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Universal Design & Web Accessibility

Universal Design & Web Accessibility. Iain Murray Kerry Hoath. Universal Design, Usability and Accessibility. Universal Design focuses on ensuring that everyone can access the same products and services.

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Universal Design & Web Accessibility

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  1. Universal Design & Web Accessibility Iain Murray Kerry Hoath

  2. Universal Design, Usability and Accessibility • Universal Design focuses on ensuring that everyone can access the same products and services. • Usability in terms of web design is generally associated with navigation and ease of use. • Accessibility focuses on web design issues specifically for people with disabilities. Usability is an important part of accessibility.

  3. Disability Statistics • Approximately 3,6 million Australians (19%) have some form of permanent disability (ABS, 1998). • Granted not all of these people need accessible web sites, but a large percentage of your target audience may not be able to view your site.

  4. Case for Accessibility • Social case: • Primary reason for use of Internet is for information retrieval. • Corporate case: • Inaccessible web sites may prevent customers from purchasing goods and services. • Legal case: • SOCOG example

  5. Assistive Technology • Important: • Vision impaired computer users do NOT use the mouse • Zoom and high contrast • Screen review software Demonstrations shortly

  6. W3C Guidelines • Three levels: • Single-A (Level 1) for minimal compliance • Double-A (Level 2) for preferred compliance • Triple-A (Level 3) for sites specifically developed for people who are blind or vision impaired • These guidelines were used in the Bruce Maguire vs. SOCOC case • The US Rehabilitation Act of 1973’s Section 508 uses these guidelines to ensure that any web development products sold to the US government conform to an accessible standard.

  7. Single A Level 1 Compliance • Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). • Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, • Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. • Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes. • Until user agents allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker. • Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content. • Provide redundant text links for each active region of a server side image map. • Provide client-side image maps instead of server-side image maps except where the regions cannot be defined with an available geometric shape.

  8. Single A Level 1 Compliance • For data tables, identify row and column headers. • For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells. • Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation. • Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page. • Until user agents can automatically read aloud the text equivalent of a visual track, provide an auditory description of the important information of the visual track of a multimedia presentation.

  9. Single A Level 1 Compliance • For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives. • If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.

  10. Additional Recommendations • Keep in mind the viewing area of magnification software. It’s helpful to have the menu options in the top left-hand area • Ensure that web sites can be viewed in 800x600 resolution • Try to avoid frames wherever possible • Use san-serif fonts for web design, such as Verdana in Windows orHelvetica in MacOS. Serif fonts are better on paper but the serifs run into each other on the screen from the perspective of a vision impaired person • Use BOBBY, aDesigner etc to check your site for accessibility

  11. Links & Resources • http://www.w3c.org/WAI • http://bobby.watchfire.com/ • http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner • http://www.freedomscientific.com/

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