCi: Problems faced by users with disabilities (.pdf, 1.7MB). Probably a good case study for those of us responsible for meeting Section 508 compliance.