Two Rochester Institute of Technology students, Jaimen Brill and Asmah Abushagur, are launching an online clothing site for the blind and visually impaired. The site, White Cane Label, is a non-profit effort to help blind people shop online and easily keep track of their wardrobe without the help of a sighted friend.
The site’s interface will be driven by sound and text instead of images. Customers will receive recommendations based on their answers to a clothing questionnaire that gauges their personal style. The recommendations will consist of detailed descriptions of each item, including styles and price ranges. After ordering an item, they’ll be mailed the outfit with braille tags indicating the designer, clothing type, size, and color for easy reference. A second label will include washing instructions.
They are relying entirely on designer donations to supply their inventory, but will be charging full price in an effort to stop sighted buyers from taking advantage of any deals.
The site started as a school project, but soon captivated the pair as they looked into it deeper. White Cane Label is set to launch this fall, as they announced at the Fashion for Good Roundtable in Rome during Rome’s Summer Fashion Week.
Readers interested in learning more about internet accessibility for the disabled should see the W3C’s reference page.
First! Neat site too.
If we want to be picky though – note their logo on the website doesn’t have any ALT text for the sight impaired. :p
this is cool. there should be more initiatives like this
Granted, the site is under development, but I’m sure that ad-frame across the top would be painful for screen readers.
http://webstand...resource_id=168
has a PDF outlining web accessibility standards/guidelines.
They should also try learning how to spell.
“Awareness” not “awarness”
“Committed” not “commited”
Good idea. Probably not a big money idea. But a good idea.
This is a great idea but they are not even hosting the site really. They are using that crap Godaddy gives you for free. C’mon guys, you are getting some A-list coverage and you cant even get your own hosting account. On a better note good luck and you have a cool idea.
Also to Chris, no one cares that you were first to comment, please don’t turn the TC comment system into Digg.
Very very interesting idea. But how many blind people uses internet? Does we have statistics on that?
Whether the business model succeeds or not, it’s a great effort and I applaud their founders.
Matter of fact, there are two pluses for White Cane Label: 1) It serves a social need, not just a business need, and 2) It expands the frontiers of HCI (human-computer interaction) research and applications.
Great work and idea and follow through! I hope this is tremendous beyond imagination!
its funny; by making their site – good for the blind –
– their site looks pretty good SEO wise too …
In response to:
“Very very interesting idea. But how many blind people uses internet? Does we have statistics on that?”
I don’t have any statistics, but, many individuals who are blind or visually impaired have access to the Web. There was actually an issue raised by the National Federation of the Blind that Target’s web site was not accessible using screen accesss software such as JAWS and WindowEyes. If you simply do a search (using your search engine of choice) for “internet” and “blind,” you will find entire message boards, listservs, blogs, etc run by and for blind internet users…
I am replying to the “White Cane posting”. First, I as a blind person, find this simply spectacular. Second, Being a blind/ visually impaired computer user, there is a long way to go, but thanks to dedication from programers, whether sighted or blind, we as disabled computer users have come a long way as far as technology is concerned. As far as statistics are concerned, please check out http://www.afb.org; http://www.nfb.org; and http://www.acb.org.
Patti