Wanted!

I'm looking for a handful of people who'd be willing to help out testing the Accessify Fourm site before going live. If you've got some spare time and you'd like to help out please email me at nigel@accessifyforum.com.

Link Partnership between Macromedia Accessibility and AccessifyForum.com

Thanks to Bob Regan at Macromedia for agreeing to a link partnership between AccessifyForum.com and the Macromedia Accessibility Resource Site. Don't forget to email gone.live@accessifyforum.com to find out when the forums goes live.

Bob's Blog

If you haven't already seen it and Accessibility of Macromedia products interests you check out Bob Regan's blog.

AccessifyForum.com

Accessify Forum will be launching in the near future, where you will be able to discuss anything and everything related to Web Accessibility and get to know other people in the Accessibility community.

If you'd like to be informed when it goes live, send a blank email to gone.live@accessifyforum.com, you will only receive one email (when the site goes live) and your address will not be passed on to anyone else (promise).

If you have any comments about this please direct them to webmaster@accessifyforum.com.

EuroAccessibility Consortium

As usual I've not had a chance to read it yet but there's an article about the EuroAccessibility Consortium over at the RNIB:
RNIB EuroAccessibility Consortium Article

UK Disability Rights Commission Formal Investigation into Web Accessibility

There is a meeting to get an update on the above investigation on the 8^th of August in London.

If you are interested in attending then you should contact Steve Beesley at the DRC, the best place to find contact details is on the DRC Website.

New Accessible Macromedia Release

Macromedia have a new release to be announced today, Contribute Version 2.0. Unfortunately I haven't had time to try it as I'd hoped to but here's the low down I got from Bob Regan at Macromedia (Accessibility Product Manager). Once I've tried it out I'll post a link to the review here.

If you haven't seen Contribute before it's a tool for non-technical users to build web pages, it integrates with Dreamweaver templates and makes web page creation possible for people with no access to a Web designer, some templates come with the product and more are available to download. And reasonably priced at $99.

The interesting thing from an Accessibility point of view is that it has an "Enforce Accessibility" option. This doesn't change the look and feel of the product but does things like:

• Asking for alt text after adding an image,
• Using strong and em instead of b and i and
• Using relative font sizes.

Enforce accessibility is off by default. One thing that is on by default is asking for a table summary when a table is created. There's also a set of Accessible templates available that Bob created in 2001/2002 which will work with the product.

The product itself has been designed to work with screen readers so it also makes content creation itself accessible, feedback from users of version 1 (with special needs) has been taken into account during development.

The National Federation of the Blind (the American version of the RNIB) has been given a copy for each of it's chapters on request. Setup of the product can be achieved through a connection key (which can include turning on the Accessibility option) to simplify the process of distributing the product to content creators within an organization.

Well that's a quick rundown of my notes from my conversation with Bob, you can get (a lot) more details from the Contribute Site, if you don't see anything about version 2 yet then just check back later on in the day or tomorrow, although the information should be there today. I nearly forgot, it's also available for Mac (version 1 was not).

Related to Macromedia Accessibility, there is also an Interview with Bob Regan, not related to Contribute.

Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark available online

Whether or not you like the author's "witty" writing style, it cannot be denied that Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites is certainly to be regarded required reading for anybody involved in the field of web accessibility.

After hitting stores in October 2002, the entire contents of the book is now available online, broken into chapters, at the author's site. Happy reading...

Unconfirmed Information Relating to DDA Court Cases

I was told the other day that this has been going on for a while (RNIB pursuing cases with a view to going to court) but the legislation says sites must be given a chance to rectify the problem before going to court (understandably) and to date no case has made it to court because the sites have been rectified in time.

I would guess that this is simply continuing but the reporter has only just got wind of it. This seems fair to me as many site owners don't know that problems exist until they are told.

This information is unconfirmed.

RNIB brings UK's first action over site accessibility.

As spotted on New Media Age today (a friendly hello and thanks to Will Cox from Sheffield Hallam University for flagging it up).

The Royal National Institute of the Blind is bringing the UK's first case against companies under the Disability Discrimination Act for failing to make their Web sites accessible to people with visual impairments. The move, which comes during the European Year of Disability, is a watershed in the development of online services in this country.

Although the RNIB can't release details of its action, digital development officer Julie Howell confirmed it's supporting several individuals in discrimination claims against a number of companies. We've brought cases against a number of firms but I can't say what stage we're at, she said.

Howell said RNIB's procedures for tackling issues brought to its attention didn't automatically result in legal action, but the DDA had armed it with the power to support individuals in taking such action. Industry observers have been anticipating a DDA Web accessibility test case for some time and the RNIB, a leading campaigner on the issue, has made no secret of its willingness to be involved.

W3C, Web Standards and Accessibility

The slides for my presentation this morning are available for download and should be of interest to anyone interested in the W3C, XHTML, CSS or WAI/WCAG.

W3C, Web Standards and Accessibility Presentation

Thanks to all who attended for not snoring too loudly :). The next "live show" should be in september in Leeds, more information closer to the time.

One more thing, thanks to Bert Bos (W3C CSS Contact) for linking to my article.

Ian comments: If you like Nigel's writing, you may be interested to know that this site now includes his article XHTML Web Design for Beginners. It's not listed in the index of tutorials yet, but I thought a mention here would be good.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

A new working draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 was published on the 24^th of June, not had a chance to look at it yet but sure to be worth a glance.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

Ian comments: I recently attended a face-to-face WAI WCAG 2.0 Working Group meeting, and as a result had a good long trawl through them. There is still some work to be done on these guidelines, and also the supporting documents (e.g. techniques documents) - the key thing is that it is a working draft. The final version may change from this document - be aware. However, the general feeling is that having a broader 'core' level for people to achieve (with extended measures for those that want to make the effort) will be better than the current three levels - many site owners currently find that a simple failure to achieve Bobby AA (priority 2) means that they have no incentive to try to attain AAA level. After all, you cannot claim 'This site has A and AAA compliance, but not quite there on AA'. Version 2.0 of the guidelines will be good for addressing this.