Creating Accessible Silverlight Experiences

1
Creating AccessibleSilverlight Experiences

• Saqib Shaikh
• Microsoft

2
Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)

• More and more apps moving online
• Customers comfortable with accessible HTML,
  scared by RIAs
• Ajax/Flash/Silverlight can all be accessible
• Just technology care about solutions
• AT users want pretty apps too!

3
Silverlight

• Another technology for creating RIAs
• Plug-in, similar to Flash
• Cross-platform, cross-browser, open standard
• Comfortable for desktop/server developers
• Program in C/VB/Python/Ruby
• Can run out-of-browser too

4
Traditional View of Web Accessibility

• Colour contrast
• Keyboard access
• Accessible video
• Semantics (ul/ol not bullet.gif, h1-h6 not larger
  font).
• Considerations are same for Silverlight apps

5
High Contrast and Zoom

• Can detect when usre is using High Contrast
• Easily access OS colour choices
• Web browsers zoom funtion automatically scales
  text (in Silverlight too)
• Can subscribe for zoom changes and scale UI
• Ill show you...

6
Accessible Video

• Audio Description for eyes-free viewing
• Captioning for audio-free viewing
• Signing for users for whom this is the prefered
  language
• Ill show you...

7
Semantics

• Programmatic access via UI Automation (UIA)
• Used by AT such as screen readers and speech
  recognition
• Convey the meaning of the UI, not just its visual
  representation

8
Semantics in Silverlight

• All controls are lookless
• Progress bar as speedometer, checkbox as thumbs
  up/down, radio button as traffic light
• Provided controls implement UI Automation
• Can implement UIA yourself if you must
• Ill show you...

9
In Closing

• Dont be scared of pretty
• Solutions matter more than technology
• Silverlight can be accessible too
• Everyone wants a compelling user experience,
  regardless of ability/disability

10
Questions?

• Email SaqibS_at_Microsoft.com
• _at_SaqibS on Twitter