2. Wednesday 29 th November 2006 Universal Design Workshop Group B Electronic Access

3. ELECTRONIC ACCESS “It’s OK, it’s all available on the Web.” Access to education and training is increasingly dependant upon access to computer technology and digital communication. This Workshop will explore the opportunities and limitations of the new technologies including: accessible web design accessible web design learning management systems (e.g. WebCT, Blackboard etc.) learning management systems (e.g. WebCT, Blackboard etc.) assistive technology and computer access assistive technology and computer access real time transcription and digital recording systems (e.g. I Lecture) real time transcription and digital recording systems (e.g. I Lecture)

4. “ Accessible web design in the tertiary education sector. Current practice and future possibilities ” Damian Sweeney

5. Overview Principles of accessible web design Recognising accessibility barriers on the web Steps to take to enhance the accessibility of your institution's web presence

6. Principles The web starts out accessible, barriers are built Choose the right technologies Use them as they were designed Pay attention to the semantic structure of your documents WYSIWYG myths (WYSIOWYS)

7. Principles - separating web technologies (X)HTML - for content CSS - for presentation Javascript - for behaviour … then the rest

8. Recognising barriers Resize the text Get an accessibility toolbar/extension Turn off styles Turn off javascript Validate the code Scripting behaviour (AJAX/Hijax)

9. Examples - bad and good USyd (images for text) UniMelb LMS (scripting) myCQU (code validation) RMIT Union (CSS design) AIRport (unobtrusive scripting, multimedia) WANAU (stylesheet changer)

10. Your backyard Train up or get rid of old-style designers Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done Include accessibility statements in your requirements documents Insist on user and browser testing

11. Your backyard (cont...) Learn to recognise poor design Look for: –tables used for layout –text as part of an image –Flash used without cause –'best viewed in x browser / at x resolution' –back button stops working

12. Resources W3C - http://w3.org Code validation - http://validator.w3.org WAI - http://w3.org/WAI ALA (for designers) - http://alistapart.com S5 - http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ WANAU - http://wanau.org