Web is an important tool yet we often forget that. However there are people out there who don’t have to luxury of easy web access like the most of us. To solve this issue we need something call Web accessibility, so that everyone can browse no no matter any disabilities and contraints.
To promote Web accessibility aycMedia and lyft hosted an even called EvoHax. A hackathon where students from various colleges came together to find unique solutions and promote Web Acessibility. So obviously as a college student in philly with experience in Web Development I had to participate. Check out this video to get a better insight on the event itself.
And I am happy to announce that my team won!
A little more about our project: A portable voice recognition device augmented with bluetooth that converts speech to text to desktop and web commands. The project is composed of scripts written in C++ and Python to interface with the free, open source, text to speech reader Non-visual Desktop Access (NVDA) to enable two way, hands free, audio communication between the user and various functions on their computer from opening an application to selectively reading a web page. The automation of searching commands like control + F to find relevant content eliminates any need for manual keyboard and mouse input.
You can check out more form this article from Technical.y
Now you guys might be thinking, what does this have to do with combining art and computers and my answer is everything. You see, to me the definition of art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination to do something for humanity, and let me tell you programming can one of the most creative things.
And hence, as computer scientists or just digital artists it our job to make web accessibility a reality for everyone. Yes, and art is important. Often a lot of web accessibility issues come because of the senses it is afterall a very vision and hearing sensitive task. Hence it is not only the job of developers but also the artists to take web accessibility into considration, always.