Hello all,
I don't know if anyone has come across this yet, but a friend of mine recently referred me to someone that wants a website for his counseling practice. She gave me his phone number with no other information. When I called him, he mentioned to me that he was totally blind.

I checked out the W3C area on People With Disabilities . I have never done a website for the blind before.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone designed a website for someone that is visually impaired?

I'm supposed to contact him after the holidays, but I'd like to do some serious research on this so that I at least can familiarize myself with this area in web design.

Regards,
DianeD

ive got a few places to visit that may help, haven't got the time to put them here just yet but I will later. Just so you know you will have at least some help coming your way.

A few things I keep in mind when designing:

Design the site using CSS, then style around the content, use "tabIndex" attributes on all your forms or interactive objects. Don't use images for text or headers and always use descriptive ALT attributes in any images.

I haven't designed a site for someone who is blind, but I do code my sites for accessibility. Some good sites to start looking at for guidelines are:

http://www.section508.gov/
http://www.websitetips.com/accessibility/
http://www.contentquality.com

The last link above will let you type in your site and give you feedback about where your site is not in compliance with current accessibility standards.

Once thing you can do is look for a site or software that will emulate how your site renders in a screen reader. I think actual screen readers are expensive, but I may be wrong.

funkaddadu is right about using text instead of images and using alt and other descriptive attributes on tags.

One question about the site. You said your client is blind. How about his clients since they will be the ones the site needs to be designed for. Is his counselling practice also for the blind? The site may still need to work for people who can see.

most blind people use a screenreader software to read the content out for them

you can download a trial here www.freedomscientific.com and try it.

you can also use a lynx viewer to see whats left on a site once all the graphics colours e.t.c. are left after they are stripped www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

also check here to see if the content is accesible www.w3.org.WAI

theres a free online checker here www.cast.org.bobby that will compaire the site with WAI guidelines.

Topic is interesting, i'll be sure to check often on the progress of the site.

If you use Firefox (Prior to 1.5 currently) on Windows you can install FoxyVoice (also needs the MS Speech API). It does come as close to a screen reader as anything else I've heard.

Also there is Fangs, A text only viewer extension.
Using them both together (FoxyVoice reading the Fangs output) will just about emulate the Jaws screen reader

A big Thank You for the information. It gives me a place to start. When I spoke to him (the client that is blind), he gave me his email address. When I asked my friend, (the one who gave me this lead), about his abilities, I was quite taken aback with all the equipment that he presently has. I was told he already has a "screen reader" and also a machine that can print out any website information in braille. So he's already equipped with what he needs. He's very "technical", too, but doesn't know diddly about designing or implementing a website. That's where I'll come in. My friend told me that she didn't mention it because "Gee, I never thought of it" as he is so fully capable and it's just never come up in their friendship. You can bet I'll be checking out the links that you all provided - I'm sure they'll come in quite handy.

From what I understand, he's quite accomplished as he holds a PhD in Psychology and has a variety of other degrees. He provides counselling to people with other disabilities also, so I would imagine that he would want the website to be for people that are not visually impaired, too. I will be doing some heavy research and reading about this and experiment with some of the links that you (wonderful) people have provided. Yes, I already am quite familiar with CSS and a few of the other things, but nothing so detailed as what I'm about to embark on. It's going to be a true adventure. Thank goodness he has a good sense of humor and sounds like quite a remarkable guy! (He's going to need it with me!) I will continue to keep everyone updated if anyone is interested. Right now, as it stands, he's tossing this idea of a "website" for himself and his institution around in his head - perhaps I caught him in a "positive mode" when I called, so he's open to discussion.

On a side note, and you may or may not find this interesting..... He met a woman on EHarmony awhile ago, not sure how long, and they've been exchanging emails, phone calls, etc. over the past several months. He didn't tell her he was blind until after they were communicating for a few months because it was something he just didn't think would make a difference or was that important. Well, to make a long story short, she moved from her home state to be with him here and they got married just this past week. Nice story, eh?

I'll be back with more as it develops!
DianeD

Looks like you have a number of good links and tips.

I have a friend who is visually impaired and uses a screen reader.

She has mentioned that the the most troublesome sites for her to visit, are those using frames. So, I would avoid them like the plague.

Diane that's a great story and very good to see that his blindness didn't make a difference to her. As I was reading your post I was afraid it was going to. I like your ending much better.

One of the things you might want to consider is asking your client for feedback once you've got something up. I'm doing my best lately to follow the guidelines for accesibilty, but I'm sure there's much that's left out. For instance one of the things I would like to know is would someone using a screen reader prefer to have the navigation for the site appear first or would they prefer to have the page start with the content. Or does it even matter. That's not something a guideline will tell me.

Asking your client for what he finds most useful and what he considers the largest obstacles in browsing a site might in the end prove the most beneficial.

Please keep us updated with how the site is progressing and any tips you've learned along the way. I think what you learn will be both informative and interesting for all of us.