1 Web Accessibility What do we mean by accessibility?

2 Outline Technologies Why accessibility? Web standards – how do we do this then? Accessibility Testing Accessibility Myths The Industry

3 What is accessibility?

4

5

6 It’s about access for all

7 The social model of disability

8 What do we mean by disability Deaf Hard of Hearing, hearing impaired Blind, visually impaired, low vision Mobility-impaired Learning-disabled

9 Technologies

10

11 What does accessibility mean?

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13 “Text is not a feature of Websites; it is a primitive, a fundamental and unalterable component” - Joe Clark

14 Why accessibility? The business case The ethical case The legal case

15 The business case “The estimated spending power of people with disabilities in the UK being £40-50 billion” Employers Forum on Disability

16 The ethical case The social model of disability Cooperate social responsibility

17 The legal case “...we are now using the force of argument. If that fails, we will not hesitate to use the argument of force.” -- Bert Massie Chairman, Disability Rights Commission

18 Sydney Olympics 2000

19 Intranets “One major UK corporation which is notorious for having inaccessible public web pages, is suddenly spending considerable sums on making their intranet accessible - for no other reason (as far as my informant could tell) than because they'd realised they risked some rather high-profile court actions by employees.” -- Alan Flavell. (Alan Flavell is a well-known contributor to html-related newsgroups – he has a lot of respect within the industry. He is an acknowledged expert. His credentials are impeccable)

20 Intranets “A member of staff could (we hope not, but it happens) lose their sight (or 'gain' some other disability) at any time. Equally, you could employ someone. If this happens down the road, you could have a massive problem.” -- Anonymous Contributor (Intranet Forum)

21 How do we do this then?

22 Web standards

23 Welcome back

24 Welcome Hello there! Life is great when you design with standards. h1 { color: red; background: white; font: Arial; } p { color: green; background: blue; font: ”Comic Sans”; } Content XHTML Presentation CSS Behaviour DOM function showPic (whichpic) { if (document.getElement ById)

25 Want to change something? It’s easy... One Two ThreeOneTwoThree Four FiveFourFive

26 Tables

27

28 the JavaScript issue...

29 Accessibility Standards

30 Do the W3C know what they are talking about? “the majority of problems that disabled people mentioned regarding poor web access were not contained in any of the WAI's guidelines.” Bert Massie, DRC

31 Automated testing PageScreamer TM

32 Manual Testing

33 User Testing DRC recommendations

34

35 the usability bonus.

36 Accessibility Myths

37...my site will look boring

38

39...it’s difficult to do. Contact Andrew Gray at

40 Audio and Video content

41...a text only version is fine. Disabled access at rear.

42 The industry.

43 “81 % of sites investigated failed to meet the minimum guidelines for access.” DRC Report 14/4/04

44 The industry

45 The industry

46 Don’t shoot the messenger

47 The public sector A requirement on all new public sector IT procurement projects A key aspect of electronic Government Interoperability Framework

48 e-Envoy recommendations

49 Certifying developers

50 It’s not all good news...

51 Soup Tomato Soup Flow Trust & Time & Cash Openly Map Maths of Multiply Network/ Commune/ for real self - organise simplicity Network economy Clusters of 5 Approach- Project 007 of 2004, Year of Transparency I ( NAME OMMITED ) invite you to tell us/me. Your comments delight me!

52 Third Party Content RSS feeds Advertisements

53 "Why would you care about standards support? You can code things that work in IE, and that's fine - nobody really uses anything but IE, coding for all browsers is a waste of time. Now what would you rather have a development team doing, working on standards support or adding in cool proprietary things, like 3D powerpoint-style page transitions, that will make their web "experience" that much better" -- unnamed Microsoft employee

54 Questions and Comments accessibility.ppt

55 Further Information Books: Building Accessible Websites By Joe Clark Online Resources: