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Hughestown Police Department to hold Glock Armorer Certification course

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Happy birthday to Isabella Melissa Bigger!

<p>KINGSTON &#8212;Though she&#8217;s been blind all her life, Peg McGraw of Kingston used to find that grocery shopping wasn&#8217;t too difficult.</p><p>Her screen reader &#8212; a software program installed in her computer &#8212; would read the text from online Shursave advertisements to her. An electronic voice would tell her what was on sale and she would make her choices, telephone a local supermarket, and the store would deliver her order.</p><p>Lately, shopping has become more of a problem for the retired telephone operator because her favorite store eliminated the &#8220;text only&#8221; option that her screen reader could read, opting instead for jpg images that her reader can&#8217;t interpret.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re out to say &#8216;the heck with blind people,&#8217; McGraw said, referring to store owners. &#8220;I think they&#8217;re trying to make their web site look more colorful and attractive for those who can see but what they need is a &#8216;text-only&#8217; part so we can read it with our screen readers.&#8221;</p><p>Lots of websites are similarly unfriendly to individuals who are blind or who have low vision, said Donna W. Hill, an author and musician from Meshoppen who is urging people to sign a petition to do something about it.</p><p>In a letter to the Times Leader, Hill, wrote &#8220;I&#8217;m a <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/archive/282321" target="_blank">novelist</a>. I&#8217;m also blind. I just spent two-plus hours composing yet another tech-support email to a website that isn&#8217;t making their site fully accessible for users like me who rely on adaptive technology to access the internet.</p><p>&#8220;If you could stand to read it, you&#8217;d understand why blind people need President Obama to release web-accessibility regulations. These are necessary because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted three years too early to fully cover the major accessibility issue facing blind Americans today &#8212; digital access. He promised to do so so by 2010.&#8221;</p><p>Hill says free resources are available to help companies learn to make their websites more accessible.</p><p>&#8220;The problem is that companies use it or fail to do so at their own discretion. This leaves blind people at a significant disadvantage at school, in the job market and in the marketplace,&#8221; Hill said. &#8220;Thus, unemployment, poverty and isolation persist for blind Americans.&#8221;</p><p>Citing research conducted by information technology professor Brian Wentz, who now works at Shippensburg University, Hill said the study showed &#8220;full 80 percent of the internet is unavailable to people like me.&#8221;</p><p>That figure sounds accurate to her &#8212; and to McGraw, who gave up trying to access Facebook because &#8220;They keep changing it and changing it and making it worse instead of better.&#8221;</p><p>Hill believes it will help if people add their names to an online petition that can be reached at petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-us-department-justice-promptly-release-ada-internet-regulations.</p><p>Addressed to President Obama, the petition says the regulations are urgently needed.</p><p>They&#8217;ll &#8220;level the playing field for all of us,&#8221; Hill wrote.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Musician and author Donna Hill of Meshoppen, who has been blind since birth, is an advocate for regulations that would make websites more accessible to people who are blind of have limited eye sight. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_hunter-in-donnas-lap-3-2-09-09-by-rich-hill-img_0097.jpg</photo0><caption0>Musician and author Donna Hill of Meshoppen, who has been blind since birth, is an advocate for regulations that would make websites more accessible to people who are blind of have limited eye sight. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>The visually impaired seek change in regulations</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Advocate for the blind Donna Hill of Meshoppen asks people to sign petition regarding internet access