Sakai Accessibility Update Mike Elledge Accessibility Team Lead Assistant Director, Michigan State University Usability & Accessibility Center
Topics Background Current Accessibility Upcoming Projects How You Can Help Questions/Comments
Background Mandate to be accessible –Section 508 –WCAG 1.0: Priority One, Two Steady progress despite constraints –Multiple technologies: Velocity, JSF, RSF –Distributed development –Limited resources
Background Strong contributors –Accessibility Working Group: Comments and suggestions –Gonzalo Silverio: Implementation, review –Aware Developers: Design to specs, experimentation with 2.0-based tools –Sakai Accessibility Testers: Indiana University, University of Toronto, others Accessibility site on Confluence:
Current Accessibility Overall –Meets 7 of 10 Section 508 mandates (6 not applicable) –Meets most WCAG 1.0 recommendations Priority One: 6 of 8 (7 = NA) Priority Two: 15 of 18 (3 = NA) –“NA” mostly content or server-related elements
WCAG 1.0 Failures Priority One –Calendar: In data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells. –JavaScript: Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.
WCAG 1.0 Failures Priority Two –All Sakai: Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites. –All Sakai: Provide information about the general layout of a site (e.g., a site map or table of contents). –WYSIWY Editor: Ensure that any element that has its own interface can be operated in a device-independent manner.
Current Accessibility Screen Readers (JAWS, Window-Eyes) –Core Tools: Accessible, some glitches –Quizzes and Tests: Needs review –Provisional Tools: Some tested, some not Screen Enlargers (ZoomText) –Okay at lower magnification –4X a problem
Current Accessibility Text Magnifiers (Kurzweil 3000) –Not very accessible
Accessibility Issues Remaining iFrame –Crushes linerarization, non-CSS rendering –Hampers short-cut keys, skip links Dynamic page creation –Mangles page titles
Upcoming Projects 2.4 Review of revised and provisional tools Discussion, reviews of 2.0-ish tools (Lightbox, live forms, page order helper) Fluid –Protocol development –Tool review and refactoring
Accessibility Priorities Accessibility review of current version followed by code revision Frame-less presentation/Refactoring of tools to be JSR-168 compliant Modification/Refactoring of JSF Tools Adoption of PreferAble and StyleAble tools Development of Fluid 2.0 Tool experimentation Implementation of Fluid in Sakai
How To Help: Everyone Sign-up to review Sakai tools: – Share knowledge, become more aware of accessibility issues: join Accessibility Working Group
How To Help: Developers Follow accessibility guidelines –WCAG 1.0 (soon to be 2.0) –ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) –Sakai Accessibility Styleguide –Sakai Developer Checklist Test for accessibility –Sakai accessibility protocol
How To Help: Designers Design for Usability and Accessibility –Sakai Design Patterns Library –Involve Users in Design Process and Review Designs for Accessibility (PowerPoint presentation)
Accessibility Contacts Mike Elledge, Gonzalo Silverio, Colin Clark, Accessibility Working Group:
Questions/Comments