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Accessibility to RSS Compromised by Feed Readers Integration with Screen Readers

RSS feeds have become popular for allowing users to subscribe to updates to their favorite blogs and news sites. Unfortunately, this hot new service is largely inaccessible to the blind.

Many RSS Feed Readers, which are stand-alone applications that receive RSS updates and allow users to subscribe to their favorite feeds, do not follow the accessibility guidelines necessary for screen reader software to accurately translate Web page content into audio reels.

The American Federation for the Blind, or the AFB, ran a recent study in which it analyzed the performance of several major feed readers by using them with JAWS, the most popular screen reader on the market.

Consistent Standalone RSS Feed Reader Accessibility Problems

Although the AFB was not particularly impressed with the accessibility of any RSS feed readers, Bloglines and NewsGator were among the most JAWS compliant.

Both interfaces were simple and easy to understand at the most basic level of functionality, two characteristics that work very well with screen readers. Unfortunately, the AFB also found several common problems that were shared across most or all of the tested RSS feed readers. The installation procedures for all readers tested were unsupported and inaccessible, requiring blind users to ask for assistance when installing the applications in the first place.

Menu bars providing access to more complex features were difficult to navigate using JAWS, and no feed readers allowed JAWS users to view a list of RSS feed subscriptions.

RSS Feed Reader Subscription Accessibility

Feedster, in particular, exemplified the many accessibility problems associated with subscribing to RSS feeds online. Feedster users subscribe to new feeds delivered to a third-party, standalone reader or to e-mail by deciphering a captcha, wiggly characters that users must retype in order to prove that they are human and not bots spamming the server for subscriptions. Unfortunately, captchas are not readable by machine agents such as Screen Reader programs.

Usually, Web sites get around this problem by providing a link to an audio file that blind users can interpret to prove that they are humans; Feedster provides no such link.

Bloglines, NewsGator, My Yahoo and Google get around this subscription problem by either allowing users to create accounts without entering a captcha, or by opening the captcha up in a new window in a format that can be read by screen readers. Both Yahoo and Google received accolades from the American Federation for the Blind for turning out somewhat accessible feed readers, although there was still room for improvement.

And the Winners Are…

The AFB recommends using Google, My Yahoo, Bloglines or NewsGator for RSS feed reading needs, although all of these applications and sites must improve to become truly screen reader accessible.