Digital Likeness » accessibility

5 Accessibility Panels I Hope Make it to SXSW 2010

Andrea Hill — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:24:02 +0000

As Andrew Kirkpatrick noted on the Adobe Accessibility blog, there are quite a few proposed Accessibility panels for SXSW 2010. I was really hoping for some sessions that were a bit beyond alt text and tabindices, and happy with what I found. Here’s my Top 5 list of Accessibility sessions I really hope make the cut for next March!

Web Application Accessibility Showdown: Flash/Flex, HTML5 & Silverlight – For anyone who knows me, this is a no-brainer. My Masters capstone was on Accessibility for RIAs, but I never even got into Silverlight. This is progressive stuff. The course description mentions Accessibility APIs, which I rarely see mentioned in talks. While listed as a beginner course, this stands to have more detailed information than you’ll see most anywhere else! My only concern? The presenter is from Adobe.
Your *#@^!in’ Website Is Not Accessible! – Getting Results – Shawn Henry brings together a panel to debate different approaches to getting the Web more accessible. Beyond the tactics of a developer, this session seeks to answer questions like “What are pros and cons of different collective approaches (e.g., laws, lawsuits, community pressure)? What are some cautions and tips for the different approaches?” and “Where are resources to back me up when approaching organizations with inaccessible websites, e.g., business benefits of web accessibility, web accessibility laws, etc”
Web Accessibility Gone Wild – Jared Smith of WebAIM presents “a wide variety of mistakes, blunders, misconceptions, over-indulgences, intricacies, and generally silly aspects of modern web accessibility.” Sometimes we know just enough to be dangerous!
Cross Device Accessibility: Is This For Real? – We haven’t even figured out desktop-based web accessibility yet, and Chris Mills from Opera is pushing the question of cross-device accessibility. There’s always more to consider, isn’t there?
HTML5: Tales from the Development Trenches – It was tough to pick a last panel, but learning about the implications of HTML5 from Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp and Steve Faulkner is probably the best way to really understand them.

I’m sure many of the other accessibility sessions have some great information, but these are the ones I’d love to sit in on. Obviously there is so much information at SXSW it’s hard to devote too much time to a single topic – these are the sessions that rose to the top of the list for me!

(While you’re reviewing these panel submissions, please check out my own as well!

What would it take for you to consider web accessibility?

Andrea Hill — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:07:38 +0000

At Web Directions North ‘09, Derek Featherstone presented on “Real World Accessibility for AJAX and Web Apps”. I had first tried to hear Derek speak on this topic back in 2007, so I was eagerly signed up for the 4.5 hr workshop.

As Derek went through his presentation, I was surprised to see that several of his examples had a 2005 date on them. Still, many participants were unaware of certain techniques, and most had never heard of ARIA. Fortunately Derek was able to cover both introductory and intermediate information, but it struck me that many presentations on accessibility still need to cover the basics. While the information is “out there”, in many cases people are not seeking it out, for one reason or another.

When I was at LexisNexis, we had a yearly training budget, and many of us chose to enroll in various web accessibility training programs: I attended AccessU in 2007, and another co-worker attended WebAIM training in Utah. There are also several sessions being presented at South By Southwest that can help engage developers beyond the basics. These are fantastic events where you can have the opportunity to meet some of the most passionate and entrenched in the field, and an opportunity for those of us with a bit more experience to ask questions and engage with others. Yet it appears there is some barrier to entry into this (unintentionally) somewhat exclusive club.

I struggle with the fact that my passion for web accessibility is not shared with the masses. For the business folk, it may seem like “more work with less return”, for developers it may seem like “more tedious work”. Yet the notion of marking up elements to describe their roles, states and properties seems interesting to me: it is one step closer to the Semantic Web. And obviously, it’s more user-centered, to consider how *people* are interacting with what we create.

The information is available, and the folks within the web accessibility community are among the most generous with their time and knowledge I’ve met. If you’re not considering web accessibility in your design and development, why not?

Should you post an accessibility policy on your website?

Andrea Hill — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:14:40 +0000

The footer navigation on a website tends to be quite standard: copyright, company name, terms and conditions, privacy policy. Occasionally another links sneaks in there: accessibility.

Footer Navigation on Westlaw.com

Footer Navigation on Change.gov

Why post an accessibility policy?

The inclusion of such a link is first and foremost an indication of good intent. The simple fact that accessibility is being considered can help with the public image of the organization. In some cases, it is the link itself and not necessarily the contents of the policy that can help with overall perception.

In the United States, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act “require[s] Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities“. Any services or products to be used by Federal agencies are expected to be Section 508 compliant. Organizations may fill out a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) to show to what extent they are compliant with Section 508 law. Mozilla has their VPAT for Firefox 3 posted at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/vpat-3.html. By filling out a VPAT, a company may list their products or services on BuyAccesible.gov, a directory intended to help agencies identify accessible solutions.

An organization may also want to provide guidance on how best to use their site by users of assistive technologies. Many website now offer keyboard shortcuts, and a section on accessibility is a reasonable place to provide such information.

So why doesn’t everyone post an accessibility policy?

Unfortunately, not every site can claim a commitment to accessibility. If a policy is to be published, it is essential that the site reflect the policy. In some cases, an organization may fear legal action if they state something and do not follow through. To avoid this, the wording of the policy should be crafted carefully.

Footer Navigation on UTexas.edu

I will admit, as I looked for the screen captures to include in this post, I had some trouble. The majority of American sites do not appear to have an accessibility policy posted. And there is a single good reason for it: there is currently no compelling reason to have one. How often have you looked for an accessibility link on a website? While those of us who are passionate about accessibility see the merits in providing this information, there is still no true benefit for the majority of American organizations online. This is not the case in other countries, where accessibility law may be more stringent.

So, should you?

The decision whether or not to post an accessibility policy is one each organization must make on their own. Because it is not necessary, any organization who decides to publicize such a policy stands to benefit from positive perception in certain segments of the population. However, this must be weighed against the costs associated with providing an accessible experience.

Accessibility isn’t a one-person job

Andrea Hill — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:40:37 +0000

From the accessibility mailing list I subscribe to:

Since John Slatin died earlier this year, there has been some confusion at the University of Texas about what to do with John’s work and if/how to keep the Accessibility Institute open. Vicki Almstrum, John’s faculty colleague from the Computer Science Department, was asked to step in last month to do a review of the status and make recommendations about how to go forward.

Last week, Vicki was stunned to receive the email ~~(included below)~~ announcing the decision of the University to close the Institute, despite at least two offers to bring the work into other departments. If you think this is a bad decision, as I do, please write to the Vice-Provost, Dr. Steve Monti and let him know. monti@mail.utexas.edu

Some of the reasons that occur to me are:

Need for research based findings to support accessible design practice

Opportunity for a world class institution like UT to serve as an example to other institutions.

Place where emerging practices can be tested and modeled

Contributions to international body of knowledge on inclusion

Maintain thought leadership in Texas, easily disseminated to state agencies that have accessibility mandates

…and I am sure there are many other reasons that you can think of as well.

If you are so moved, please write and let the UT administration know that this community cares deeply about John Slatin’s leadership role and that we urge UT to maintain and build upon John’s work.

As in any field, there are certainly people that become synonymous with a movement. With accessibility, I think often of the incredible folks I met at AccessU: Sharron Rush (who penned the above note) and Jim Thatcher among them. I never had the privilege of meeting John Slatin as he was already battling leukemia when I was at AccessU in 2006, but the folks called him from the conference after-party, and I knew how much he meant to everyone, what a difference he’d made in this field.

Perhaps no one can fill Dr. Slatin’s shoes, but that should not mean that the work that the Accessibility Institute does should cease. Following his death, the Access U conference was rechristened John Slatin Access U, and a John Slatin Accessibility Fund was established that allowed accessibility experts to provide services in exchange for a donation that went to the Slatin family to cover his medical expenses. His efforts made a tremendous difference, and it is in his honour that such work should continue.

Obviously, a strong and charismatic leader can really help to draw attention to a cause. But the strength of a movement can really be realized when that leader steps away, and things can continue to move forward without him.

I will be sending an email letting Dr. Monti know that I think the Institute that Dr. Slatin helped found should not be closed, and I hope urge anyone who feels strongly about accessibility to do the same.

Site redesigns, Section 508 Compliance and IE6, oh my!

Andrea Hill — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:02:44 +0000

Another question asked in the Q&A section of LinkedIn:

I’m working on a site redesign, and a few questions came up in a meeting yesterday that have me my scratching my head. I work for a nonprofit, and apparently there’s a ‘feeling’ that we may be required to go 508 compliant in order to retain tax-exempt status sometime in the not-so-distant future. I have no problems with that, as we would like to be fully accessible to everyone, but 54 percent of our site visitors still use IE 6. Is it possible to be 508 compliant, standards compliant, and function in an IE 6 browser? Are there any good resources for backwards compatibility with IE 6 that anyone can recommend?

My response:

Actually, Section 508 came out in 1999, a couple years before IE6, so you should be about right!
As a non-profit organization, you’re actually one of the few organizations who may have a legitimate concern about Section 508. Many other organizations think they need to be worried, but it really only affects Federal agencies or some others that receive federal funding.

As someone mentioned above, Jim Thatcher is a wonderful reference in this matter. He actually has written a few books on the subject, most recently “web accessibility: web standards and regulatory compliance”.

As for “backwards compatibility” with IE6 — I haven’t seen the site you’re looking at, but I can make a few guesses of some heardache you’re dealing with:

alignment when you have padding/margins as well as a width specified on an element
use of transparent PNGs
margins being twice as wide as they should be

These and many other IE Exploder issues are listed out at positioniseverything.net. If you’d like someone to take a quick once-over on the site to identify any of these issues, please feel free to contact me. I’ve been a developer for over 8 years, so I’m well-versed in the “idiosyncracies” of IE6 (as well as accessibility – my Masters research was actually focussed on RIA Accessibility)

Spiders don’t use Screen Readers (SEO vs Web Accessibility)

Andrea Hill — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:18:04 +0000

How often have you been asked “so if we don’t use Flash, this will be searchable/accessible, right”? As though there is some new compound word describing a site whose content is easily available to all non-human user agents.

Ah, we should be so lucky! While some coding practices aid in both SEO and web accessibility, there are some fundamental differences between the practices.

One of the most basic differences is the intent. When looking at a web project, it is completely acceptable to prioritize as to which content you want to be indexed for a search engine—for example, a company may not care if their short-lived events data gets indexed. SEO is about attracting traffic to your site. In contrast, web accessibility is about ensuring an individual can use your site once he’s on it.

Up until, oh, two weeks ago, Flash was commonly considered to be unsearchable. A way to ensure the content of the site could still be indexed (and therefore show up in google) was to write the content to the HTML page, and then if the visitor had Flash available, overlay the static text with a richer experience. This worked fine to allow a search engine spider to index the content, however, it didn’t always provide a user of assistive technology a good experience.

There is a common belief that users of assistive technologies don’t or can’t access Flash, so they would get the stripped down, text-only version. This isn’t always the case, they may get the Flash-enabled version, like other human visitors. Well, except their actual experience is significantly different..

For anyone who has never seen a screen reader in action, I highly recommend you check out this Introduction to Screen Readers movie.

Flash has had accessibility properties available to developers since Flash MX, and Adobe Flex provides built-in “accessible components.” However, unlike the recent announcement about .swf indexing not requiring any additional effort on the behalf of developers, creating an accessible .swf experience does require some work. As well, accessibility for .swfs depends on MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility), so it is platform dependent. Even a diligent developer will find his hard work is all for naught if his visitor is on a MAC.

As you can see, “searchable” and “accessible” cannot be used interchangeably. While the tactics for each don’t necessarily conflict, there are different goals and different considerations to take into account.

Web Accessibility and Usability Presentations at Columbus Digital

Andrea Hill — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:57:08 +0000

Next Tuesday (July 29th), I will be presenting on Web Accessibility to Columbus Digital – the Central Ohio Adobe Users Group. Starting off the meeting will be a presentation on Usability on the Web.

Announcing this month’s Adobe User Group Presentation Night, hosted by Quest Software!

[Google Calendar Link]

6:10- 7:00: Usability on the Web
Chris Peters, Marketing Director at Quest Software
Chris Peters has been producing websites for almost as long as the Web has existed as a medium. He has been studying usability, accessibility, and human factors avidly since 2000. Chris has doubled paid search conversion rates since beginning his role as Search Marketing Manager for Quest Software, and he leads the open source ColdFusion on Wheels project in his spare time.

7:10- 8:00: Web Accessibility
Andrea Hill, Senior Developer at Resource Interactive
Andrea Hill is a Senior Developer at Resource Interactive, a leading independent interactive agency in Columbus, Ohio. Prior to starting at Resource, Andrea worked in the User Experience group at LexisNexis, coding prototypes for usability testing and serving as the company’s key accessibility contact. Andrea’s background in user-centered design has fueled her interest in usability and accessibility, and her experience as a front-end developer has provided her with the technical background to see how it all fits together. She recently graduated with a Master in Computer Science degree from Franklin University, where her research focus was on RIA Accessibility.

8:00: SOFTWARE RAFFLE
It’s time for our 6-Month software raffle. Come on by for $2000 worth of Adobe Software!

Directions
Take 270 to Tuttle Crossing Blvd. Turn West on Tuttle Crossing Blvd. Shortly after is Emerald Parkway, turn right. 6500 Emerald Parkway is on your right. Plenty of parking.

(totally stolen from the Columbus Digital site.)

what’s the deal with… Web Accessibility and the ADA?

Andrea Hill — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:09:20 +0000

Until only a few years ago, I would have stated that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) had nothing to do with web accessibility. However, the landmark case against Target has altered the landscape.

Part 36 of the ADA refers to “nondiscrimination on the basis of disability by public accommodations and in commercial facilities”. A quick look at the published “standards for accessible design” makes the intended focus of this law clear: the document is entitled “ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities”, and calls out the need for ramps and wide aisles.

As a result, web developers haven’t worried too much about the applicability of the ADA. The lawsuit raised against Target in 2006 changed all that, however.

It was deemed that ADA applied due to the cross-channel integration of the online and in-person experience. It was services like “buy online, pick up in-store” that put Target at risk—users of assistive technologies could not take advantage of this service.

A very significant consideration is that unlike WCAG or Section 508, there are no clear “ADA Web Accessibility Standards” to follow. This is about actually ensuring equal access, not fulfilling a checklist. This makes it arguably a much more daunting initiative.

However, this is not to say that every online retailer or service provider needs to be concerned with such a lawsuit. Rather, it was the blurring line between the online and physical spaces that made them vulnerable. While it would be ideal to optimize the entire online experience for disabled users, at the very least accommodations can be made to ensure that any experiences that extend to the physical location (where accessibility is required) also do so online.

“This doesn’t mean that the ADA applies to all Web sites, but on the other hand, if there’s a bricks-to-clicks type of business and there is some integration of the experience between the two, I think the court is saying that those sites need to comply with the ADA”
- Eric Goldman, assistant professor and director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

what’s the deal with… Web Accessibility and WCAG?

Andrea Hill — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:02 +0000

WCAG (Wu-CAHG) stands for the “Web Content Authoring Guidelines”, put forth by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). WCAG 1.0 was released as a Recommendation in 1999, and WCAG 2.0 is now in Candidate Recommendation status.

The Section 508 Standards were actually based on WCAG 1.0; Jim Thatcher has a side-by-side comparison of the two on his website.

WCAG lists three levels of compliance. The definition of the levels seems somewhat backwards: by not complying to a certain level, you are barring access to certain groups of individuals:

Priority 1: one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document.
Priority 2: one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document.
Priority 3: one or more groups may find it difficult to access information in the document.

One of the most important things to know about WCAG is that there is no governing body to enforce compliance. These are guidelines, not laws. That being said, many organizations model their accessibility policy after these guidelines, or will publicly state their commitment to following these guidelines. Even with no external governance, an organization that does not fulfill an stated commitment stands to suffer from negative perception by users.

When WCAG 2.0 was first drafted, it met with much industry critique as being too difficult to understand and too technology-agnostic. It has gone through extensive revision and it now close to being considered a formal recommendation.

The new guidelines offer more quantifiable success measures: whereas the techniques for satisfying WCAG 1.0 stated that there should be “sufficient contrast” between foreground and background colors, WCAG 2.0 techniques explicitly call out color contrast ratios to satisfy.

As in any case, meeting guidelines or standards does not guarantee that a site visitor will have a positive experience or be able to complete his tasks. However, these guidelines can help a site designer or developer identify common areas of difficulty and work to eliminate those.

what’s the deal with… Web Accessibility and Section 508?

Andrea Hill — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:40:15 +0000

Anyone who has heard me speak about web accessibility knows that I typically call out two motivating factors behind accessibility: usability and regulatory compliance.
Let’s face it, usability can be a hard sell. But if an organization is being tasked with meeting certain standards/guidelines/laws, there may be no choice. The trick, therefore, is knowing if it applies.

“Section 508″ refers to a section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (amended in 1998). Its purpose is stated as follows:

The purpose of this part is to implement section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C. 794d). Section 508 requires that when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, Federal employees with disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access and use by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. Section 508 also requires that individuals with disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or services from a Federal agency, have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the public who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency.

Basically, Federal agencies have an obligation only to use or buy products that are accessible. It is not readily known that this also extends to agencies such as post-secondary institutions that receive federal funding. Organizations that wish to sell to these markets must provide products that meet these standards.

Section 508 refers to all electronic technology, and there are standards for software applications, telecommunication products, and others. When looking at web accessibility, we consider section 1194.22: Web-based intranet and internet information and applications.

When an agency is evaluating products or services, it has the obligation to secure the “most accessible” solution. Yes, this acknowledges that there may be some gaps in compliance. When I attended the Access U Conference last year, the representatives from various colleges were all discussing the relative merits of different CMSes, looking for the “most accessible” solution.

To facilitate the assessment of “most compliant”, organizations will often complete a VPAT – a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. This template allows an organization to document how they do or do not meet each standard. Filling out this template, even if it means acknowledging shortcomings, gives an organization the opportunity to show what they are doing to commit to accessibility. It also makes an organization eligible to list their products in the BuyAccessible Product and Services Directory, which may be used by agencies to find accessible solutions.

While many organizations are not obligated to comply with Section 508 standards, it may still be a good exercise to be familiar with the standards and the rationale behind them. Many of the standards map directly to the WCAG1.0 Guidelines… oh wait, that’s another post, entirely…!