Web accessibility

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Web accessibility

• A practical introduction

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A working definition
Web accessibility is about designing sites so
as many people as possible can access and
interact with them effectively and easily


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Why is it an issue?

• Lack of standards in the early days of the web
• Ignorance of the needs of disabled web users
• Development tools were very poor at creating
  accessible websites
• Limited advice and support available
• Fortunately this has started to change

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Key Benefits

• Reach a wider audience up to 10 percent
• Makes your site more useable for everyone (35
  better)
• Reduces site maintenance lower bandwidth and
  hosting cost
• Device/platform independence (estimated 1 in 3
  devices handheld by 2010)
• Improves search engine rankings
• Provide Social responsibility and achieve better
  reputation
• Future-proofing your online presence.

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Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

• The DDA covers employment and the provision
  ofgoods and services to disabled people
• The DDA has been rolled out in stages to give
  organisations time to adjust grey areas
  clarified by case law
• An accessible Website is given as an example of
  areasonable adjustment in the goods and
  services DDA code of practice law since 1999
• A service that is only available over the web is
  arguably most at risk from this legislation

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Issues with disabilities
The groups that have specific Issues with web and
intranet accessibility are

• Vision including blindness, colour blindness
  and tunnel vision
• Hearing both total deafness and hard of
  hearing
• Mobility problems with hands and arms
• Cognitive, Mental and learning disabilities

Many have more than one disability
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Access technology - Vision

• As a very visual medium, the Web presents unique
  problems to the millions who have low,
  restricted or no vision.
• There are 4 broad categories of vision
  impairment
• Colour blindness red/green impairment most
  common, affects 5 of male population and 1
  female test at vischeck.com
• Mild vision impairment larger font size,
  different background
• Moderate vision impairment screen
  magnification software
• Blind/severe vision impairment screen readers

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Mild vision impairments Adjust the Browser
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Enabling Technology
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Assistive technology - Vision

• Screen readers are used for non-visual access to
  Windowapplications and the Web. A screen reader
  allows users who are blind to hear what is
  happening on their computer by convertingthe
  screen display to digitised speech.
• Window-Eyes and JAWS are examples of screen
  readers.

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Hand/arm Adaptive technology
People with mobility impairments face
challenges when navigating and interacting with
web pages. They may experience difficulty
moving the cursor with the required precision or
may lack the manual dexterity or hand-eye
co-ordination required to use a standard keyboard
or mouse. Some people will use voice
recognition to navigate and interact with web
pages.
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Assistive Technology
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Alternative Pointing Devices
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Alternative keyboards
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Hearing
Hearing impaired people have particular
problems with inaccessible multimedia, including
video and audio clips on the web, which lack
captioning and transcripts. Additionally for
those whose first language is BSL (British Sign
Language) there are words in English that do not
exist in their vocabulary. For example recent
research by the BBC found terms such as
marinade in their recipe section were not
understood by BSL users, highlighting the need to
provide a glossary for key words.
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Guidance for Managers
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
1.0 Guidelines created in 1999 to explain how to
make websites and intranets accessible to people
with disabilities. They are prioritised into
three levels Priority Level 1 - 'Must' or level
AMinimum - key issues images, language,
Multimedia Priority Level 2 - 'Should', or level
Double-AGood practice - key issues layout,
hypertext, forms Priority Level 3 - 'Ought' or
level Triple-ABeyond best practice
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Web accessibility audits

• Accessibility audits have three steps
• Step 1 Compatibility testing with various
  browsers.
• Toggle images
• Toggle sound
• Test Font size
• Observe Color Contrast
• Use Tab Control

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Web accessibility audits

• Step 2 Automated testing
• Using tools such as WebXact Cynthia Says
• Requires interpretation

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Web accessibility audits

• Step 3 Manual accessibility evaluation
• Most time consuming
• Most critical
• Manually test accessibility based on guidelines
• W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,
  WCAG 1.0
• RNIB See it Right Accessible Website
  Guidelines
• ISO/AWI 16071 Ergonomics of human-system
  interaction -- Guidance on software
  accessibility

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Planning for an accessible Website

• Obtain top management and trustee commitment
  make them aware there is a legal requirement to
  make your site accessible under the DDA
• Find out how accessible your site is now
• Decide on what level of accessibility you want to
  achieve W3C WCAG level 2 is increasingly
  becoming a goal of many organisations

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Planning for an accessible Website

• Create an internal team to identify accessibility
  objectives - this might just be you!
• Make sure the relevant people in your
  organisation understand about accessibility
• Create an accessibility policy

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Web accessibility policy

• If any part of your website has specific
  accessibility issues that will impact on the
  ability of disabled people to use your site. You
  must document the problem and explain how you
  are working towards fixing it, and if possible
  give a time frame for this solution.
• For those services that are inaccessible you need
  to explain how disabled people can access this
  information or these services via alternative
  means
• Encourage feedback from disabled people
• Put a summary of your policy on your Website

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Accessibility issues for editors

• Below are some key areas to consider when writing
  content for the web
• Use the simplest and clearest language
  appropriate for a sites content.
• Use short line lengths and paragraphs.
• Use pictures and symbols in addition to text.
• Provide a text equivalent for each non-text
  element / ensure pictures have descriptive text
  (alt attributes).
• Avoid putting too much information on a page -
  as a guide dont have more than three pages worth
  of content as you scroll down.