
		Google Developer Podcast Technology

Google Developer Podcast Episode Nine: The status of accessibility on the Web

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

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T.V. Raman is a Research Scientist at Google who knows a thing or two about accessibility. We took the opportunity to interview him, and Hubbell, his seeing-eye dog (who was nice and quiet).

We started out by asking the honest question that developers ask about accessibility: "What is in it for me?". T.V. discusses the practical issues, and what you should be doing with respect to accessibility, and how it is one piece of the usability picture.

We then delve into the problems of developing accessible websites, and solutions to some of the problems.

If you listen to the interview you will learn:

How not to develop in a user-agent specific manner
Fun issues with screen readers
How audio CAPTCHA brings equality to the pain of CAPTCHA, and how people who can see use the audio ones
How painful is the Web to view for a blind person
Using the Google Web Transcoder (the other GWT!) to clean up pages
How CSS hasn't been as leveraged as much as we would like
How the increase in mobile and widget platforms has a side effect of accessible views
How RIA applications deal with accessibility
How T.V. has written custom clients for Google APIs
What standards groups are doing in the accessibility space
Dealing with Python, a language that cares about whitespace, as a blind man.