KUCHING: Website designers should implement web accessibility guidelines so that their pages are accessible to the disabled, senior citizens and other special-needs groups.

National Council for the Blind Malaysia (NCBM) assistant executive director Moses Choo said designers should also provide text descriptions for pictures or images on websites.

The screen readers used by the visually-impaired would then be able to read the descriptions, enabling them to “see” the pictures, he said.

“We need people who are providing information on websites to do it in a way which meets the standards that the world is following.

“For example, if you want the blind to enjoy a picture you have put on the screen, you must be able to describe the picture.

“Basically it is putting descriptions to pictures which would mean that even the blind can ‘see’ what you are trying to tell,” he told reporters at a web accessibility workshop here yesterday.

The two-day workshop at Inti College was organised by the state government with Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (Sains), NCBM and the Sarawak Society for the Blind.

Choo, who is visually-impaired, said another guideline involved putting documents on websites in formats suitable for screen reader software.

“Never put a picture of the document on a website, which is normally a JPG or TIF file.

“You can put it as a text, Word document, HTML or mark-up PDF file instead,” he said.

He also said web accessibility was not about software but the way a webpage was designed.

“It’s purely on logic, basic requirements and meeting web accessibility standards so that blind people and other groups can access the Web,” he said.

Sains chief executive Datuk Teo Tieng Hiong, who opened the workshop, said groups like the visually-impaired should not be overlooked when it came to information and communication technology (ICT), including websites.

“Often the way we do things excludes certain groups of people, whether they are rural folk, women, the urban poor or the disabled.

“This workshop is aimed at helping a particular group of people to be able to access information on the Web,” he said.

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