1. Accessible Websites Removing the Barriers
Anne L. Allen
University of Florida, Academic Technology
Center for Instructional Technology and Training

2. Accessibility "The power of the Web is in its universality.
Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
Tim Berners-Lee,
W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web

3. What is accessibility on the web?
Web sites are accessible when individuals with disabilities can access and use them as effectively as people who do not have disabilities.

4. Who, me? I don’t have any students with disabilities.
This seems like a lot of trouble for a small number of people who might possibly use the material.

5. What do these have in common?
Carbon paper
Typewriter
Curb cuts

6. Who benefits? Carbon paper
First developed for blind and partially sighted clerks who could not tell when their quill pens ran out of ink.

7. Who benefits? Typewriter
The first working typewriter was built by Pellegrino Turri in 1808 for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono so she could write legible love letters.

8. Who benefits?
Curb Cuts

9. Electronic Curb Cut Effect
Readophone Talking Book (1934)
National Bureau of Standards develops specifications for a low-cost reliable talking-book machine for the blind. Tape recorder anyone?

10. Electronic Curb Cut Effect
In finding a way to develop more reliable, powerful, flexible, smaller, cheaper, cooler-running and less power-consuming hearing aids, 3 Bell Labs scientists invented the transistor – earning the 1956 Nobel Prize for physics.
Sony purchased a license for the technology, for $25,000, and invented the transistor radio.
Transistors became the primary technology responsible for a revolution in the telecommunications industry that continues today.

11. Electronic Curb Cut Effect
Televisions with decoders are simply better than those without. For example, captioning can enable TV viewers to:
search for and retrieve video content, by word, through the use of multimedia databases;
Listen to programs in silence while someone is sleeping;
Listen to programs in noisy environments like sports bars;
read more effectively, and at an earlier age, by enabling them to see the words being spoken at the same time they hear them (i.e. Sesame Street);
Learn to read/speak a second language by displaying foreign words at the same time they are being spoken; and,

12. What kinds of disabilities?
Blindness
Other visual impairments
Learning disabilities
Mobility impairments
Photosensitive seizure disorders
Hearing impairments

13. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Blindness
Inability to access graphical information
Solution
Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element

14. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Visual impairments
Difficulty reading tables and charts
Inability to make sense of pages when magnified
Solution
Design sites using relative rather than absolute values for width and height of rows and columns and images

15. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Learning disabilities
May have difficulty understanding cluttered websites and layout changes from screen to screen
Solution
Follow usability and accessibility guidelines when creating sites – better design for all

16. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Mobility impairments
May not be able to respond that call for a timed response (such as quizzes)
Solution
Allow users to adjust the timing of responses

17. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Photosensitive seizure disorders
Flickering images and text may trigger seizures
Solution
Avoid the use of flickering elements

18. What Kinds of Difficulties?
Hearing impairments
Unable to hear multimedia presentations using sound, such as recorded lectures or videos
Solution
Multimedia presentations must be captioned or provided in alternate formats

19. Assistive Technology How do people with disabilities use the Web?
How do you use the Web without a mouse?

20. Assistive Technology How does Quick Glance work?
Camera mounted on computer monitor is focused on user's eye.
It determines where user is looking--
--the gaze point cursor is placed at the gaze point.
"Mouse clicks" are done with a slow eye blink, an eye dwell, or a hardware switch.

21. Assistive Technology
Sip and Puff

22. Assistive Technology Foot Mouse Add-on Touch Screen
one pedal controls cursor movement, the other for mouse clicks
Foot Mouse
Add-on Touch Screen

23. Assistive Technology
Alternative Keyboards

24. Assistive Technology
On Screen Keyboards

25. Assistive Technology
Roller Switches
Power Braille

26. Accessibility
What are the challenges of using the web without seeing the page?
How does a screen reader read images? Audio files? Video files?

27. Web Page Reader
Home Page Reader

28. HPR Exercise
Find forecast high temperature for today at or
Find what the latest storm warnings are at
What trains go from Los Angeles to Chicago around 7:00 AM on April 1, 2006 (
At find the lowest round trip fare from Los Angeles to Honolulu

29. Accessibility Could you complete your task?
If not, what were the barriers?

30. Accessibility is not “in” the Web page
Accessibility is experiential
User is able to use data, information, and services as effectively as someone without a disability
Accessibility is environmental
It depends on the interaction of the document with user agents, assistive technologies--and people