[daniel13]

I agree with some earlier comments about watching out for black spots. I lost my sight in a grizzly bear mauling and learning to use adaptive technology was a critical part of my recovery which lead me back into the work place. The technology available is very helpful, but definitely has its limits and can indeed be quite frustrating at times. Agree with the article that Facebook is really not accessible in a meaningful way at all. While the mobile site is slightly better, it has no structure and is essentially made up of approximately 99 links on my mobile homepage. Like all skills though, you do get better at using a screen reader with practice. I believe the brain's neural pathways actually adapt to accommodate the way a blind user interfaces with the screen reader much in the same way it does for other tasks such as orientation and mobility (travelling blind). So, blind users actually do get used to the super fast speech that may be unintelligible to most people. With that said, I appreciate the article because there are very simple ways to make websites user friendly to the blind. Headings that are not over used and well labeled and having all controls on a site well labeled alone can make a huge difference. The other key is really simplicity. Less is more for the blind user for sure. I've tried to do that with my website (danbigley.com), but it can be difficult to test and ensure accessibility.