Articles>Accessibility

Be Kind to the Color Blind

Using color and color alone as a visual cue is appealing because it’s usually an aesthetically pleasing and a minimalist design technique. Calls to action and visual cues are critical to interface designers because users, especially on the web, have limited patience and are looking to process information and make decisions quickly. Since the brain recognizes and forms an emotional bond with colors almost immediately, colors are a natural choice for visual cues. Unfortunately, it’s easy to alienate or confuse some of your users when some of those aesthetically pleasing colors look very similar. To point out a few interfaces that use hard to differentiate colors as visual cues, here are a few examples that have given me some trouble.

Accessibility—Good Business, Best Practice

Roberts and Pappas introduce their new column on accessibility by showcasing how accessibility can be a good business practice and increase a company’s bottom line.

Bringing Gaming to the Disabled

To a huge number of gamers and would-be gamers, though, even the most sensible and well-laid-out controller scheme is unplayable. For them, accessibility and interface issues make gaming at best an incomplete experience and at worst a total impossibility.

HTML 5 and Accessibility

Probably the most worrying thing about the HTML Working Group is the lack of respect for differing opinions that some working group members have. The apparent disinterest in accessibility is another troublesome factor.

HTML 5, Microformats and Testing Accessibility

Testing is vital, particularly at the border of accessibility theory and practice. I wonder, for example, if tabindex and accesskey would have made it to the HTML4 spec if there had been full testing with assistive technology users? What I really want to know from the HTML5 people is who they think is going to do this research that will provide the evidence that their gang requires before useful attributes are restored to the specification.

VoiceOver and Safari: Screen Reading on the Mac

One of the most interesting features of Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, the newest version of Apple's operating system, is VoiceOver, a built-in screen reader. Up until now, people needing a screen reader have been more or less forced to use Windows because of the lack of decent screen reader software for the Mac, but now it's built right into the Mac OS.

HTML 5 and the Summary Attribute

As I wrote in Help screen reader users by giving data tables a summary, the summary attribute on the table element can be used to provide information that helps non-sighted users understand data tables. The current draft of HTML 5 requires that validators display a warning if they encounter a summary attribute, since it is now an 'obsolete but conforming feature.'

Captioning Tools

Before looking at tools, please look at the DMCP Captioning Key to get familiar with captioning standards.

Read-Aloud PDFs

Are you aware that PDF documents are readable by your computer? You can listen to any PDF instead of reading it!

Creating Accessible Tabular Data Tables: A Help Authoring Guide

This Fast Track tutorial demonstrates and employs web standards and accessibility methods for tabular data table creation. It is presented free of charge to the community as a help authoring, technical writing and web design guide.

Ten Ways To Make Your XHTML Site Accessible Using Web Standards

Let’s take a look at 10 ways to improve the accessibility of your XHTML website by making it standards-compliant. We’ll go the extra mile and include criteria that fall beyond the standards set by the W3C but which you should follow to make your website more accessible. Each section lists the criteria you need to meet, explains why you need to meet them and gives examples of what you should and shouldn’t do.

Baby Boomers May Drive Accessibility

The millions in America who navigate the world with a physical disability are poised to receive a lot of company over the next 20 years. The Baby Boomer generation is about to flood the population and promises to create a future in which centenarians are not at all unusual. With increased longevity comes more frequent occurrence of disabilities, thus demanding increased attention to making accessible technology more widely available.

Designing for "Mature" Users

According to a study by the Annenberg School at USC, American Internet users include: 75% of adults aged 56-65 and 41% of adults over 66. If we want to design for the bulk of our users, we had best consider the more mature user groups.

Can Two Established Information Models Explain the Information Behaviour of Visually Impaired People Seeking Health and Social Care Information?

This study provides a new and valuable insight into the information behaviour of visually impaired people, as well as testing the applicability of a specific and generic information model to the information behaviour of visually impaired people seeking health and social care information.

Inclusive Design, Part 2

Accessibility is not something to be left to specialists hired to clean up our mess at the end. It should be a priority of the entire development team from the beginning. Yes, companies should definitely have accessibility people on-board, but they should act as much as educators and coaches as designers. Everyone on the development team must be aware of and responsive to the full spectrum of identified users if your product is to sell to the widest possible audience. That’s the only way to achieve inclusive design.

Inclusive Design, Part 1

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be disabled? Well, you better start thinking about it! As my collegue Gregg Vanderheiden is fond of pointing out, 'We all will have disabilities eventually, unless we die first.'

From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability

This article asserts that current approaches to enhance the accessibility of Web resources fail to provide a solid foundation for the development of a robust and future-proofed framework. In particular, they fail to take advantage of new technologies and technological practices. The article introduces a framework for Web adaptability, which encourages the development of Web-based services that can be resilient to the diversity of uses of such services, the target audience, available resources, technical innovations, organisational policies and relevant definitions of 'accessibility'. Method The article refers to a series of author-focussed approaches to accessibility through which the authors and others have struggled to find ways to promote accessibility for people with disabilities. These approaches depend upon the resource author's determination of the anticipated users' needs and their provision.

WebAIM: Using NVDA to Evaluate Web Accessibility

This article is designed to help users who are new to NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) - external link learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional NVDA user. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It supports over 20 languages and can run on any computer entirely from a USB drive with no installation.

Screen Reader Survey Results

WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users. With over 1100 responses, this survey provides great insight into the demographics and preferences of screen reader users.

Designing for Screen Reader Compatibility

Techniques that work for one screen reader almost always work in other screen readers. In some cases, one of the screen readers has capabilities that the others do not have, or handles some types of content better than the other screen readers. Still, developers are almost always better off when they focus on accessibility standards and generally-accepted accessibility techniques than when they focus on screen reader differences.

Adopting WCAG 2

It is six months since the release of WCAG 2.0 and I thought it might be interesting to see how extensively it has been adopted as a bench mark for determining web content accessibility. Over this time, I have felt that the rate of adoption has been relatively slow and the number of countries and other regulatory authorities now using WCAG 2 is lower than I expected.

Usability Spotter #5: HP Laptop Touch Pads with Scroll Zones- Absence of Tactile Cue

Summary The issue with HP laptops that have a touch pad with a scroll zone contained it (as shown in image A) is that they do not provide a tactile cue for the user to help interpret what section of the touch pad the finger is positioned at. In the absence of a tactile cue, it is difficult for the user to determine whether the finger is on touch pad or the scroll zone without looking at it, resulting in the accidental scrolling on the screen when actually the user simply wants to move the cursor. The issue and multiple solutions are discussed ahead.

New Accessibility Guidelines A "Welcomed Update"

The World Wide Web Consortium recently approved new accessibility guidelines. Passed in December 2008, the new "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" is now the official recommendation for web accessibility for the disabled. This new WCAG 2.0 document, a welcomed update, replaces the WCAG 1.0 W3C recommendation of 1999. This article is part one in a series discussing the impact of WCAG 2.0 on your website.

New Accessibility Guidelines Part II: Operability

The concept behind website operability is simple: Can everybody use the tools and mechanisms required to operate your website? Operability may seem easy, but it can be very challenging. Every control, every link, and every button on your site is a potential point of failure for operability. Without appropriate consideration for the disabled, you run the risk that disabled users will be unable to access your site.

New Accessibility Guidelines Part III: Understandability

The understandability of text is crucial to web accessibility. At broad levels, this means specifying text languages, explaining the meanings of jargon or idioms, and expanding abbreviations to clarify text. It's not just text that can present a barrier to accessibility, however. A lack of organizational predictability or proper error management can greatly decrease the accessibility of any website.

New Accessibility Guidelines Part IV: Robustness

The fourth principle of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines requires new web documents to be “robust.” Robustness, future-proofing, user-agent independence, accessibility-supported: All are terms that suggest the same basic idea that your documents should follow standard, supported models for web document types. In many ways, this is the simplest and most testable requirement of the WCAG, but the details can be quite complicated.

Captivate Accessibility Hints

Adobe’s Captivate application allows one to create Flash based interactive demos and presentations. PowerPoint materials can also be converted in Flash using Captivate. Captivate has a number of accessibility features in version 3 and 4.

2009 Brings ADA Changes

The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) took effect on January 1, 2009. The ADAAA, which was signed by President Bush on September 25, 2008, is intended to restore Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provisions that had been eroded by a series of Supreme Court decisions.

Back To Basics: How Poor Usability Effects Accessibility

In recent user testing with a range of participants including Visually Impaired (VIP) and Blind users we found that the majority of problems were common across all groups. However the effect of poor usability is more severe for users with visual disabilities. Surprisingly all of the issues are very familiar and are easy to fix so we thought we’d revisit some of the basics of accessible web design.

Effective Alt Text

It is perfectly possible to diligently apply alt text to every image on a site and create a result that is completely useless. Unless the alt text effectively conveys the information the image displays, it will be ineffective.

Accessibility and Hierarchies of Impairment

There is no doubt that, in pro-disabled accessibility discourse, certain groups are privileged above others. Whilst there is increasing sensitivity to this in Computer Science, with developers and researchers working to close the distance, this reasons for this divide are under-theorised within ICT discourse.

Weer Not Bad Spelerz

Whether you are a new caption viewer or someone who has been using captions for many years, as you watch captioning, the thought may cross your mind that the captioner either (a) is from a foreign country and has little facility in spelling or (b) is a lazy typist who doesn't want to check their spelling some of the time. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Refreshable Braille and the Web

Many people have not had the opportunity to see someone use a refreshable Braille device to access the web. I recently videoed Bruce Maguire describing how he uses the Internet with a refreshable Braille display. He also demonstrates finding a book on the Amazon site. Transcript of the video is at the end of this document.

Pitfalls of Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Automated web accessibility evaluation tools are hard to trust, understand and only provides feedback on a small amount of factors that influence accessibility. Also, a unified web evaluation methodology should be adopted to provide consistent results across tools.

CAPTCHAs, CAPTCHAs Everywhere

My business and passion is accessibility and there is obviously a huge problem with these visual CAPTCHAs. If you used alt-text on this image, alt="e3TJ6Jdp", that would be fine and very welcome for blind visitors. It would also be welcome for any computer system seeking to sign up for lots of emails. Using alt-text on the image does not solve the problem! The visual image CAPTCHA is fundamentally inaccessible. For the example above, this means very simply that Yahoo excludes people who are blind (or vision impaired) from signing up for Yahoo email accounts.

Evaluating Existing Audio CAPTCHAs and an Interface Optimized for Non-Visual Use

Audio CAPTCHAs were introduced as an accessible alternative for those unable to use the more common visual CAPTCHAs, but anecdotal accounts have suggested that they may be more difficult to solve. This paper demonstrates in a large study of more than 150 participants that existing audio CAPTCHAs are clearly more difficult and time-consuming to complete as compared to visual CAPTCHAs for both blind and sighted users. In order to address this concern, we developed and evaluated a new interface for solving CAPTCHAs optimized for non-visual use that can be added in-place to existing audio CAPTCHAs. In a subsequent study, the optimized interface increased the success rate of blind participants by 59% on audio CAPTCHAs, illustrating a broadly applicable principle of accessible design: the most usable audio interfaces are often not direct translations of existing visual interfaces.

Accessibility to the Face

Empathy is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have an ability to imagine things the way that others see them and how it makes them feel. We don’t even have to have a disability ourselves. Accessibility is NOT a checklist. Accessibility is about usability. Accessibility is a paradigm shift. Accessibility is a personal issue.

Accessible HTML/XHTML Forms

Forms are often the most tricky aspect of web development for beginners to get their head around, largely because it means stepping out of the comfort zone of one-way information - no longer are you simply presenting information at the person viewing your site, now you are asking for input, for feedback that you have to process in some way. And just as it may be difficult for HTML beginners to understand just how they handle form data, so is it difficult to understand some of the issues relating to accessibility.

Current Browsers and the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

Any effort on the part of web authors to add accessibility features is rendered useless if browsers and assistive technologies don’t take advantage of them. User agent developers need to ensure that their products support these features and, most crucially, make them available to users in an accessible and obvious manner. What follows is a quick run-down of most of UAAG’s guidelines and checkpoints, annotated with comments, suggestions, personal gripes about current levels of implementation, and wishlists for future browser versions.

The Struggle for Book Access: Amazon

The Kindle2 is a hot topic in the disability field right now. Many print-disabled people (people who are blind, severely dyslexic or a have a physical disability that keeps them from reading regular print books) see electronic books as a dream come true. But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing.

Usable Accessibility: Making Web Sites Work Well for People with Disabilities

When people talk about both usability and accessibility, it is often to point out how they differ. Accessibility often gets pigeon-holed as simply making sure there are no barriers to access for screen readers or other assistive technology, without regard to usability, while usability usually targets everyone who uses a site or product, without considering people who have disabilities. In fact, the concept of usability often seems to exclude people with disabilities, as though just access is all they are entitled to. What about creating a good user experience for people with disabilities—going beyond making a Web site merely accessible to make it truly usable for them?

AJAX Aids Accessibility?

Yes, if you do it right, using Ajax techniques can improve accessibility. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Ajax is like most techniques and technologies on the web—they are what you make of them.

Ten Things You Should Know About WCAG 2.0

With the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines being made a Candidate Recommendation on 30th April 2008, many companies are starting to prepare for the arrival of the new Accessibility Guideline. What exactly is different though? User Vision's Mark Palmer takes you through some key things you should know about the document commonly known as WCAG 2.0.

WCAG 2.0 Checklist

A simple checklist that presents the principles and techniques of WCAG 2.0 in a user-friendly, understandable format. The language has been significantly changed and simplified from the official WCAG 2.0 specification to make it more easily tested and verified for web pages.

Are Accessibility Statements Useful?

An accessibility statement provides website visitors with information on how to utilize any accessibility features implemented, together with known barriers and how to overcome them. This information is usually presented on a dedicated page within the website. This article will look at the benefits of providing an accessibility statement together with common problems, before evaluating whether accessibility statements are useful.

New Accessibility Features in Internet Explorer 8

Hi, my name is JP Gonzalez-Castellan and I’m the Accessibility Program Manager for IE8. The IE team has been working towards making IE8 the most accessible browser possible, and we wanted to detail some of the work we’ve done toward this end. In this post I will provide you with some background on Accessibility, I’ll cover new UI features (Caret Browsing, Find on Page, Adaptive Zoom, High DPI, etc) and also platform features (support for ARIA, support for IAccessibleEx, and support for additional WinEvents) that improve the Accessibility of the browser.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

A Personal Reflection on the WCAG 2.0 Publication

Let's work together as a community to make WCAG 2.0 a unifying force for web accessibility. There are so many websites and exciting new web applications being created today with accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some people with disabilities to use them. Let's change that, with WCAG 2.0.

Accessing Information: Not Everyone Does it the Same Way

As some in our profession have come to realize, social media and use of the Web in general have changed (and are still changing) the way in which people access and use information.

Impairment and Design

We are all impaired to some amount. I realized this a few years ago as a musician, moving heavy amplifiers to gigs. Those little ramps that had been required by law (at least here in Australia) for wheelchairs were my saving grace.. instead of lifting the hefty equipment I could roll it into the building. It probably saved me more than once from back injury. And yet, there would be no way the institutions would have put in those ramps for my convenience.

This is How the Web Gets Regulated

As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark.

Serving Citizens’ Needs: Minimising Online Hurdles to Accessing Government Information

With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Is merely having a website enough, or are there certain usability considerations site creators must keep in mind to assure efficient public access to online materials? This project looked at typical people's ability to locate various types of content online, in particular, their ability to find tax forms on the web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways, and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, two common sources of confusion in users' online experiences with locating tax forms online are distinguished: (1) URL confusion and (2) page design layout. Ways are also suggested to decrease these two sources of frustration, yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.

Moving Towards Accessible Development

Below is a bit of an accessibility round up of a few useful tools, articles, sites, and informative podcasts about the topic that may help inform/convince you about the importance of accessibility.

Analysis Phase

It is most effective and efficient to incorporate accessibility from the very beginning of a project. When accessibility is only addressed late in product design, it can be very costly to make required design changes. Incorporating accessibility early in the project increases the potential positive design impact, and decreases the time and money required to design accessible products. This chapter provides information on setting usability goals, user analysis, workflow analysis and understanding accessibility issues.

Build Accessible Online Forms

Ask anyone who has had to fix a Website that's littered with accessibility howlers, and top-most in their list of problems encountered will be forms, closely followed by tables. These two topics always seem to present the most difficulties, but they needn't be a problem. For the most part, forms are a problem because the extra accessibility tags are simply not known to the Web designer -- after all, it looks right, it seems to work... what's the problem? Only by switching off the monitor and using a screen-reader can our oblivious Web developer understand the issues.

Be a White Hat SEO for Your Intranet: It's Good for Accessibility

The SEOs with white hats conduct legitimate optimising of web pages to make the site come up appropriately in the Search Engine Results Pages (also called SERPs). The back hat SEOs implement tricks to appear high in the results pages even if the web site is not necessarily relevant. The range of tricks is astonishing. But most of the techniques used by white hat SEOs were similar if not identical to the guidelines given by accessibility experts.

Accessibility in User-Centered Design

A brief introduction, with linked resources, for those unfamiliar with accessibility and/or user-centred design.

Accessibility Humanized

Most web developers act in blindness when they design accessible websites, since they know next to nothing about disabled people and the technology they use. Accessibility guidelines and validation tools doesn't provide this insight. Accessibility should rather be approached from a user centred perspective.

Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design

The Web is providing unprecedented access to information and interaction for people with disabilities. It provides opportunities to participate in society in ways otherwise not available. With accessible websites, people with disabilities can do ordinary things: children can learn, teenagers can flirt, adults can make a living, seniors can read about their grandchildren, and so on. With the Web, people with disabilities can do more things themselves, without having to rely on others.

Another –ability: Accessibility Primer for Usability Specialists

This paper discusses in depth the relationship between accessibility and usability in product design. It presents a definition of accessibility and introduces the concept of ‘usable accessibility.’

Appropriate Use of Alternative Text

Adding alternative text for images is the first principle of web accessibility. It is also one of the most difficult to properly implement. The web is replete with images that have missing, incorrect, or poor alternative text. Like many things in web accessibility, determining appropriate, equivalent, alternative text is often a matter of personal interpretation. Through the use of examples, this article will present our experienced interpretation of appropriate use of alternative text.

An Eight-Step Implementation Model

The inaccessibility of web content can have a significant impact on the lives of individuals with disabilities. Many people without disabilities are ignorant of the importance of the issue to those who are directly affected. They are also often ignorant of the tremendous benefit that accessible web content can be. Accessible web sites offer independence to individuals with disabilities that would otherwise not have it.

Links and Hypertext: An Introduction to Links and Hypertext

Some types of links are more accessible than others, and some types of links are completely inaccessible to people with certain types of disabilities. Because links are so basic to the functionality of web content, inaccessible links are one of the most severe barriers to overall accessibility.

Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility

This article is designed to help users who are new to JAWS learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional JAWS user.

Testování Přístupnosti Webových Stránek se Screenreaderem JAWS

Tento článek je českou verzí článku Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility. V textu jsou zmiňovány prvky stránky, které jsou součástí struktury webu WebAIM.org a nemusí se vyskytovat na stránce s touto verzí.

Usando o Jaws Para Testar Acessibilidade

Este artigo destina-se a ensinar aos usuários não familiarizados com o JAWS os procedimentos básicos necessários a avaliar a acessibilidade do conteúdo web e servir como uma espécie de guia de referência para o usuário ocasional deste programa.

Web Accessibility podGuide

The web accessibility podGuide is an iPod-ready version of the current web-related accessibility standards, including: Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 1.0); User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG 1.0); Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0); Section 508 standards for web, software, multimedia and related accessibility.

How to Meet WCAG 2.0

A customizable quick reference to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 requirements (success criteria) and techniques.

A Quick and Dirty Introduction to Accessibility

A presentation providing an overview of accessibility that discusses disabilities that affect use of the web, devices and technologies used by disabled users.

LD Web

LD Web is a website aimed at making the Internet a better place for people with learning disabilities. LD Web develops guidelines and practical "how to" techniques to help web designers understand this underserviced community. LD Web is also meant to be an open discussion forum for dialogue, questions, and experiences in dealing with learning disabilities on the Web.

Designing Usable Sites for Children and Teens

It is often difficult for an adult designer to accurately remember what it is like to be 10 years old, and so it is important to turn to research conducted with children and teens to get a sense of their preferences.

Usability of Websites for Teenagers

When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features.

Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children

Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.

Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility

Most of the time, the primary focus of information about accessibility has to do with making non-text information available as text. Captioning and audio description for video, transcriptions for audio, simple text alternatives for static images. But what about the content itself?

Web Design for Dyslexic Users

How should a website homepage be created so that people with dyslexia can get the most out of the page?

Adobe Acrobat and PDF

After HTML, PDF (Portable Document Format) files are probably the most common files on the Web. PDF is usually used when a file needs to appear or print a certain way, regardless of the browser or technology. PDF files can be made accessible to people with disabilities, although usually with more difficulty than with HTML. A key part of this process involves creating tags that make a document more accessible to screen reader users.

On Scalable Text

In order to provide scalable text, make textual information text (rather than images), and use relative text sizes (rather than absolute). Scalable text is important for people with low vision. The basics of providing scalable text are very simple. However, strict design requests can pose challenges.

How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers

So you have a blog, and you're worried that it might not be accessible to people with disabilities? Don't worry! A few simple changes can increase your blog's potential readership.

Color Universal Design (CUD): How to Make Figures and Presentations That are Friendly to Colorblind People

There are always colorblind people among the audience and readers. There should be more than ten colorblinds in a room with 250 people (50% male and 50% female). There is a good chance that the paper you submit may go to colorblind reviewers. Supposing that your paper will be reviewed by three white males (which is not unlikely considering the current population in science), the probability that at least one of them is colorblind is whopping 22%!

Designing Web Content for People with Learning Disabilities

We need to design sites to include as many people as possible so that we have a fairer world. We need accessibility to bridge differences and integrate more people into society. If someone who could understand Web content is unable to because of the design choices of the Web author, then that Web content is not as accessible as it could be - even if it can be used by all types of physically disabled users.

Designing Pages Accessible to Limited Textual Comprehension Users

Little has been written or done to advance the cause of web users with cognitive disabilities -- users who may actually require the use of graphics in order to make sense of a web site. For purposes of this document, we will use the term "Limited Textual Comprehension" to refer to anyone, disabled or not, who is unable to understand a web page -- and thus cannot access the information contained within in it -- due to the textual content of the page.

How to Avoid Screen Reader 'Noise Pollution'

Surely there can't be a skill to writing ALT text for images? You just pop a description in there and you're good to go, right? Well, kind of. Sure, it's not rocket science, but there are a few guidelines you need to follow.

Demonstration of the LONGDESC Attribute and the 'd' Link

When images are provided to illustrate complex ideas, the same information MUST also be provided in an accessible form.

CSS in Action: Invisible Content Just for Screen Reader Users

Most of the techniques for making web content accessible to screen readers are invisible to visual users. Alternative (alt) text, table header tags, table summaries, and form tags are examples of techniques that make a big difference for screen reader users, but which have little or no impact on the visual appearance of the web content. Every once in a while, though, web designers confront situations in which the addition of accessible markup does have an impact on the visual layout. In some cases, this visual impact can decrease the usability of the content for visual users. In other cases, designers simply want to provide a more pleasing layout or appearance that would be compromised by including all of the text in a semantically correct format.

A More Accessible Map

Most online mapping applications do not address issues of web accessibility. For a visually impaired web user, these highly visual maps are essentially useless. Is there a way to display text-based data on a map, keeping it accessible, useful and visually attractive? Yes: using an accessible CSS-based map in which the underlying map data is separated from the visual layout.

A Dyslexic Perspective on e-Content Accessibility

This paper gives the web developer an insight into the issues of web accessibility for users with dyslexia (and/or other specific learning difficulties). It covers the four main areas of accessibility: presentation, content, structure and navigation.

Accessible Folksonomies

I’ve been thinking about one particular artifact of the folksonomy phenomenon — the folksonomy menu that serves as a sort of buzz index providing users with a quick visualization of the most popular tags (technically I think it’s called a weighted list). Popular tags are displayed in a larger font and it’s relatively easy to identify hot topics at a glance. This visual representation of the popularity of any given tag is undeniably cool. However, once the coolness factor wears off it becomes fairly obvious that these menus are also not very accessible.

Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview

There are initial costs for organizations implementing Web accessibility; however, the initial costs are often offset by a full return on investment. In order to be willing to invest the initial costs, many organizations need to understand the social, technical, and financial benefits of Web accessibility and the expectations of the returns throughout the organization.

Introduction to Web Accessibility

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.

Ten Accessibility Blunders of the Big Players

More and more countries have passed laws stating that Websites must be accessible to blind and disabled people. With this kind of legal pressure, and the many benefits of accessibility, the big players on the Web must surely have accessible Websites, right?

Ten Reasons Clients Don't Care About Accessibility

Working as an accessibility consultant in an IT company is a very frustrating job right now. Highly publicized lawsuits and deep-rooted accessibility myths leave us with a lot to explain when the final product does not really help visitors. Our clients simply don’t care about accessibility as much as we’d like them to, and there are several reasons for that.

Accessibility as Part of The Search Engine Marketing Strategy

In traditional marketing you're looking to define your targeted audience for your business or organisation. In Internet marketing things work in the same way. Unfortunately, with the growing popularity of the Internet in the past years and with the growing number of people building sites, a certain part of the online audience has been overlooked.

Accessibility Is Just Another Language

Although typically we think of accessibility in terms of visual, hearing, dexterity, cognitive disabilities and so on, this concept of disability is very limiting in terms of the need for accessible technology. More than 50 million Americans have some sort of disability, and the numbers are increasing as the population ages. Tens of millions of people in the European Union (EU) and half a million worldwide have a disability. Disability knows no boundaries, languages or borders.

Accessibility Issues Make a Difference

You often read advice from industry experts along the lines of "using tags as they were meant to be used" and limiting your use of advanced programming techniques in order to make your site accessible.

Accessibility Tips for Website Construction

This paper provides ten key tips to help improve the accessibility of any website, or intranet. It's not intended to be an introduction to web accessibility.

Accessible By Design

The demand for accessible sites is growing, but web workers, like you, are often unclear how to make sites more accessible. Designing an accessible site isn't necessarily harder, but it involves unique limitations that make you approach design from a different perspective.

Assessing Assessments: The Inequality of Electronic Testing

Computer and Internet based tests are used for a variety of purposes. From entering education or employment, to improving basic learning, people everywhere are taking electronically formatted tests. With the advancement of testing from traditional paper-based tests to technologically advanced electronic tests, people reap the benefits of easier access to tests, faster response times, and greater reliability and validity of tests. However, persons with disabilities are being left out of the picture and out of many typically-administered tests.

Attitudes to Web Accessibility

During the summer of 2003, we ran an online questionnaire, conducted interviews and carried out a literature review on Web accessibility. One hundred and seventeen respondents participated and they included designers, information officers and accessibility advocates. This initial set of results are intended to encourage debate on the subject.

The Benefits of an Accessible Website, Part 1: Increase in Reach

Some organisations are making accessibility improvements to their websites, but many are seemingly not making the accessibility adjustments. Disabled people don't access their website, they say, so why should they care?

The Benefits of an Accessible Website, Part 2: The Business Case

Building a Barrier-Free Web

Perhaps you're not legally required to make your site friendly to disabled users, but it's still good business.

Captcha Usability Revisited: Google Inaccessible to Blind People

An online petition is being circulated to all Internet users for the purpose of collecting signatures showing support for Google to make its word verification scheme accessible to the blind and visually impaired.

Constructing a POUR Website - Putting People at the Center of the Process

Web developers can create Web sites that are possible for people with disabilities to access, but only with great difficulty. The technical standards are important, but they may be insufficient on their own. Developers need to learn when and how to go beyond the technical standards when necessary.

Developing and Publicising a Workable Accessibility Strategy

This article looks at the increasing need for developers of institutional and educational websites to develop and follow a strategy for ensuring optimal accessibility of online content. In particular the need is stressed for careful thought about the aims of such a strategy, and to ensure that the strategy meets a balance between ambition, legal responsibility and equitable access to learning and teaching. As an example, the need for a well written public online accessibility statement is discussed, not only as a demonstration of awareness and proactivity, but also as an important factor in its own right in optimising access.

Essential Components of Web Accessibility

This document shows how Web accessibility depends on several components working together and how improvements in specific components could substantially improve Web accessibility. It also shows how the WAI guidelines address these components.

How Will the New Disability Standards for Education Affect What Universities Do on the Web?

On August 18, 2005 new Disability Standards for Education came into effect in Australia. Questions have been raised about how they may impact on the way universities publish resources on the web. In this article, I provide an overview of the new Standards, their general impact, and conclude that if organisations are already following the advice of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (on how to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 in relation to the web), the introduction of the Standards should make no appreciable difference.

Inaccessible Website Demo

When people consider disability and web use they often only think of blind people. But of course there are many types of disability which need to be considered when designing web pages. In this demonstration we try to give you a flavour of the kind of difficulties a range of disabled visitors can face.

Innovative Design Inspired by Accessibility

To design innovative Web applications that create opportunities rather than barriers, study the variety of characteristics of people, situations, and devices in your audience--it will give you new perspective from which to approach your design.

Keys to Access: Accessibility Conformance in VET

In this research, we aimed to investigate what VET training providers have achieved in terms of accessibility conformance; to reveal and understand the obstacles that may be blocking conformance and suggest strategies that will speed conformance.

The Importance of Procurement in Accessibility Policy

Most policies in education focus exclusively on the practices of in-house Web development professionals. Few institutions are looking at the Web content and Web-based applications that come to them from other sources (e.g., content management systems, finance systems, student information systems, healthcare or benefit systems, human resource systems). So, what is missing in current policy? A mechanism to procure accessible Web products and services is missing. Without procurement as part of the policy, true system-level accessibility can only be an illusion.

Manchester United: Top of the Web Accessibility League?

Manchester United have received a lot of press coverage for the separate accessible version of their website. They've probably invested a lot of time and effort to make this separate website, which according to Trenton Moss is totally unnecessary.

Screen Readers and CSS Layout

Screen readers are mostly mystical devices for almost all of us. Few of us actually own them. They’re incredibly expensive. Fewer yet know how to use them well, what their capabilities are, or how they actually work. Is it little wonder then, that big names in our web design world question how screen readers handle modern layout techniques? Not at all. The two gurus quoted below have other strengths, and specialities. They probably haven’t used a screen reader in ages.

Screen-Reader Usability at a Standards-Compliant E-Commerce Site

An E-commerce site was redesigned with Web standards in mind. The revised site used semantic HTML markup that usually passes validation tests and also incorporated many common accessibility features. A study was carried out with screen-reader users to determine how well compliance with Web standards and accessibility guidelines translated into actual usability and accessibility.

Secret Benefits of Accessibility Part 1: Increased Usability

Web accessibility has so many benefits that I really do wonder why such a large number of Websites have such diabolically bad accessibility. One of the main benefits is increased usability, which, according to usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, can increase the sales/conversion rate of a Website by 100%, and traffic by 150%.

Secret Benefits of Accessibility Part 2: Better Search Ranking

One of the main benefits of Web accessibility is that a Website that's more accessible to people is also usually more accessible to search engines. The more accessible your site is to search engines, the more confidently they can guess what the site's about, giving your site a better chance at the top spot in the search engine rankings.

Seven Accessibility Mistakes (Part 1)

There are several reasons inaccessible Web products get published. One we discussed in my last article is that some clients just don’t care about accessibility. Their reasons make a lot of sense if you put yourself in their shoes. Another reason is developer mistakes. Making mistakes is natural, and suffering the consequences and learning from them is what makes us better developers and better people.

Seven Accessibility Mistakes (Part 2)

This two part-article discusses reasons why some projects fail to result in properly accessible products.

Seven Screen Reader Usability Tips

Simply ensuring that your Website is accessible to screen reader users is, unfortunately, not enough to guarantee that these users can find what they're looking for in a reasonably quick and efficient manner. Even if your site is accessible to screen reader users, its usability could be so poor that they needn't have bothered stooping by in the first place.

Speaking ALT Text

I have a few late model screen readers and I also have simple audio recording tools. I'll use them to get you closer to what these screen readers actually say. I'll start a collection of recordings so you can hear for yourself what these tools say.

The Convergence of the Aging Work Force And Accessible Technology

This paper discusses the effects of America’s aging work force on business growth and productivity and illustrates how accessible technology can equip employers and mature workers to face the challenges posed by this demographic trend.

The Lifecycle of Web Accessibility

In this article we'll divide the life cycle of web accessibility into 5 different phases and we'll see how they are strictly interconnected with other disciplines such as graphic design, development and content management.

WCAG and the Myth of Accessibility

Kevin Leitch explains why he feels that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have failed in their mission to ensure that web content is accessible to all.

The Market for Accessible Technology

This report presents findings about individuals who are likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology. It also includes findings about working-age adults and computer users and presents data about the aging population in the US and its impact on computer use. This report concludes with statements about how these findings affect the information technology (IT) industry.

Accessible Technology in Computing: Examining Awareness, Use, and Future Potential

Presents new findings about the use of computers among individuals with difficulties/impairments. It also discusses factors that influence the use of computers and accessible technology and includes data about the current awareness and use of accessible technology. This report concludes with a forecast of growth in the demand for accessible technology and an overview of the opportunities for the IT industry to make accessible technology easier to discover and use.

Understanding Disabilities when Designing a Website

This article will explain some simple techniques which, if incorporated into the design of a website, will enhance its accessibility and usability for people who have a vision, hearing, physical, cognitive, or learning disability.

Captions for Video with Flash CS3 (Part Two)

In this article, we’re going to look at a method of captioning a Flash video file: embedding the XML directly into the FLV file. In very simple terms, the XML document will contain the cue points for the captions. When one of those cue points is reached, the caption appears over the video.

Captions for Video with Flash CS3

In the exercise that follows, and in the second part of this series, we are going to add captions, using both methods, to the same video. For those passionate about web standards, the first method involves the use of Timed Text captions. If you go this route, you need to follow the standard laid out by the W3C. There is a lot to it but, in a nutshell, it requires you to create a specific type of XML document using the required tags.

How to Add Voice Interactivity to Your Site

This tutorial aims to help you add voice interactivity to your site, with minimal code changes and maximal browser compatibility. Along the way, examples will be provided, and at the end, you will be able to test a fully working, real World, voice-enabled site. This tutorial describes the use of a reusable VoiceXML form. Because the voice capability is included in the browser, you do not need to write your own speech recognition engine or speech synthesizer. This is a great advantage to you and to your Web application users.