“What started out as a few passion projects by members of LinkedIn’s web development team has now become the formation of our Accessibility Web Developer Task Force, dedicated to making LinkedIn user experiences inclusive and accessible,” says LinkedIn’s Sarah Clatterbuck (pictured).

As far as the navigation goes, she says, “Members who navigate with a keyboard can now better perceive where they are on a LinkedIn page and save time in moving between professional content and features.”

Additionally, realtime notifications are available to those navigating by keyboard, and actions like sending messages, and interacting with dialog boxes can be done quickly and easily with the keyboard or screen reader.

Image alt text is now being employed in all major areas of the site.

The company says it is currently working on an in-page navigation tool to help keyboard and screen reader users better navigate long pages.

“This means that you can now enjoy everything featured in our Audio category in the Content Guide—including segments from NPR’s Fresh Air and PRI’s The World—and more: you can connect your Flipboard to your SoundCloud account to flip through your Stream, Likes, Sounds, Sets and Groups. Find something you like, and press play to listen via Flipboard,” the Flipboard team explains in a blog post. “The music note in the top bar of the section controls your audio experience.”

The company launched the audio feature back in May for iOS devices. It’s coming to Nook and Kindle devices in the next few days.

Android users can get the updated app from the Google Play store. The update also comes with some bug fixes and performance improvements.

“Unlike most accessibility software, it is built using only web technologies like HTML5, CSS and Javascript. ChromeVox was designed from the start to enable unprecedented access to modern web apps, including those that utilize W3C ARIA (Access to Rich Internet Applications) to provide a rich, desktop-like experience,” Google says of ChromeVox. “This enables visually impaired users to experience the power of web applications while also giving developers a way to verify the accessibility of their web applications.”

The video covers set-up, using ChromeVox to listen to your web app, common pitfalls for web accessibility (and how to fix them), and how Google tests ChromeVox code.

The following update from Google just hit Google+:

Hangout Captions26 minutes ago

Live transcription integration for your Hangouts
This is +Naomi Black from the Google Accessibility team. I've been working with ace Hangout developers +Robert Pitt, +Mohammad Eshbeata, and +Brian Aldridge on a new app to make communication between deaf and hearing participants easier in your Google+ Hangouts. 
By adding the +Hangout Captions app, you can either connect live text from a professional transcriptionist to your Hangout, or type right into a text box yourself to transcribe a Hangout for your friends. Right now, we only support professional transcription through StreamText and our "do it yourself" Basic Transcription. This is an early look at the app so you can tell us what you think. 
To find out more about the new +Hangout Captions app (and more importantly, try it out) check out the website: https://hangout-captions.appspot.com/
Or, try it right away by starting a Hangout with the app running by clicking this link: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/?gid=8064685913

#googleplusupdate

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Google is also making its Android operating system more accessible. The OS, unveiled at Google I/O last week, comes with new APIs for accessibility services to let developers handle gestures and manage accessibility focus as users move through on-screen elements and navigation buttons, using accessibility gestures, accessories, and other input.

“The Talkback system and explore-by-touch are redesigned to use accessibility focus for easier use and offer a complete set of APIs for developers,” Google adds on its Jellybean page. “Accessibility services can link their own tutorials into the Accessibility settings, to help users configure and use their services.”

Google held an accessibility for Android session at Google I/O, encouraging developers to consider accessibility more in their own apps, which should make for an overall more accessible Android experience:

With Jellybean, apps that use standard View components inherit support for the new accessibility features automatically, so developers don’t have to change their code.

Google has a lot more information about its accessibility features for its various products here.

The sessions starts with testing for accessibility, followed by advanced screen reader accessibility, then ChromeVox extensions, and APIs for low vision.

The description explains, “This session will help you learn through code samples and real world examples how to design and test your web apps for complete accessibility coverage. We will review APIs such as the Text-to-speech (TTS) API, tools like ChromeVox and ChromeShades and how Google products implement solutions today for users with disabilities.”

As long as we’re on the topic of Google and accessibility, the company has also added some more accessibility features of its own to the latest version of Android (Jellybean), which was unveiled at Google I/O.

According to Jellybean’s version page:

New APIs for accessibility services let you handle gestures and manage accessibility focus as the user moves through the on-screen elements and navigation buttons using accessibility gestures, accessories, and other input. The Talkback system and explore-by-touch are redesigned to use accessibility focus for easier use and offer a complete set of APIs for developers.

Apps that use standard View components inherit support for the new accessibility features automatically, without any changes in their code. Apps that use custom Views can use new accessibility node APIs to indicate the parts of the View that are of interest to accessibility services.

Guided Access is a form of accessibility software for iOS. Apple has always been at the forefront of technologies dedicated to helping those with disabilities interact with Apple products. Guided Access will allow a parent or teacher the ability to have full control of how an iOS device can be used. For example, the home button and all other hardware buttons can be locked, motion sensitivity can be disabled, or a certain portion of the screen can be made inactive toward touch. In addition, the device can be locked into a single app. This means that iOS device can now reliably be used to test students or give reading assignments, without fear that they will lose focus and end up playing Angry Birds. Apple also mentioned that the devices could be locked-down in this manner and used for museum information apps.

It’s just like Apple to provide a simple, elegant solution to a tricky problem. It will be interesting to see what parents and teachers use Guided Access for, since the best uses for such technology are often found by the users rather than the designers.

Google says in the video description, “We announced our self-driving car project in 2010 to make driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient. Having safely completed over 200,000 miles of computer-led driving, we wanted to share one of our favorite moments. Here’s Steve, who joined us for a special drive on a carefully programmed route to experience being behind the wheel in a whole new way. We organized this test as a technical experiment, but we think it’s also a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met.”

“95% of my vision is gone. I’m well past legally blind,” says Mahan in the video. “You lose your timing in life. Everything takes you much longer. There are some places that you cannot go. There are some things that you cannot do. Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things.”

At the end of the video, it says it was produced in partnership with Morgan Hill Police Department and Santa Clara Valley Blind Center San Jose, CA.

As reported earlier this month, Google’s driverless cars have inspired new legislation in California, similar to legislation introduced last year in Nevada, which legalized autonomous cars, clearing the way for Google’s program. It’s actually kind of hard to believe this program has already gotten so far, but there’s no telling how far it will actually go, if enough legislation gets passed in other states, and eventually countries.

I have a feeling we’ll be seeing Google put out a lot more videos similar in nature to the one above, to promote the company’s efforts.

It uses text to speech technology, reading content from the chat box to the user.

“Today I was in a hangout, where I met a blind war veteran,” says Mansour no Google+. “It was really inspiring to see him use such technology. But it was really hard for him to use it since it wasn’t accessible friendly. I was writing on the chat on the left, and it was really difficult for him to read the text. I am really into Accessibility, and I worked on it a lot in Chromium in the past, and I really wanted to help him.”

“So I told Tim, ‘what if the chat spoke to you?’ Tim said, ‘that would be awesome’. When I saw the big smile on his face, I had to do it! So I created this extension for Chrome!” he adds.

In the description in the Chrome Extension gallery, it says the first version focuses on the blind, but Mansour hopes to add more features to make it even better and more accessible, and is looking for feedback to that effect.

Mansour notes in his Google+ post that he hopes Google will adopt this for Hangouts itself.

Google has also been working on some other accessibility-related features for Google Docs and Google Calendar.

“This fall, as classrooms fill with the hustle and bustle of a new semester, more students than ever will use Google Apps to take quizzes, write essays and talk to classmates,” says Google Accessibility technical lead T.V. Raman. “Yet blind students (like blind people of all ages) face a unique set of challenges on the web. Members of the blind community rely on screen readers to tell them verbally what appears on the screen. They also use keyboard shortcuts to do things that would otherwise be accomplished with a mouse, such as opening a file or highlighting text.”

The company has been working with advocacy organizations for the blind to make its products more accessible, and has already improved keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers in Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar. On the Gmail Blog, the company provides some examples of how screen readers and keyboard shortcuts have been improved specifically in Google Calendar:

• In your calendar lists, you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate between your calendars. For each calendar in the list, you’ll hear its name and can use the spacebar to turn the calendar on or off. To remove a calendar from the list, use the delete key.
• In the agenda view, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move between events and use the left and right arrow keys to move between dates. To expand an event and expose the event details, press enter. To go to the event details page, type ‘e’. To remove an event, press delete. Although agenda view provides the best screen reader experience today, we are also working on improved accessibility for other views.
• In the guest list on the create/edit event page, you can navigate around using the up and down arrow keys. Use the spacebar to switch a guest’s status between optional and required. To remove a guest from the list, use the delete key.
• Additional keyboard shortcuts make it easier to use Google Calendar no matter which view or screen you’re on. Type ‘c’ to create an event, ‘/’ to start a search, and ‘+’ to add a calendar.

For a complete list os shortcuts and more information about screen reader functionality, you can find more info in Google’s help center.

JAWS, VoiceOver and ChromeVox are all supported by Calendars.

Google says it will continue to improve products for blind users in the weeks and months ahead.

Google engineering director Chee Chew said in a Google+ post that Google has been “aggressively improving video quality and stability.”

“It’s still a huge challenge to transmit 10 video feeds to 10 end points, potentially all around the world,” says Chew. “We still have lots of improvements we want to make, but I hope you [have] see[n] a substantial improvement in video stability in the past several weeks. This will be a never-ending effort.”

“Second, as I hungout in signing hangouts, I also noticed that most people were trying to watch others sign from the thumbnail video,” says Chew. “Our voice activated video switching for the main video usually just stayed on whomever had the most background noise.”

Google added a “Take the Floor” feature, so you can have everyone mute their audio, hit “shift+s” when you want to sign something and do so when you see yourself in the main video. It only works when you’re muted though.

Last week, Google told some of its “trusted developers” that it would make available access to the Google+ APIs. While it may be a while until they are widely available, it will be interesting to see what other developers are able to do with Google+ and Hangouts in particular in terms of accessibility.