Latest Accessibility News on Accessify

I spotted an article that suggested the RNID’s web site had been redesigned, so over I went to take a look and then realised that it had not yet got the treatment. Re-reading the article I noticed that the site is not due for re-launch until the 17th March, but what they do have is a rather nice teaser. Now, there’s a set of ready-made presentation slides for the purposes of getting the accessibility message across to people with short attention spans!

Science fiction writer, Boing-Boing contributor and general gadget-freak Cory Doctorow has set his sights on Citibank for their new method of signing in to their Internet banking service. The new system avoids the use of a physical keyboard, instead opting for a virtual keyboard (described by Cory as a ‘toy’) that floats above the page content, forcing the use of a mouse to activate the virtual keys. You all know where this is going - how can this possibly work for blind users? How can it work for people with motor problems (and by that I don’t mean the car won’t start)?

Finally, this thing can’t possibly be usable by blind people or people with physical disabilities that make fine mouse-movements difficult. The fact that you need to use their toy keyboard every time you complete a transaction makes this doubly/triply obnoxious.

Read Cory’s full post here and use the comments facility below to have your say. Are you a Citibank Customer? Can you use the sign on tool with whatever assistive tools you normally rely on?

NILS has just released a tool for checking foreground and background colour combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. Determining “colour visibility” is based on algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley and Peter Firminger presented this comprehensive paper at the OZeWAI 2004 Conference:

The aim of this paper is to offer some ideas on how websites might more effectively meet the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties. The paper will look at three issues:

• How the presentation of page content can be modified to make it more accessible.
• Design of site navigation systems.
• Tailoring content to the needs of different audience groups.

Read the article over at webusability

When people think about accessibility of web content, there’s a tendency to concentrate on people with visual impairments. People with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties are often overlooked.

This article by Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley, and Peter Firminger, examines the types of problems visitors may encounter when using the web, with insightful and practical suggestions on how to develop websites that are inclusive for people with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties.

Read the article over at Juicy Studio.

It’s now easier than ever to test Web site accessibility. IBM Home Page Reader 3.04 - a new version of the popular talking Web browser - has arrived. Originally created to help users who are blind or have low vision access the Internet, Home Page Reader also gives Web developers and designers the tools they need to test the accessibility and usability of Web sites.

Download it today and experiment with Home Page Reader’s new functions, including:

• Ability to read accessible, tagged Adobe Reader 6.0 PDF documents and accessible Macromedia Flash Player 7 content.
• Inclusion of a desktop reader with keyboard navigation and speech output for a number of Microsoft Windows applications, including the Windows desktop and selected system applications such as:
  • Help
  • Control Panel
  • Notepad
  • Media Player
  • Settings
  • Start Menu
  • Taskbar
  • Windows Explorer
  • WordPad
• Improved features for users with low vision, including the highlighting of controls and images in the Graphics view as they are spoken and simple page magnification using either the Zoom setting within Home Page Reader or the Magnifier tool in Windows.
• Enhancements in accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Specifications and Guidelines that can help Web developers increase accessibility of their pages
  • W3C HTML 4.01, WCAG 1.0 and UAAG 1.0
• Provision of a Developer’s Help document that outlines helpful hints, tips and techniques for Web developers who use Home Page Reader to test their Web sites for accessibility. The document also offers suggestions for fixing accessibility flaws.

This document indicates which toolbar function (if any) is helpful in assessing conformance to the WCAG 1.0 Checkpoints.

The toolbar contains many functions for examining discrete aspects of a web page’s content and code. These can be used as an aid for manual checking of many of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’ Checkpoints. None of the toolbar functions listed will tell you whether a page conforms to a particular checkpoint, but they will help you in assessing conformance.

Date: Thursday 24 February, 2005
Location: Wellington New Zealand

Jonathan is blind and has in the past provided web accessibility advice to a range of Government and private agencies. He will be demonstrating how web accessibility doesn’t mean that web designers have to sacrifice innovation or creativity. He will also be demonstrating the kind of technology blind people are using today to surf the web, showing just what a difference an accessible web site can make to a blind person’s independence.

Matt May of Bestkungfu and a little group called the W3C has written an article for Digital Web called Accessibility From The Ground Up. It’s a ‘primer for the web designer’ (his words, not mine) that runs through the various things that designers need to get up to speed on. I have to agree with Matt’s comment here:

The hardest part of Web accessibility, in my opinion, is the stuff between the angle brackets. You get your content from a dozen different sources, often with a dozen different voices. Some of it, like legal text, is irreducible. Changing it even slightly could alter it dramatically, if you were even allowed to do so.

So true. Once you have a basic understanding of how to make a page accessible it becomes second nature, just something you do without thinking (a state of mind some would describe as being ‘unconsciously competent’ … yes, I’ve been on a training course!). Cutting out legal text and marketing nonsense, now there’s the real challenge!

The article Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screen Readers by Mary Frances Theofanos from the US National Cancer Institute and usability consultant Janice Redish (we mentioned it back in November) is now also available in HTML format.