First I want to say I have nothing personal against blind people & people who need to use special software that assists them with using a website. That said, just how big is the portion of people using the Internet who actually have to use this assistance ? There's an awfull lot of stress to make websites accessible in recent years, yet I never meet anyone who actually uses the stuff. I meet plenty of people pushing it though. It reminds me of when I was a kid, our family used to eat out just about every weekend, sometimes during the week, & one of the things I remember was playing on the handrails of the ramps added for wheelchairs & the elderly. If I remember right there was alot of stress put on places of businesses to make their buildings accessible back then. All these places started putting these ramps in all at the same time. I don't really remember ever seeing very many people actually using the things. If there was, I wouldn't have been climbing on them. I was a pain in the ass, but I wasn't rude. I look around today & those places are either not still around, or there's not nearly as many of them. I can't help but wonder if all of the things done to make these places accessible to the handicapped actually hurt these businesses by making them more inaccessible to their primary customer base. When I really start to think about it, it must be tough for handicapped people to get out of the house & get to these places to begin with. I doubt the fact that there's a ramp to the door, a table with no legs on one side, & a few other comforts influenced their decision to travel across town just to have a bite to eat. I wonder if this could be happening with some sites on the Internet. I can understand the benefit of making some sites more easily accessible to impared people, but surely a site dedicated to video doesn't need to be made accessible to the visually impared ?
I have heard of programs for blind people to use phone and other things but I dont know how it is possible for them to use the web effectively and that there would really be a large market in that. If you could find a way that would be great but I don't know how it could convert and how you would get everyone to make there sites friendly to that.
Web accessibility is not only for blind people. Just as the ramps and elevators that are put into buildings are not only for people in wheelchairs. In your building example, think about people with baby strollers, crutches, old age, scooters, etc. The same holds true for reasons to build an accessible website. Not only are properly coded websites beneficial for blind people (yes, blind people can visit websites with products like this ) but also think about people that are colorblind, deaf, dyslexic, poor vision, broken arm, slow internet connection, etc. Not to mention that sites that are coded properly load faster and are generally more user friendly for everyone. Read this article from the W3C for more info on the web accessibility initiative.