Harry Potter and the Tax On The Blind

Image description: tweet by Titanium Cranium (@FelicityTC)
including three screenshots of a Harry potter book in three different formats
on Amazon. Text: “Harry Potter on Amazon - Print: $6.39 Audio: $44.99
Braille: $100.00 #CripTax”

Tumblr user actuallyblind debunks the idea that charging 8 to 10 times more for audio and Braille version of books is just covering the cost of production:

But those defenders of higher prices are reversing the argument to justify fleecing disabled readers.
What do I mean by that? 

Braille is not magic. It is done by taking plain text and feeding it through fairly affordable translation software, creating a document that can easily be printed in braille. All that time and effort and special software? IS NOT FOR THE BRAILLE... 

Printing in braille is cheap; reverse engineering a finished text to print it in braille IS NOT. Same with those audio books. After a book is completed and, often, after it has already been published, the publisher arranges to have the book recorded by a professional voice actor/reader, which usually also involves a recording producer... However: that cost? IS RARELY FACTORED INTO THE BUDGET OF PRINTING A BOOK. 

[The claim that Braille and audio] formats are more expensive to produce so they have to be priced higher is only true if you completely throw out the premise that publishers have an obligation to account for disabled readers when they are actually budgeting for and publishing the book."

In my experience as a designer, I've noticed that the high cost of creating accessible features-- whether it's on a website or a building-- is not due to the features costing anything exorbitant. The actual high cost comes in when there is a lack of considering accessibility issues from the very start and you have to retro-fit those features in. Whenever this approach is a project's primary approach to accessibility, then accessibility seems expensive. The true is expense is a failure to plan.

Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to blame disabled people for wanting accessibility to the same resources as everyone else instead of blaming the designers or publishers or the people responsible for hiring and directing them.

If you're about to say something like "Oh, no one has to read entertainment books, I'm sure it's taken care of in schools, tumblr user inlustris weighs in:

My mom is a textbook braillest. She has the software, fixes the formatting, takes the textbook and makes it translatable into braille. Most of her work ends up becoming rush jobs, because schools always forget about their blind students and the materials that they need. They start semesters without the right textbooks, are provided the materials late, can’t take the tests at the same times, because schools and teachers usually lack the foresight to provide the materials in advance. 

What we need is for more designers, publishers and project design leads to learn about the principles of universal design.

Making the Web Accessible For The Visually Impaired

Description of how a screen reader works with webpages.
Courtesy of the National Federation of the Blind, the Amer-
ican Foundation of the Blind, and the Associated Press.

Children's author and key "We Need Diverse Books" boosted a recent discussion between a web developer and a blind web user: what are the main challenges for people with visual impairments when trying to navigate a website that hasn't been optimized for accessibility? user answers:

[A]ttempting to navigate the site will be really obnoxious. There are shortcuts to help navigate screens with the screen reader, and these are used pretty frequently. JAWS, for example, will use H to move from header to header, T from table to table, and so on. If that order isn’t intuitive, an end user can get in an unexpected place - and since there’s no visual context, it can be hard to get back on track. 

Mostly, it’s about being aware that the structure of your code has further reaching impact than just the visual aspects of the screen.

If you're a business, it also ends up costing you sales and loyal customers. By coding a website that is screen-reader accessible with features like properly marked-up semantic structure and labeled links and images, your website will be more easier to be indexed search engines. Web crawlers (also called "web spiders") such as the one Google uses get their information from websites the same way a user employing assistive technology would. By having an accessible site Google can more easily index your site and make it easier to find in search results. And according to WebAim, if a visually impaired customer finds a commercial website is easy to use with assistive technology, they are twice as likely to be a repeat customer.

A site's marketing copy is tailored to bring customers to your website, so it's just good business sense to make sure it’s accessible once they arrive. The American Foundation for the Blind and WebAIM have several tip sheets and tutorials that help make your website welcoming for people with low or no vision.

Ultimately, while making the web more accessible for the blind does immediately benefit visually impaired users right now, it also helps your bottom line AND your future use of the web. As I wrote last year:

"But Shawn, I don't have a disability, why should I care?" some might ask. Well, if empathy won't convince you, how about self interest? In the disability activism community some people use the term "temporarily able-bodied" (TAB for short) to refer to people that don't have a disability. Why? Well, odds are that as you age, you will experience declines in vision, movement, motor function or cognitive functions. You may be able-bodies NOW, but you won't always be.