Articles Related to Accessibility

Web Accessibility for Cognitive Disabilities and Learning Difficulties

By Ian Pouncey
· 4 Aug, 2010

Introduction

Web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties is one of the most overlooked subtopics of general web accessibility,
despite it affecting the largest numbers. A large part of it is that there are so many conditions to understand in this area (far more than say visual
or hearing impairments) and a lack of educational information available for learning about it.

In this article we will cover a few of the problems users with cognitive disabilities may have that can affect their ability to use the Web, as well as
the things that developers can do to alleviate these problems and things they should avoid. A lot of what is covered will be well known and common sense to many, but is here for completeness.

Web Accessibility for Cognitive Disabilities and Learning Difficulties- Full Article

The ADA and the Web: Concerns and Misconceptions

July 30, 2010
by Jared Smith

WebAIM is often approached by individuals and organizations concerned about “ADA compliance” of their web site. This is a bit of a misnomer. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 pre-dates and does not address web accessibility at all. That may soon be changing.

The ADA and the Web: Concerns and Misconceptions- Full Article

Accept No Substitutes!

By Geof Collis
Bad Eyes Design & Consulting

For the longest time I’ve was advocating against the Portable Document Format
(PDF), none of them were accessible to my screen reader so I”Settled”
for plain text, to me it was the lesser of evils. At no time did I ever care
for the Microsoft Word format, next to an inaccessible PDF it was just as bad.

Problems With Using Website Validation Services

June 7th, 2010 by Alexander Dawson |

Amongst the basic skills that fledgling designers and developers should know is the art of website validation.

Website validation consists of using a series of tools such as W3C’s Markup Validation Service that can actively seek out and explain the problems and inconsistencies within our work.

While the use of such tools has benefits (in the sense of being an automated fresh pair of eyes), a worrying trend of either over or under-dependence keeps rearing its ugly head.

Problems With Using Website Validation Services- Full Article

How to Make the Web Accessible to Everyone

Carrie Saint Freedman
Thursday 27 May 2010 16:14

Despite a range of legislation and best practice advice, cyberspace is still far from equitable for those of us “non-standard” enough to be using
adaptive or assistive technology.

How to Make the Web Accessible to Everyone- Full Article

Kill Accessibility

May 20 2010
By Gary Barber

Let’s get some reality on the web accessibility debate.

We all know about WCAG 1, we have all at least had a look at the associated checklists. If you are lucky you may have glanced at
WCAG 2.

We all have been developing and designing our sites with semantic content, in compliance with W3C guidelines,
using progressive enhancement for the interactive components, unobtrusive Javascript, and
graceful degradation of the pages for legacy browsers. Maybe used some of the attributes of ARIA.
Sure that’s a no brainer.

We know that doing this will solve most of the accessibility issues. So much so that one would think that the
cause for accessibility and universal design was over. Right?

No, wrong.

Web Accessibility: Text-only Versions

Posted to Site May 17, 2010

Introduction

One of the myths of web accessibility is that people with disabilities benefit from text-only versions. The truth is that practically nobody with a disability
benefits in any way from a text-only version at all. Text-only versions may be of some benefit to people with slow Internet connections, but not to people
with disabilities (unless they happen to have slow Internet connections). In almost every case, it would be better—much better, usually—to fix the original
version than to create an alternative text-only version.

Web Accessibility: Text-only Versions- Full Article

Bad Eyes Sees the PDF Light

By Geof Collis
May 11, 2010

Ok, you win!! I’ve been converted!!

I’ve been advocating for years the need for providing an alternate document
along with the Portable Document Format (PDF) because all I ever received was
an inaccessible PDF.

I asked nicely over and over again. I tried real hard to be patient. When push
came to shove, I filed a Human Rights complaint. Still to this day your websites
are littered with inaccessible PDFs. I almost gave up!!!

Well, almost.

Document Accessibility Should Begin at the Author Level

Apr 9, 2010, By
Deborah Kaplan and Monir ElRayes

The ability to access and process electronic information has become one of the most important factors in leading a full and productive life in today’s knowledge-based
society. This makes access to electronic information critical for people with disabilities who are seeking employment and other opportunities.

Document Accessibility Should Begin at the Author Level- Full Article

The Alt and Title Attributes

When browser vendors bend the standards and implement something in a different way than what the specification states, they may cause problems, or at least confusion. One example of this is the way certain browsers, the most widely used being Internet Explorer for Windows, handle alt attributes (popularly
and incorrectly referred to as “alt tags”).

Alternate text is not meant to be used as a tool tip, or more specifically, to provide additional information about an image. The title attribute, on the
other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element. That information is displayed as a tooltip by most graphical browsers, though
manufacturers are free to render title text in other ways.

Making the Mobile Internet Accessible for All

Robin Christopherson
Wednesday 17 March 2010 03:11

A recent survey by WebAIM – a US-based non-profit organisation promoting web accessibility systems – found that a surprising 53% of people with a vision impairment were using a screen reader on a mobile device, showing clearly that an increased emphasis on the accessibility of mobile content and devices is overdue.

Making the Mobile Internet Accessible for All- Full Article

10 Unexpected Online User Behaviours to Look Out For

When designing a website, there are key user behaviours that should be taken into account. But in order to take them into account, it helps to know them.

People have banner blindness

People don’t notice banners. It’s been found in eye tracking studies their gaze literally avoids settling on any area that looks like an advert instead it seems people actively try to avoid looking at them. This effect is called banner blindness.

WIPO Workshop Focuses on Improving Web Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities

8/2/2010 08:27 GMT
ag-IP-news

GENEVA – A workshop hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from February 2 to 5, 2010, brought together over 180 persons from some 32 organizations to promote awareness about accessibility for people with disabilities and to encourage webmasters within the United Nations system and other organizations to implement principles of accessibility in their daily work.

WIPO Workshop Focuses on Improving Web Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities- Full Article

Badeyes Design & Consulting Partners with eSSENTIAL Accessibility™

By Geof Collis
Badeyes Design & Consulting
February 2, 2010

To further its commitment to web accessibility, Badeyes Design and Consulting has partnered with eSSENTIAL Accessibility™ in order to add another layer of accessibility to sites it designs.

With the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) now in force it makes even more sense to make websites as accessible as possible and eSSENTIAL Accessibility™ helps us do just that.

Badeyes Design & Consulting Partners with eSSENTIAL Accessibility™- Full Article

Web Accessibility Myths

Posted: January 23rd, 2010
By Ian Pouncey

There is a lot of good advice for the discerning web developer to find on the web on how to make a website accessible, unfortunately there is also plenty
of bad or outdated advice out there as well. Here are a few of the myths of accessibility that you may hear.

Web Accessibility Myths- Full Article

Tips for Webmasters: Improve Your Websites’ Accessibility

By Geof Collis
Badeyes Design & Consulting
January 16, 2010

In anticipation of the upcoming Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Information and Communications Standard, I have put together some tips for Webmasters on how to make your website accessible.

Tips for Webmasters: Improve Your Websites’ Accessibility- Full Article

Web Accessibility no Longer an Afterthought

by Tom Krazit

Yahoo’s Victor Tsaran, blind since the age of five, is responsible for making sure Yahoo developers design Web pages with accessibility in mind.

Yahoo’s Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an application. So when he started Yahoo’s accessibility push two years ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features.

Web Accessibility no Longer an Afterthought- Full Article

Discover New Ways of Thinking About Accessibility

on Wednesday, 9 December 2009
by Shawn Henry

As an employee of the W3C Web standards organization, you might think that I would say the most important thing to start with when addressing web accessibility is standards. I don’t. I say the first step is learning how people with disabilities use the web. You might be surprised to learn that is the W3C’s advice. We’ve now got it more clearly in writing, in the new document published today by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI):

Accessibility: How Many Disabled Web Users Are There?

Ecommerce merchants spend a lot of time thinking about statistics. They try to gauge who is visiting their website, what products consumers are most interested in, and how consumers are finding those products. Without knowing about their audience, merchants have a difficult time marketing their site and products.

The physical disabilities of a merchant’s visitors are a factor that he or she should consider.

Limitations of Web Accessibility

By Tom Babinszki on Thu, 11/12/2009 – 19:14

Many documents have been written about web accessibility. This is only appropriate as web accessibility covers a considerably large amount of topics. However, similar to any principle, web accessibility also has its set of limitations.

Here, we will try to point out those limitations in order for you to better understand web. Accessibility. It is important to note though that experts are presently working on these issues to address or improve them.

Are PDFs More Important Than Web Accessibility?

Written by Mark Magennis
Friday, 04 September 2009

We recently did an audit of a website where probably close to 99% of all the information it contained was in downloadable documents, mostly PDFs. These documents contained a lot of the stuff you’d usually find on a website – structured text, data tables, application forms, complex diagrams, graphs and other images. None of those we looked at were accessible. We wondered what we should advise the client to do about it.

The PDFs weren’t structured or tagged, so a user of assistive technologies would find them problematic. For a screen reader user, the structure would be difficult to make out, data tables difficult to understand, information in diagrams and graphs completely unavailable and application forms impossible to fill in. So even if the HTML pages were made fully accessible, or if the PDFs could be acquired by some other means, 99% of the information and functionality on the website would still be unavailable to those users. In this case, it could be argued that the PDFs are more important for accessibility than the ‘web accessibility’.

Web Accessibility Surveys Results are Frequently Disappointing

By David Sloan

A recent exchange on Twitter has motivated me to write about the contribution published surveys on web site accessibility make towards understanding and addressing the problems that hold back web accessibility. I’ve read, and continue to read, many, many papers presenting the results of surveys of web sites, and I think we need surveys to look beyond just the data and instead delve more deeply into why the results are as they are. We’ve gone way beyond the point where a paper simply reporting that a study of x web sites from y sector revealed ‘disappointing’ levels of accessibility provides anything more than a minor contribution. Surveys need to look at process not product.

Web Accessibility Surveys Results are Frequently Disappointing- Full Article

Site Check Certifications, Who Can You Trust?

By Geof Collis
October 24, 2009

I recently read an article CIBC.com the first banking site in Canada to receive CNIB Site Check certification and just had to check it out.

Full article at
http://www.aoda.ca/?p=224

WebAim: Screen Reader User Survey Results

In October 2009, WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users. This was a follow-up survey to a previous survey. We received 665 valid responses to the screen reader user survey. More in-depth analysis and documentation on the free-form responses will be available in the future.

Deafness and the User Experience

by Lisa Herrod

How many times have you been asked this question: if you had to choose, which would you prefer to be: deaf or blind? The question illustrates the misconception that deafness is in some way the opposite of blindness—as though there’s some sort of binary representation of disability. When we look at accessible design for the deaf, it’s not surprising to see it addressed in a similar fashion: audio captioning is pretty much the equivalent of alt text on images for most designers.

Full article at
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/deafnessandtheuserexperience

Testing with Screen Readers

What are the benefits of testing web content with screen readers?

Answer:
Listening to your web content rather than looking at it can be an “eye-opening” experience (pardon the pun) that takes sighted users out of their normal comfort zone. It gives sighted users a chance to evaluate their content from an entirely different perspective: from the perspective of a blind person. A lot of times you’ll end up finding mistakes that would have been hard to catch visually. For example, spelling mistakes become very obvious when you hear words mispronounced by the screen reader. Screen readers are also very good for checking the accuracy and quality of alt text. Recently I was listening to a web page and realized that the alt text was completely wrong. The graphic said “Search” but the alt text said “Options.” It took me a moment to figure out why the screen reader wasn’t reading the alt text for the “Search” button, but then I realized that it was reading the alt text, even though the alt text was wrong. Screen readers can also help you identify problems with reading order, table markup, form elements, and many other aspects of accessibility.
Full article at
http://www.webaim.org/articles/screenreader_testing/#maincontent

Improving accessibility for motor impaired users

The unique requirements for motor impaired web users can often be overlooked or poorly implemented. Motor impairments can be caused by a stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a physical disability or even a broken arm. This group of users essentially have limited or no ability to use a mouse.

Full article at
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/motor-impaired.shtml

Accessibility myths and misconceptions

Awareness of web accessibility is increasing, slowly but surely. You can read about it on mainstream websites and in printed newspapers. Here in Sweden you can even read about web accessibility on the back of milk cartons. Accessibility getting more attention is excellent, but it’s very unfortunate that in many cases the information being spread is inaccurate and misleading.
Misconceptions about web accessibility are very common. What’s even worse is that it’s also common to see people trying to take advantage of the low knowledge of accessibility among those responsible for websites.
Full article at
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200505/accessibility_myths_and_misconceptions/

Beware the Automated Accessibility Tool Trap

By Trenton Moss

An automated accessibility tool is a piece of software that can test a Web page, or even an entire Website, for accessibility. Automated accessibility tools are useful because they can save you a huge amount of time. Don’t want to check images for alt text on each and every page on your Website? Run the site through an automated tester and it’ll do all the checking for you!

But are these tools a little too good to be true? I think so. Can you really test a Website for accessibility so easily? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding no. Numerous problems are associated with using automated tools alone to test a site’s accessibility.
Full article at
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/automated-accessibility-trap