Beyond the Bells and Whistles:

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Beyond the Bells and Whistles Is Your
WebsiteUniversally Accessible?
Beth E. Thrift SEIRTEC _at_ SERVE 3333 Chapel Hill
Blvd., Suite. C102 Durham, NC 27707 919.402.1060
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www.seirtec.org/
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• Section 508 A Brief History
• Web Accessibility
• Why worry about accessibility
• Where to start in making your website accessible
• Multimedia on the Internet
• Making multimedia accessible
• Principles in captioning
• Synchronous events
• Universal Design
• Accessibility Universal Design
• Tools Resources

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Section 508 A Brief History
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Section 508 A Brief History

• Convergence of factors
• Disability Rights Movement
• Barrier-free Design to Universal Design
  Movement
• Advances in Rehabilitation Engineering
  Assistive Technologies

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Section 508 A Brief History

• Increasing population of individuals with
  special needs
• Adults now live an average of 30 years longer
  than did adults at the beginning of the 20th
  century which means many are faced with
  diminishing
• Vision
• Hearing
• Mobility Agility
• Improved medical care means that more people
  survive once fatal accidents and illnesses

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Basic Web Accessibility
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Five Types of Disabilities to ConsiderWhen
Designing Websites

• Visual Impairment
• Hearing Impairment
• Mobility Impairment
• Cognitive Impairments
• Seizure Disorders

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A Different Perspective

• Unplug the mouse
• Turn off images
• Turn off sound

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Content should not be image-dependent
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Some Website Design Implications

• Text equivalent for non-text elements
• Equivalent alternatives for multimedia
  presentations must be synchronized
• All information conveyed with color will also be
  available without color

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Some Website Design Implications

• Text equivalent for non-text elements
• Equivalent alternatives for multimedia
  presentations must be synchronized
• All information conveyed with color will also be
  available without color

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Some Website Design Implications

• Redundant links shall be provided for each
  active region of a server-side image map
• Provide method that permits user to skip
  repetitive navigation links
• Design pages to avoid causing the screen to
  flicker with a frequency greater than 2Hz and
  lower than 55 Hz

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Where to Start

• Images provide ALT tags to provide descriptors
  for all images
• Image maps use client-side Map and text for
  hotspots
• Multi-media provide captioning and transcripts
  of audio and descriptions of video
• Hypertext links use text that makes sense when
  read out of context.

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Where to Start

• Page organization use headings, lists, and
  consistent organizing structure
• Graphs charts summarize or use the longdesc
  attribute
• Scripts, applets, plug-ins provide alternate
  content
• Frames label frames
• Tables make line by line reading sensible
• Check your work validate HTML

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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

• Three levels of priorities
• A Web content developer must satisfy this
  checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will
  find it impossible to access information in the
  document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic
  requirement for some groups to be able to use Web
  documents.

www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html
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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

• Three levels of priorities
• A Web content developer should satisfy this
  checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will
  find it difficult to access information in the
  document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove
  significant barriers to accessing Web documents.

www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html
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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

• Three levels of priorities
• A Web content developer may address this
  checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will
  find it somewhat difficult to access information
  in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will
  improve access to Web documents.

www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html
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Multimedia on the Internet
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Presentation Media

• PowerPoint
• Poor accessibility in PowerPoint itself
• Office 2K/XP generated HTML has outline, but
  lacks tags for images, tables, text boxes
• New tool helps guide you to fill the gaps
• Acrobat PDF
• Future version will be accessible
• For now, direct user to Adobe site for a tool to
  convert PDF
• HTML

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Accessible Multimedia

• Several types of multimedia exist today
• New forms being created, things change fast
• Key concepts
• Caption sounds and images into text for reader
  software
• Allow keyboard navigation
• Todays agenda from older and better
  standardized to newer and less understood

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Multimedia Is Wonderful, but...

• Avoid eye candy if it excludes parts of your
  audience
• Remember bandwidth limits
• Dial-in users may find multimedia too big
• To be accessible, transcription will be needed
• Text can be utilized for reading, text-to-speech,
  and Braille

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Principles of Captioning for Multimedia

• Synchronized - the text content should appear at
  approximately the same time that audio would be
  available
• Equivalent - content provided in captions should
  be equivalent to that of the spoken word
• Accessible - caption content should be readily
  accessible and available to those who need it

Standards 508(b) W3C Guidelines
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Audio/Video Captioning

• Text captions, synchronized with the images
• Text transcript file
• Best for text-only devices, Braille printers
• Audio description track for video
• Alternative language text/audio tracks

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Internet Video Captions
Words appear below the image, when enabled in the
viewer
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Audio/Video Examples

• Green Potato Chips video video with audio and
  text
• http//ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/showcase.html
• Pure transcript also available

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Audio/Video Current Tools

• MAGpie -- A free tool from NCAM for creating
  captions and audio descriptions. Creates captions
  compatible with RealPlayer, QuickTime, and
  Windows Media Player. http//ncam.wgbh.org/
• SMIL -- Synchronized Multimedia Integration
  Language -- is a general method of marking up
  content for many formats

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Animation/Simulation

• Java
• SMIL support added recently (Soja, Schmunzel)
• Few older applications are accessible
• Flash
• New versions are designed for accessibility
• Guidelines for design on Macromedia site

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Synchronous Events

• Text chats are easy, in principle
• Beware non-accessible java applets
• Voice presentations can be captioned in advance
• Voice chats require live transcription, the most
  cost-intensive element
• Example EASI Chatterbox
• http//easi.cc/cbox.htm

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Universal Design
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www.cast.org
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www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/
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Tools and Resources
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A few online tools for checking accessibility

• Bobby
• The Wave Accessibility Validator
• Cynthia Says
• A-prompt Toolkit
• Usablenet

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Bobby
http//bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
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http//www.wave.webaim.org/index.jsp
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http//www.cynthiasays.com/
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http//aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/
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www.usablenet.com
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www.sedbtac.org
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www.webaim.org
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Why should I be concerned whether my website is
accessible?

• Its good business sense
• Its the law
• Its the right thing to do

Norman Coombs - EASI
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Beyond the Bells and Whistles Is Your
WebsiteUniversally Accessible?
Beth Thrift bthrift_at_serve.org www.seirtec.org/p
resent/webaccess.html