Latest Accessibility News on Accessify

Are you a structural engineer?

I spotted this on WebAim’s discussion list and thought it perfectly captured what it is to be a designer of an accessible web site:

“… In other words, one designs a page first to maintain a specific informational document structure across different platforms, visual, and non-visual, and then somehow, one adds the gloss of presentation, (visual, aural, text) afterwards. This is not necessarily trival, because this structural view of information tends to be the opposite of the way most people natually think when designing a web page, and is a habit that may be difficult to learn. A designer of accessible Web pages needs to think like a structural engineer, rather than like an interior decorator and landscaper.”
Terence de Giere, http://www.degiere.com/

UK Government to get tough over Web accessibility

Found in New Media Age’s online magazine, newmediazero, is this story about the UK government’s latest plans to enforce web accessibility:

“The Government is preparing to launch the UK’s first legal crackdown on companies that fail to make their Web sites accessible to blind or partially-sighted Internet users.

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) will begin a formal investigation into online service providers next month, which could produce the country’s first test case of disability law applied to the Web.

The government body’s legal team is currently formulating its strategy and is weighing up whether its investigation should focus on individual companies or particular industry sectors.

If the investigation concludes that certain Web sites breach the 1999 Disability Discrimination Act, the Commission’s statutory powers allow it to serve notices ordering them to cease operation.”

The story in full can be found here, although you may have to register on the site to view this content.

Related links

• Disability Rights Commission
• Disability Discrimination Act
• RNIB

How accessible is Safari?

There’s a new article added to this site today - a piece that looks at Apple’s new browser offering, Safari - just how how good is its support for web accessibility? This is one that I’d appreciate feedback on!

Accessible Mapping Tools

Do you often create online maps and then have difficulties converting into an accessible format? According to a report in Yahoo Finance, Corda technologies may be able to help. The company is claiming Section 508 compliance in the maps produced using OptiMap 5, as this quote shows:

One of the most notable aspects of OptiMap is that for Federal Government agencies and those doing business with federal customers, OptiMap charts are fully Section 508 compliant, providing the ability to have the full descriptive text of the map available to the visually impaired through an audible screen reader. OptiMap is the first and currently the only product to make online maps fully accessible for the visually impaired.

Opera 7 Final Released

After being out on beta for a while now, Opera 7 has now been released in 42 different languages as a finished product. The browser promises better standards support and a new navigation method called ‘Spatial Navigation’ - trialled in their interactive TV browsers, it allows users to move left,right, up and down across the page using the arrow keys rather than simply following the defined tabbing order.

Online Web Accessibility Course

The Illinois Center for Instruction Technology Accessibility (CITA) is offering an online course covering accessible web design. Course title is: Designing Universally Accessible WWW Resources for People with Disabilities. The course lasts just under three months and looks pretty thorough.

• How participation works
• Lectures on offer
• Required software materials for course

The University of Washington’s DO-IT program have put together a series of videos, some covering the topic of accessibility. Of particular interest are Accessible Web Design and Computers and People with Mobility Impairments.

An invitation from the Wasp

“Dear Ian,

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) would like to invite you to become part
of the WaSP team. As you likely know, we are an all-volunteer
organization, and we realize your time is valuable. We are greatly
interested in your participation because you’ve shown an interest and
dedication to the subject of Web Standards.”

OK, so it was a standard letter - but only for a handful of invitees - so I’m honoured to be invited to take part. Not sure what it will involve as yet, but it’s nice to be asked all the same. Accessify will still be updated on a regular basis folks. More news as I get it …

Checky here

One for all you developers out there. If you are in the habit of using favelets to check for accessibility or to validate your HTML/XHTML and so on, you will probably be interested to hear about Checky - a validator plug-in for Mozilla. I have installed it myself and found it to be .very handy.

Here are some further screenshots. It will validate using 18 different services, and more are promised soon.

New tutorial on Accessify

There’s a new article on this site: Checking your pages for accessibility with Opera. Like the title says, this tutorial demonstrates how you can use just a humble browser to see how well your web pages hold up to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. As ever, feedback is appreciated.