Posted in Software & Development
September 5, 2024
ACCESSIBILITY WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
How AI Improves Websites for Visually Impaired Users
As more businesses and institutions move part or all of their customer experience online, accessibility for people with disabilities is a critical component of building websites. Having accessible, perceivable, operational, and understandable functionality on your website that caters to every customer is vital to your brand’s image and site usability. This use case by Victor Yang, Software Developer at Acro Commerce, highlights how we use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve accessibility to virtual health services and complex information for the visually impaired.
Ensuring Website Accessibility for the Visually Impaired
In today's digital age, every website should be designed with accessibility in mind. This ensures that all users, including those who are visually impaired, can access and benefit from the information provided. By integrating advanced accessibility features, we can create a more inclusive online environment.
The My Guide: Long COVID website, developed by British Columbia’s Provincial Health Services Authority, or PHSA, aims to inform users about post-COVID-19 recovery, equip them with essential tools and skills, and empower them with the confidence to take action. With the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to provide comprehensive and accessible information to individuals worldwide. This website is crucial for patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals seeking guidance on post-COVID symptoms and recovery strategies.
For PHSA's My Guide: Long COVID, this means that patients experiencing post-COVID symptoms and those interested in understanding recovery can easily navigate and interact with our website. Enhancing accessibility broadens our audience reach and strengthens our commitment to providing comprehensive and equitable public health services.
Per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard, the following criteria must be considered when building a site that is fully accessible to people with disabilities.
Perceivable
- Provide text alternatives for non-text content.
- Provide captions and other alternatives for multimedia.
- Create content that can be presented in different ways, including by assistive technologies, without losing meaning.
- Make it easier for users to see and hear content.
Operable
- Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
- Give users enough time to read and use content.
- Do not use content that causes seizures or physical reactions.
- Help users navigate and find content.
- Make it easier to use inputs other than a keyboard.
Understandable
- Make text readable and understandable.
- Make content appear and operate in predictable ways.
- Help users avoid and correct mistakes.
Robust
- Maximize compatibility with current and future user tools.
Accessibility Challenges for Technical Content
Ensuring that information is accessible on a website like My Guide: Long COVID, where the information can be highly technical and displayed in various formats, presents several challenges.
Here are the main obstacles we face on the PHSA project:
- Multilingual Website: One of the primary challenges for the My Guide: Long COVID website is its multilingual nature. As we aim to provide information to individuals worldwide, the website must be accessible to speakers of different languages. This presents a significant hurdle in ensuring that content is accurately translated while maintaining accessibility features across all languages.
- Voice File Generation: Another critical challenge is the generation of voice files for visually impaired individuals. Listening to content is often more accessible for visually impaired users, but creating voice files for all website content can be labour-intensive. Additionally, the voice files must be of high quality and accurately convey the information presented on the website.
Addressing these challenges is essential to ensure that the My Guide: Long COVID website is accessible to all users, regardless of language or visual ability.
Using Google Text-to-Speech AI API to Generate Audio Automatically
To overcome these accessibility challenges, we are integrating the Google Text-to-Speech API using the Drupal module Google Text-to-Speech.
This integration allows us to automatically convert text content into high-quality spoken words, making the My Guide: Long COVID website more accessible to visually impaired users. By leveraging this API, we can ensure that all website content is available in multiple languages and is easy to listen to, thereby improving the user experience for a global audience.
This solution simplifies the process of generating voice files and ensures that the information is accurately conveyed and consistently updated. It aligns with our mission to provide comprehensive and accessible post-COVID-19 recovery information to all users.
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