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Apologies for anyone who was expecting a full run-down of all the accessibility panels that took place at this year’s South by Southwest. Quite simply, I did not make copious notes, but I will be collecting together all the accessibility-related posts I find on other people’s blogs over the coming days (feel free to add a comment for antying you find in the meantime). For those vaguely interested, here are my personal recollections of SXSW 2005 (not necessarily accessibility related, nor necessarily relevant to you, unless perhaps you know me personally or were at SXSW yourself).

The leading online resource for anyone interested in deafness, hearing loss and tinnitus is just a click away. After months of focus groups, research and user testing, RNID launched its new website on March 17.

Packed full of new features, and with a fresh, modern look, it is easier to navigate, fully inclusive and has a powerful new search engine to help you find what you’re looking for faster.

“Overall it will be a completely new experience for our users, comparable to the best websites out there,” says Website Manager Sara Ashton. “People have the same expectations for all websites and charities are not exempt from this.”

There is no doubt about it, the new RNID site is a huge improvement…although a few things still puzzle me. For instance: why can’t I find anywhere on the site what the initialism RNID actually stands for…is it “for the Deaf” or “of the Deaf”? Yes, I know…but the devil is in the detail.

Some people sit in the audience furiously typing away, blogging the presentations as they happen. Others sit back and let them get on with it. I’m in the latter category, so here are a few links to those people in the former category who can type a heck of a lot faster than me

• Joe Clark’s SXSW write-ups
• Matt May, Best Kung fu - Getting along with accessibility

More accessibility-related SXSW postings as I find them …

Developed by a senior design computer science student group at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, VIS is:

… an educational tool that can be used to inform computer users about what it is like to use a computer with a disability. When the program runs, it manipulates the images on the user’s screen so that it seems like the user has a visual impairment such as colorblindness or macular degeneration among others. The user will be able to pick which visual impairment to use and the severity of the impairment.

You can download VIS from the student group’s project site.

RNIB is compiling a report on how Digital Rights Management (DRM) can impede access to information for people with disabilities. We’re looking for your examples of how widely used DRM systems block access by blind or partially sighted people.

If you can help, please contact David Mann or Dan Pescod at Europcampaigns@rnib.org.uk.

While having a bit of a browse around today, I stumbled upon a report put together by 29 Digital entitled UK Banking Accessibility Review. I was particularly pleased to see that the report included Nationwide, because often these reports neglect to include building societies and focus only on the big banks (for those not sure what the difference is, here is Wikipedia’s low-down on building societies and Nationwide). I was even more pleased to see how well it fared:

Nationwide takes the "Top of the Class" award, while other well-performing
sites include NatWest, First Direct, Royal Bank of Scotland and Yorkshire.

Of our 19 sites, four (21%) have made the leap to CSS-only layout
(Barclays, Lloyds TSB, First Direct, Nationwide); this is encouraging,
as it is only in the last year or so that this "web standards" approach
to site design has gained in popularity.

As with previous tests, there are some good examples along with some very
bad examples in our group of websites. Many are easy to comprehend in a
text-only view - Abbey, Barclays, First Direct, Coventry, and in particular
Nationwide all work well

Of the rest Barclays, Cahoot, First Direct and Nationwide appear to be
using heading tags as intended.

I was pleased to see that after a year away, when my influence over matters of accessibility at Nationwide would naturally have weakened, the web site is still doing well. There’s always more that can be done (and I could list lots of improvements and changes if I had my way, before you start to pick holes that I already know are there!), but this does prove one thing at least: once the culture of web accessibility has been ingrained in a company, once it’s become part of the development and testing process, once it’s become just another thing that you do as part of your daily job, it’s very difficult to get things too badly wrong!

Anyway, self-promoting (kinda) pride ends here …

A report on Digital Media Europe gives a snapshot of the UK accessibility market and comes to the conclusion that there are just a few years’ worth of accessibility consultancy unless people/business start to get clobbered for failing DDA compliance matters:

The consultancy also reports that accessibility spending driven by legal concerns, with the researchers predicting the accessibility market has a limited shelf life of three years or so and that the accessibility market will be threatened if there are no high-profile prosecutions when companies fail to comply with the DDA. The analysts reckon that ongoing growth will be determined by litigations or the lack of them.

A quick reminder - I’ll be speaking at this year’s South By Southwest, strangely enough on the topic of Accessibility. If you are attending, and if you are not nursing the hangover from hell following one of the many social events that will be happening on the Saturday evening, it’d be great to see you.

I’m totally up to my neck in work right now, so I can’t really do this post the justice it deserves, so I’ll simply point you in the direction of a story published in yesterday’s ZDNet Uk: Local authorities failing on e-accessibility. Insert your own pithy comment here where you’d normally expect that from one of us lot. Thanks!

As sent in by Pete Rainger (and yes, sorry for not posting this earlier as originally promised…it slipped my mind):

As part of the Adult Dyslexia Organisations (ADO) forthcoming launch of their new “Dyslexia Friendly : User Friendly” Campaign, we are putting out a call for participation in a new research initiative.

The ADO has teamed up with Key2Access Ltd. to try to create a ‘community of research and collaboration’ for those involved in accessibility and Dyslexia (or other SpLDs). To do this we are calling for all those involved in research (both academic and practitioner based), whether in the past, present or aim to in the future, to join our online register (going online next month). Please download our brief questionnaire (in RTF format) and return it to research@adult-dyslexia.org.

If you are just interested in the initiative, or the area of research then you can join our low volume email list to keep you posted on the latest developments. Just send an email to us with your name and contact details and we will add you to the list.

Details of the Research Initiative

The research initiative will cover four main topic area (other suggestions welcome):

Topics:

• Web Accessibility for Dyslexia,
• E-learning Accessibility for Dyslexia,
• Interface Design (inc. Software) for Dyslexia,
• Print Accessibility for Dyslexia.

The initiatives aims will include:

• The development of an Accessibility & Dyslexia Research Community,
• An online Research Register of Researchers and Practitioners,
• An Interactive online Research Literature Review / Bibliography,
• The development of workshops, conferences and events to brings the community together to share experience, expertise and best practice.

Our long term aim will be the development of guidelines and best practice advice for each of the topic areas.