Sakai U-Camp: Accessibility Colin Clark, Inclusive Software Architect, Adaptive Technology Resource Center, University of Toronto Mike Elledge, Assistant Director, Usability & Accessibility Center, Michigan State University

Topics What is disability? What is accessibility? What are Sakai accessibility objectives? What is the state of Sakai accessibility? What resources are available? How do I design accessible interfaces? What does the future hold for accessibility and Sakai?

Defining Disability In context of a learning environment: Disability is artifact of a mismatched relationship between a learner and the education offered Not a personal trait Thus accessibility is the ability of learning environment to adjust to user needs

Defining Accessibility Flexibility of education environment, curriculum, and delivery of content Availability of alternative and equivalent content and activities

Accommodation Strategies Multiple versions Single component approach Adaptable components

Problem with Multiple Versions “Accessible” version not maintained and becomes outdated (eg. text-only version) Unequal access to resource People with disabilities are not a homogenous group

Limitations of Single Component Approach Accessible for everyone but optimal for no one Design decisions often do not make the experience better for all users (breaks the “curbcut rule”) Time and expertise required of all resource creators Reluctance to use new or innovative technologies Valuable resources that are not compliant are often rejected

Types of Disabilities Hearing—Conductive, sensorineural Visual—Color blindness, low vision, blindness Cognitive Impairments—ADD, Dyslexia, TBI, environmental Physiological Impairments—Temporary, permanent

Incidence of Disabilities

Video Clip of Blind User Web content is read by screen readers (like JAWS) and blind persons navigate with the keyboard Benefit from keyboard shortcuts, organized content, contextual clues

Sakai Accessibility Objectives To comply with Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 Priority One, Two and (partial) Three To go beyond compliance and be usable to persons with disabilities

Sakai Accessibility Elements Navigation: Accesskeys, skip links, headings Content: Titles, summaries Functional: Label For/ID, Fieldset/Legend, Scope Presentation: CSS

Sakai Accessibility Issues Magnification > 200% Content iFrame JSF “Accessibility” Content collapse (CSS) “Bugs” –Text Editor –Code burps –Onkeypress clean-up – Testing new versions and tools

Accessibility:WG Confluence: Resource, archive –Developers checklist, testing protocol, results –Current accessibility, history, charter – y/2ACC/Homehttp://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/displa y/2ACC/Home Collab: Discussion –Accesskeys, AJAX/Dynamic HTML –

Designing Accessible Interfaces Accessibility principles are design principles Challenges of inclusive design Inclusive design techniques

Components of the Web Content: –the user interface –underlying information –application behaviour User Agents: a nerdy name for the browser Assistive Technologies Authoring Tools Evaluation Tools

Accessibility Principles From WCAG 2.0: –1. Content must be perceivable –2. Interface components should be operable –3. Content must be understandable –4. Content should be robust & forward-looking

Does this Sound Familiar? These are design principles! Design for consistency Design useful navigation schemes Design and test forms Make things readable and understandable to the user

Challenges for Designers The Web is a medium that should be plastic and highly adaptive Need to design multiple user experiences Design for less-than-ideal circumstances

Inclusive Design Techniques Understand users with disabilities Label everything clearly Design for separability and change Enable different control strategies Provide alternatives or augmentations for everything

Future Sakai Accessibility Frameless portal and integrated tools Dynamic content TransformAble Flexible UIs: the Fluid Design Project

TransformAble Web services to help with Web application accessibility PreferAble: allows users to specify personal display and control preferences StyleAble: restyles user interface SenseAble: rearranges and augments content Currently being integrated into Sakai We’re behind schedule but moving along

Fluid Design Responding to the need to improve usability and accessibility in community source projects Create both technologies and processes Enable design contributions Share user interface components UI components as design patterns

Why Create a Flexible UI? To address unique institutional needs To address needs of different disciplines To address cultural differences To simplify internationalization & localization To ensure accessibility To accommodate diverse individual needs To support device independence

Fluid Project Goals Make it easier for designers to get involved in community source software Enable pooling of UI resources Encourage loosely coupled UIs Facilitate wide-scale testing Enable transformable user interfaces Improve consistency of user experience

Provide Technical Supports Provides a consistent model for UI components across applications Establishes a single API for configuring components Provides a consistent way of specifying site-wide customizations such as skins Decouples UI from application logic Enables easy switching of components to meet diverse user needs

Q & A