AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Web accessibility Web accessibility and Disability A Practical introduction Jon Gooday & Robin Christopherson AbilityNet

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. What is web accessibility? Web accessibility is about designing sites so as many people as possible can access them effectively and easily, independent of who they are or how they access the net “ “

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 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 ‘A’ Minimum Priority Level 2 - 'Should', or level ‘Double-A’ Best practice Priority Level 3 - 'Ought' or level ‘Triple-A’ Beyond best practice Standards Web standards

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Key accessibility issues  Images not labelled properly  Inaccessible Flash  Language - use of complex text, jargon, poor headings and layout  Multimedia - lack of captioning and transcripts  Frames – poor frame titles makes pages hard to navigate for blind web users  Tables - information in tables not coded so they are readable by blind web users  Scripts – JavaScript and applets which are not compatible with adaptive technology with no alternative content provided

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Who does it affect?  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 ~ 9.8 million people in the UK have a disability under the DDA. The groups that have specific Issues with web and intranet accessibility are:

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. 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

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Mild vision impairments – Adjust the Browser

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Magnification software

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All.  Do not use colour alone to convey information (level 1)  Ensure a consistent and uncluttered page layout (level 2)  Avoid using graphics for text (level 2)  Choose colours that ensure sufficient background and foreground contrast and avoid combinations of red/green and blue/yellow (level 2/3)  Ensure all font size definitions are relative -re-sizeable (level 2)  Offer a hi-viz skin and/or link to a page explaining how to change colours and font sizes (level 3)  Use a clear non-seriffed font such as Arial, Tahoma or Verdana (recommended)  Avoid using Flash for text – there are resizing issues (recommended) Key guidelines for mild/moderate visual impairments

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Screen-Reader Users

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All.  Ensure all images have alt tags - especially links, logos and important pictures. Use empty alt tags (alt=“”) for decorative images (level 1)  If you use Flash make sure it works with modern screen readers and provide an accessible alternative for older readers (level 1)  If you use frames make sure they have titles and names that make sense - screen readers navigate in and out of individual frames on a page (level 1)  Make sure tabular data is coded accessibility – use the correct table header tags for column titles (level 1) Key guidelines blind web users

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All.  Provide transcripts for Multimedia if you use it(level 1)  Ensure both JavaScript and Applets work with screen readers – provide alternative content if they don’t. (level 1)  Choose text for hyperlinks with care – make sure it makes sense out of context and avoid repetition (level 2)  Position labels in forms to the left or above input fields and the right of checkboxes and radio buttons (level 2)  Offer a “Skip to content” link to jump over navigation links (level 3) Key guidelines blind web users

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. 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

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Hand/Arm Mobility problems 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.

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Alternative Pointing Devices Hand/Arm Adaptive technology

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Alternative Keyboards Hand/Arm Adaptive technology

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Key guidelines for Hand/Arm problems Mobility For Keyboard users:  If you use flash or scripts make sure pages are useable with the keyboard (level 2)  Ensure a logical tabbing order through all page elements (level 3)  Use shortcut links – ‘AccessKeys’ for top navigation links (level 3)  Limit the number of links on the page (recommended) For Mouse users:  Graphical or text links should be a decent size(recommended)  Avoid graphical or text links in close proximity not 1/2/3 (recommended)

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Cognitive impairments include dyslexia, memory impairments and attention deficit disorders. Recommendations:  keep the language clear and avoid jargon (level 1)  use consistent navigation, sitemaps and breadcrumb trails (level 2)  keep movement to a minimum or allow user to it turn off (level 2)  use graphical icons as navigation aids (level 3)  content should be organised logically and clearly (level 3)  there should be sufficient spacing between lines, paragraphs or sections, use bulleted lists (recommended)  Use a clear non-seriffed font and don’t fully justify text (recommended)  Dyslexic web users prefer a beige background (recommended) Cognitive Difficulties and Dyslexia

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All.  Software tools providing more accessibility features to help designers build accessible sites for example Dreamweaver 2004  More designers creating websites to W3C web standards which includes accessibility – compatible with handheld devices such as mobiles,Palms and Pocket PCs  More accessible Flash  More examples of main stream accessible websites  Clarification of relevant legislation – UK, Europe and World Future trends

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Sources of help Organisations such as AbilityNet and RNIB offer a wide range of services to help you make your websites and intranets accessible, Including: Audits, Training Site design Disabled user testing Key resources on the web include:  W3C Web accessibility initiative -  Irish National Disability Association (NDA) -  BBC Research -  A list Apart –developer resources -

AbilityNet – Making IT Accessible for All. Conclusion State of the eNation Report September 2004 – Premiership Clubs The eNation Report is a quarterly review of key websites in a particular industry sector. The latest report looks at the 20 football clubs in the Premiership. 21 sites were reviewed in total as Manchester United also has an alternative accessible site. A 5 star scale was used: *= Very inaccessible ***= Satisfies a base level of accessibility *****= Very accessible.  1 site had a ** ranking  20 sites had a * ranking

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