|  | copyright 2005 Dennis Lembree
Practical web accessibility tips. Blog and podcast for programmers, developers, coders, or anyone else interested in techniques for web development with accessibility in mind (see W3C's WAI, Section ... | |
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Download Web Axe Episode 67 (WCAG2, events, CS4, John Slatin) News & Events WCAG 2.0 nearing completion "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 was published as a W3C Proposed Recommendation on 3 November 2008. This means that the technical material of WCAG 2.0 is complete and it has been implemented in real sites. The next stage is the final publication, which is expected in December 2008." Podcasts from Accessibility Conference last spring CS4 Accessibility John Slatin Fund Project "Matches accessibility experts with companies wanting a brief accessibility audit of their websites. In return for the audit, site owners will contribute a minimum of $500 to help fund the medical expenses incurred by John's family during his long illness." Revisiting Screen Resolution
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In the article Deafness and the User Experience by Lisa Herrod, issues with Deaf web users are explored. And there are some excellent points for writing for web accessibility: - Use headings and subheadings.
- Write in a journalistic style: make your point and then explain it.
- Make one point per paragraph.
- Use short line lengths: seven to ten words per line.
- Use plain language whenever possible.
- Use bulleted lists.
- Write with an active voice.
- Avoid unnecessary jargon and slang, which can increase the user?s cognitive load.
- Include a glossary for specialized vocabulary, e.g., medical or legal terminology, and provide definitions in simpler language.
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In the article Fieldsets, Legends and Screen Readers from The Paciello Group Blog, the author Roberto Castaldo provides some excellent insight into how the screen readers JAWS and Windows Eyes work with the Fieldset and Legend tags. (Fieldset and Legend tags are used to group elements within a form.) He concludes that support in JAWS is better overall than Windows Eyes, and that even there are issues in both screen readers, developers must continue to implement these standards tags and other accessibility practices. Some tips from the article include: - Fieldset and Legend tags must be used together, never independently of each other.
- Keep the content of the Legend tag brief (the Legend may be read when each of the controls contained in a Fieldset receive focus.)
- In Windows Eyes, the option to read the Legend tag is off by default.
- Fieldsets may be nested.
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In Boagworld podcast episode 130, I discovered that in order to help test web accessibility, Paul Boag wears glasses (that he doesn't need) and gloves and attempts to navigate through a site. Excellent idea! In order to better understand [the elderly's] experience I have bought a pair to ski gloves and some reading glasses (I don't need reading glasses). Every now and again, I surf the site I am designing wearing both the glasses and gloves. The glasses make the screen hard to read while the gloves hamper my use of the mouse and the keyboard. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select something from a drop down menu wearing ski gloves!
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You can now use a free toolbar application to rate web sites on web accessibility. The toolbar is part of The Helen? Project, hosted by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). The project is in a public beta so AFB is asking for feedback. All internet users, especially people with disabilities, are welcome to use the toolbar. From the AFB: We offer you a free downloadable, fully accessible, web site rating toolbar application (which we affectionately named "Helen?") that will enable you to have your voice heard as you experience problems and/or success in using any web site. And, most importantly, Helen? will enable the collective voice of the user community to be heard by web site providers... If you are already a registered user of afb.org, you are ready to participate. Simply download the Helen Toolbar Application. Not a registered user? Register with afb.org and The Helen? Project for free.
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Big news! The NFB versus Target lawsuit is settled! As expected, there are good points and bad points to the settlement. You may read an excellent summary of the settlement by Jared Smith of WebAIM in the blog entry Target lawsuit settled. Some of the wins from the lawsuit are: - Target will pay NFB $90,000 for the certification and first year of monitoring and then $40,000 per year thereafter.
- Target?s web developers will receive at least one day of accessibility training, to be provided by NFB at a cost of up to $15,000 per session.
- Target will respond to accessibility complaints from web site users.
- Target will pay damages of $6,000,000 to the class action claimants, or at most $7000 per claimant, and will pay $20,000 to the California Center for the Blind.
If you're really interested, you may read the actual NFB vs. Target Settlement from the Northern District of California. (I find it ironic that the HTML title of this page doesn't pass accessibility guidelines; it says "Untitled Document".) Addendum:Here's a press release from NFB from last year (October 7, 2007) with more background on the lawsuit: Court Ruling Says California Disabled Rights Law Applies to the WebAddendum:More on this subject from Accessify, Bruce Lawson, and Access Matters:
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The 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground conference, subtitled Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference, will be November 11- 14, 2008. The University of Colorado at Boulder is hosting the event at the beautiful Millennium Harvest House hotel in Boulder, Colorado. I may be speaking at this conference so I hope you can attend! More about Accessing Higher Ground, in their words: Accessing Higher Ground focuses on the implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology in the university and college setting for sensory, physical and learning disabilities. Other topics include legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance, and making campus media and information resources - including Web pages and library resources - accessible.
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In Boagword podcast #120 (June 4, 2008), Paul Boag speaks with Patrick Lauke on WCAG 2.0. It's a lengthy discussion that's definitely worth a listen.
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Therese Nielsen, a veteran Web Axe podcast listener, has been a major contributor to the relaunch of the University of Michigan's Services for Students With Disabilities web site earlier this year. The following is a portion of a message she sent: I just wanted to let you know that listening to Web Axe helped me out a great deal as I created the site!...It has received a lot of really positive feedback, and a visually disabled student who is reviewing UM sites for accessibility recently raved about how much she likes using the site, calling it "wonderful".
Thank you for the kind words Therese and congrats on the fine work!
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This podcast covers the markup for Language, Abbreviations, and Quotes; CSS is a whole other issue which may be covered in a future podcast. Download Web Axe Episode 64 (Language, Abbreviations, and Quotes) News Announcements - Web accessibility consulting now offered by Dennis & Ross; contact them at webaxe [AT] gmail NOSPAM dot com
- The next Refresh Detroit meetup is Wednesday, July 30.
Main Segment General Guidelines Language in HTML tag <head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us" /> Code Examples: Blockquote <blockquote>
<p>Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!</p>
<cite>Jane Doe</cite>
</blockquote>
<blockquote cite="Jane Doe [or URL]">
<p>Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!</p>
</blockquote> Code Examples: Inline quotes <p>A customer for web accessibility consulting said <q>Dennis and Ross are
highly recommended for web design!</q>, and that was pleasing to my ears.</p>
<q lang="en-us">Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!</q>
As <cite>Jane Doe</cite> said, <q lang="en-us">Dennis and Ross are
highly recommended for web design!<q> Code Examples: Abbreviations & Acronym <acronym title="California" lang="en-us">CA</acronym>
<abbr title="California">Cali</abbr> Also, the abbr attribute can be used in table headers: <th scope="col" abbr="colors">colors selected currently</th> CSS + Aural Style Sheets acronym {speak : normal;}
abbr.initialism {speak : spell-out;}
abbr.truncation {speak : normal;} Language Codes List of language codes; the Representation of the Names of Languages. From ISO 639, revised 1989. Other Links
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Are we entering a Post-Guideline Age for web accessibility? It's an interesting new argument being made in the article Web Accessibility. Life In the Post-Guideline Age from the E-Access blog. I believe there is a good case for this: - Too many different guidelines and laws.
- Too many different technologies are being developed.
- Just because a site passes web accessibility, doesn't necessarily mean it's usable (this is what the article focuses on).
Here's a good excerpt from the article: I think of this as a pyramid. Web accessibility is the foundation. Usability by disabled people is the next layer. And both of these underpin the ultimate goal: excellent user experiences by disabled people (and everyone).
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The University of Colorado-Boulder is hosting the 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference, November 11- 14, 2008. The main topics include: - implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology in the university and college setting
- legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance
- campus media and information resources, including Web pages, accessible
The web site describes the event as: Disability Services at the University of Colorado at Boulder presents Accessing Higher Ground: Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference for Education, for Businesses, for Web and Media Designers
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As you may know, Acrobat 9 has recently been released. Fortunately for all, making PDFs accessible is even easier than ever. There's some good information on the Acrobat 9 accessibility FAQ page, and many accessibility features are explained. Here are the highlights: - Acrobat has an OCR text recognition feature that allows you to apply OCR to the scanned pages.
- The form tools in Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended allow you to automatically recognize form fields in PDF files and Microsoft Word documents.
- Several tools can create tagged PDF files automatically, including: Microsoft Office applications when Acrobat is installed; the most recent versions of Adobe FrameMaker®, InDesign®, LiveCycle Designer ES, and PageMaker®; the Web Capture feature in Acrobat.
Podcast on creating accessible PDFs [update June 6] Refresh Detroit's next meetup will feature a presentation on this topic. Acrobat: Features, accessibility, and version 9 - June 18, 2008
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In the blog post Web Accessibility - The Power of Five, E-Access Bulletin Live reports on a web accessibility study completed by the Society of IT Management (Socitm). The study cites the five most common web accessibility errors, which reportedly make up 76% of all website accessibility failures. - no alternative text for images
- inappropriate use of java script
- errors in simple data tables
- errors in complex data tables
- use of features with a lack of accessible alternatives
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In his article Writing for Accessibility, Joe Dolson explains that accessible copy is more than making non-textual elements available, it's also about the main content! He continues to explain how tone and puncuation are very sensitive and important issues when writing for accessibility. Joe suggests: - Keep your sentences on the short side
- Avoid excessive parenthetical statements
- Avoid excessive subclauses
- Read the sentence without giving any particular emphasis to the terms and see how easy it is to understand the statement
Related links:
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