Web Accessibility

1. Web Accessibility Rick Ells rells@cac.washington.edu UW Computing & Communications

2. Disability Types The major categories of disability types are: • Visual • blindness, low vision, color-blindness • Hearing • deafness • Motor • inability to use a mouse, slow response time, limited fine motor control • Cognitive • learning disabilities, distractibility, inability to remember or focus on large amounts of information From: Introduction to Web Accessibilityhttp://www.webaim.org/intro/

3. Who has disabilities? • Visual impairment16% (27.4 million) of working-age adults have a mild visual difficulty or impairment, and 11% (18.5 million) of working-age adults have a severe visual difficulty or impairment. • Dexterity impairment19% (31.7 million) of working-age adults have a mild dexterity difficulty or impairment, and 7% (12.0 million) of working-age adults have a severe dexterity difficulty or impairment. • Hearing impairment19% (32.0 million) of working-age adults have a mild hearing difficulty or impairment, and 3% (4.3 million) of working-age adults have a severe hearing difficulty or impairment. From: The Wide Range of Abilities and Its Impact on Computer Technology - A Research Study Commissioned by Microsoft Corporation and Conducted by Forrester Research, Inc., in 2003 http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research/

4. Web accessibility and the law • 1973 – Rehabilitation Act • Prohibits discrimination on the basis of handicap by employers receiving federal contracts or in federally assisted programs • 1990 – Americans With Disabilities Act • Prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, by governmental agencies, and in public accommodations • 1998 – Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act • Requires Federal departments and agencies to take into consideration accessibility when developing, procuring, or using electronic and information technology http://www.section508.gov/ • By 2001, all Federal Web sites complied with requirements

5. Washington State and the UW • UW has long standing policy of providing reasonable accommodation for the handicapped • 2005 – Washington State Department of Information Services sets guidelines based on Section 508 for government and educational Web siteshttp://isb.wa.gov/tools/webguide/accessibility.aspx

6. Technologies and Strategies Assistive Technologies • Alternative keyboards or switches • Braille and refreshable braille • Scanning software • Screen magnifiers • Screen readers Adaptive Strategies • Speech recognition • Speech synthesis • Tabbing through structural elements • Text browsers • Visual notification • Voice browsers From: How People with Disabilities Use the Web http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/#tools

7. Device independence • The Goal: Access to a Unified Web from Any Device in Any Context by Anyone From: Device Independencehttp://www.w3.org/2001/di/

8. Building in device independence • Organize content in simple hierarchical structure (XML) • Easier for each device to receive, interpret, and display • Separate presentation from content (CSS) • Allows separate presentation instructions for different devices • Provide alternatives • Example: Text descriptions of graphics • Define associations • Examples: Text with form fields, row and column labels

9. Creating and using accessible content From: Essential Components of Web Accessibilityhttp://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php

10. Guidelines and Standards From: Essential Components of Web Accessibilityhttp://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php

11. Basic accessible design • Keyboard navigable:A person with poor sight, no sight, or limited dexterity cannot use a mouse. • Standards-compliant:Pages that adhere to standards are easier to design assistive and adaptive client programs for. • Makes sense linearly:Encountering a Web page with a voice browser is a linear process, progressing through the content in sequence or navigating by the structure of the content. A sighted person using a graphic browser can take in two-dimensional spatial arrangements of content and go directly to any visible part. • Provides Alternatives:Provide alternative text for people who cannot see graphics. • Helps make connections:When you can only hear a page, it can be hard to tell which text goes with which form field or which row and column a table cell is in. Simple labeling of text and form field pairs and of rows and columns enables assistive and adaptive programs to correctly present content relationships. • Has no surprises:No sudden pop-up windows or pages that take the reader away from the page they are reading. No links that cannot be tabbed to or evoked by pressing the return key.

12. 10 quick tips to make an accessible Web site • Images & animations: Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual. • Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots. • Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video. • Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid "click here." • Page organization. Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible. • Graphs & charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute. • Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported. • Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles. • Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarize. • Check your work. Validate. Use tools, checklist, and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG From Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips/Overview.php

13. Poor form From: Creating accessible forms, WebAIM, http://www.webaim.org/techniques/forms/

14. Good form From: Creating accessible forms, WebAIM, http://www.webaim.org/techniques/forms/

15. Caption videos

16. Is your Web page accessible? • Check for standards-based, validated coding • Evaluate keyboard navigability of the page • Evaluate coding and page design • Check for Section 508 compliance using WebXact (formerly known as Bobby) From: Accessibility Evaluation Procedure, AccessibleWeb@U, http://www.washington.edu/computing/accessible/accessibleweb/eval_proc.html

17. Accessibility evaluation checklist • Are frames appropriately titled? • Are ALT tags present and sufficiently equivalent to the graphic content? • Are form elements explicitly associated with labels? • Is information in PDF available in other more accessible formats? • Are all links and navigational elements present and contextually appropriate via the keyboard? • Does the site avoid conveying meaning with color alone? • Are data tables marked up as required? • Is multimedia content captioned (or if audio only, transcribed)? • Is flickering content avoided? • Is a skip navigation link present if needed? • Is the page functional when scripts are disabled? • Is the page functional when style sheets are disabled? • Does link text provide a reasonable description of the link target? • If a page requires a timed response, can users request more time? From: Web Accessibility Rubric, Terry Thompson, http://staff.washington.edu/tft/rubric.php

18. A flood of new technologies

19. Web application model From: Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applicationshttp://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

20. Dynamic content From: Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applicationshttp://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

21. The promise of better interaction

22. Accessible Web applications • Section 508 Tutorial:  Developing Accessible SoftwareDemonstrating principles by developing a calculator in Visual Basichttp://www.access-board.gov/sec508/software-tutorial.htm • Software Applications and Operating Systems (1194.21)Program features that must be contained in software for the product to meet Section 508 standards.http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.21.htm

23. Dynamic content • Accessible DHTML, Mozilla, accessible Web ap methods supported by FireFox 1.5 and WindowEyes 5.5 http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml/ • DHTML Accessibility - Fixing the JavaScript Accessibility Problem, Rich Schwerdtfeger and Becky Gibson, IBM, http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2005/proceedings/2524.htm • Client-side Scripting Techniques for WCAG 2.0, W3C, http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-SCRIPT-TECHS/

24. Is accessible design worth it? • The handicapped are a valued part of the UW community and they are not going away. • The UW has a national reputation of supporting and accommodating the handicapped. • Your peer developers are already working on this problem (lots of opportunities for conferences and papers). • The methods needed here are already common in other application software. • Doing it right could avoid future hassles for the UW. • You, or someone you love, may need adaptive or assistive technology someday. • It’s the human thing to do.