The church and Accessibility for the blind and visually impaired

[cannona-p40]

Hello all.

I was recently fortunate enough to be awarded an internship with the Church, which I began last week. During my time here, I will primarily be concerning my self with suggesting changes, improvements and new projects which will benefit blind and visually handicapped members and investigators. This is of particular interest to me, as I happen to be blind my self.

I am working with the interaction design team (a team of designers who create and update many of the Church's sites) but I will not be limiting my work to simply making the Church's web presence accessible, though that will certainly receive a lot of my attention. I plan on looking at many of the Church's programs and offering my suggestions and assistance so that the Church might better serve this population.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I would be very interested in hearing them. Also, if you know someone who is blind and involved in the Church, I would of course be very interested in any thoughts they might have as well. Again, I don't wish to limit the discussion just to the Church's web site, I want to leave it open to anything.

You can either email me directly, or post in this thread. My email address is cannonaw[at]ldschurch[dot]org

Thank you.

Aaron Cannon

[WelchTC]

Aaron, welcome aboard! To get the discussion rolling, tell us a little bit about how you currently navigate the web using your computer. Also give us some ideas on suggestions that you have that would make the sites easier to use for those who are visually handicapped. By sharing what you do now and what we could do better will help us to come up with even more ideas.

Tom