Accessibility – 1h

Why produce web sites for people with a disability? Moral Reasons Business – A growing market that gets bigger as the population ages – Loyal customer base The wider view – Accessible sites benefit almost everyone (Universal Design Concept) Legislation – Disability Discrimination Act (1995) – Special Education Needs and Disability Act (2001) – Section 508 (USA)

Inclusive Design Accessibility – Physical access to equipment (devices, times, places) – Everyone has impairments at different times, in different contexts. “Temporarily unimpaired” – “Disability” and “handicap” are the result of society’s failure to cope Usability – The quality of the interaction (flexibility, learnability, user satisfaction, errors, speed) Acceptability – The acceptability of the system to users in its context of use

Incidence of Impairments in the EU Figures in millions (Gill, 1997)

Disability/Impairment facts: UK million people (UK Office of National Statistics) UK Disability Discrimination Act (1995) – A person is considered disabled if they have …a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities – Disabled people have the right of access to the same services as the rest of us – “Reasonable adjustment” is required to accommodate disabled users – Latest Code of Practice refers to Web Accessibility

A financial reason... Charge: In 2000 the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) was sued for having an inaccessible web site by a visually-impaired user who was unable to access ticketing information, event schedules or postings of event results. Verdict: The court determined that the complaint was correct and SOCOG was found guilty of breaching the Disability Discrimination Act and fined.

Accessibility - Disability Impairment of sight, hearing or movement Difficulty in processing certain types of information Difficulty in reading or understanding text Unable to use certain input devices (e.g. mouse, keyboard) May not understand/speak fluently the language in which the document is written

Accessibility - Context Text-only screen, small screen, slow internet connection Early version of a browser, a different browser entirely (e.g. Lynx), a voice browser (e.g. Home Page Reader, Jaws), or a different operating system Users may be in a situation where their eyes, ears or hands are busy or interfered with (e.g. working in a busy, loud environment)

Assistive Technologies for physical disabilities - examples Drag-lock Keyboard customisation Simple switches Head movement Foot controlled devices Joysticks Touch pads Trackballs Light pens

Assistive technologies for other disabilities - examples Hearing impairment –Induction loops –System sounds & Symbols (e.g. Sound Sentry) Others –Speech synthesisers –Word- / phrase- prediction Visual impairment Screen readers Redirect monitor output to speech synthesis or a refreshable Braille display Audio browsers Read and interpret HTML (and style sheets) and are capable of producing inflected speech output Voice recognition

Accessibility Evaluation Tools But note that compliance with automated checking does not necessarily make sites accessible (see Diaper & Worman, 2003) There is no single tool that can be used to guarantee absolute accessibility Human evaluation is still required Guidelines are available –

Conformance Levels Priority 1: Checkpoints that must be satisfied otherwise one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the web site. Priority 2: Checkpoints that should be satisfied otherwise one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the web site. Priority 3: Checkpoints that may be addressed otherwise one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the web site.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines HTML tags (elements) Cascading Style Sheets – For controlling presentation (e.g. for controlling the font and colour attributes of a particular tag) – Allows the actual html file to contain “meaning” Non-HTML technologies generally pose greater problems than HTML

Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content Text equivalents of non-text content – Includes: images, animations, applets, buttons, sounds, frames, audio and video files – “alt” “longdesc” attributes, element content – Text can be output to speech synthesizers, voice browsers and braille displays – Helps blind, deaf and learning impaired

Examples: An image of the moon As an image As an image/link to further information (inside an anchor element …. ) As a purely decorative image – no relevance to content “longdesc” attribute could also be used

What can you see in these images?

Don’t rely on colour alone Text and graphics must be understandable when viewed without colour Helps users with a visual impairment – Colour blindness (8% males, 0.5%females) – Inability to distinguish colours due to insufficient contrast Quick test: print out web pages in black & white

Use mark-up and style sheets and do so properly Use header elements to describe the document’s information structure and not to control presentation (e.g. changing font type, size or colour): – major heading – sub heading – sub, sub heading etc. Use tables for tabular information not presentation Use markup rather than images to give information HTML has specific elements for describing: – Lists,, – Quotes, – Abbreviations – Acronyms

Use mark-up and style sheets... Control presentation with style sheets – Format text – Control layout – Browsers will process html associated with meaning – Pages controlled using attached style sheets will download faster Use relative (e.g. %) rather than absolute units in markup language html attribute values and style sheet property values

Design for device independence Allow users to interact with the web site using their preferred input (or output) device e.g. mouse, keyboard, head wand, track ball etc. Text equivalents for images make it possible for users to interact with them without a pointing device Usually, web pages that allow interaction through the keyboard are also accessible through speech input or a command line interface

Design web pages for keyboard interaction Produce a logical tab order through links, form controls and objects – use the “tabindex” attribute which can be placed in: anchor, area, object, button, input, select and textarea elements – tabindex values can be any positive integer including zero (lowest priority in the tab sequence) Example using anchors: Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Provide clear navigation mechanisms Clearly identify the target of each link – Link text should be concise, and meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context e.g try to avoid writing “click here” – The target of a link can be further clarified using the “title” attribute (general purpose) Provide a site map Provide navigation bars Group related links

Summary (1/2) Using HTML to convey meaning/structure rather than for presentation (use style sheets) Use technologies compatible with assistive technologies (screen readers, speech browsers, screen magnifiers, alt input devices) Be aware of improved accessibility features in “embedded interfaces” (e.g. Flash MX 2004) and monitor others for improvements (pdf, javascript). Watch for accessibility features being limited to full- price products eg Adobe Acrobat

Summary (2/2) Take advantage of accessibility solutions for technologies (Dreamweaver accessibility stylesheets, Java accessibility API) Use accessibility evaluation tools Test with various browsers Follow the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 1.0) produced by the W3C, and track new developments (WCAG 2.0)