Accessibility review of Odiogo podiocasts

Diperbarui 30 Agustus 2010 oleh Dani Iswara

Better than usual podcasts, they claimed it as podiocasts. How accessible is Odiogo result? This review is based on my opinion as a user. I have no Odiogo’s account yet. So, with the help of Cahya Legawa (cahya.legawa.com), using one of my blog post, we did a test page. My post titled Semantic XHTML Format Reference reposted with my permission on his blog post using the same post title. Odiogo’s text-to-speech (TTS) will read the content/post only. As similar as delivered by feeds syndication. The blog post/feed needs at least 24 hours to be converted by Odiogo server. You may download its podcast result (at podcasts.odiogo.com; as MP3 format; 3MB in size).

Result and suggestions

My comment for the result:

• The speech is good & clear. At least, better than Adobe Reader’s text-to-speech machine.
• It doesn’t read the title attribute.
• The left and right parenthesis will not read at all.
• Words in capital letters will be read as an abbreviation, read aloud per letter.
• Headings and subheadings are not distinct, no pause after it.
• The alt text is missing, and alt will be read as "alt".
• Links are not identified.
• No pause on ul, ol, li, dt, dd, and table tags.
• No emphasize while reading strong and em tags/elements.
• This form for example, <code>, will be read as "and lt code".
• Then the closed element above, </code>, will be read as "and lt slash code".

Of course, Odiogo and Adobe Reader text-to-speech softwares are not using screen reader algorithm. For better accessibility experience, use a real screen reader. Or try those text-to-speech tools to read the Fangs—screen reader emulator—results. See how Fangs read Twitter homepage (Dani Iswara .com).

My suggestions for Web/blog authors to optimize Odiogo result:

• Expands all abbreviation if needed.
• Use capital letters for abbreviations only.
• Puts break punctuations in every listings.
• Headings need break punctuations also. But there is no rules to put it.
• Use active sentences.
• Use short and clear words.

Read also how to make Web content more readable (Dani Iswara .com).

My recommendation for Odiogo algorithm, compared to Fangs:

• Links should be distinct. Every links should be read as "links [followed by anchor text]".
• Semantic elements should be read properly. Users should know that the text is a headings, code, quotation, caption, table row/column, etc.
• Emphasize elements have a higher pitch.
• There should be a pause in such as headings, subheadings, listings, and definition lists.

They may include more features for some applications (blog.odiogo.com) also. Can we see a better accessible tool of Odiogo?