IT Accessibility Review
Volume 1, Number 10
Around the IT/Web Accessible World
College Creates New Touch Device
Herefordshire´s Royal National College for the Blind (RNC) has created a new talk and touch system to help students use maps, charts and diagrams. The T3 talking tactile technology uses a laptop, CD program and touchable icons to make information accessible.
It has been developed by the college in Hereford and a New York graphics firm.
Students say it is a huge improvement on the old system they were using because it puts them in charge of their learning without needing assistance.
Benefits for Others
The T3 is a laptop-sized, touch sensitive device which is connected to a computer and run with a program CD related to the national curriculum.
Its creators say any subject can be converted by the program.
When the symbols, icons, and regions of the tactile surface are pressed sound describes what the user is feeling.
Ian Beverley, Braille technology trainer at RNC said: "I would describe it as sensational as it allows the visually impaired student to access learning resources with senses other than vision."
The team said trials are also showing the device may have benefits for other groups including people with dyslexia.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4782052.stm
Poor Accessibility Has A Price
By Phil Muncaster, IT Week
Recent reports suggest the accessibility of many public and private sector web sites falls short of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.
Research by user experience consultancy Designed for All last month found that only 30 percent of web sites displaying an accessibility statement or logo were making accurate claims about accessibility. Many of their sites failed basic accessibility tests or claimed standards beyond those actually achieved, according to the firm´s report.
In separate Cabinet Office research released at the end of last year, only three percent of 436 public service web sites examined across Europe were found to meet the internationally accepted W3C web accessibility standards.
Mike Davis of analyst firm Butler Group blamed firms´ poor management for not picking up such failings during testing. "When government departments put together web sites, priority is not given to accessibility issues," Davis said. "Compliance to these standards should be in every specification [for government sites]."
Jennifer Axelrad, marketing manager for speech-recognition technology specialist Nuance, said, "I´m surprised the figure [for good accessibility was as high as] three percent. It is a disgrace considering how easy it is to implement accessibility systems - the technology is out there and it´s not difficult to do."
Robin Christopherson of web accessibility specialist AbilityNet, which carried out the Cabinet Office survey with a number of other organizations, said that public sector sites are usually more accessible than others. "[These findings] are something of a mystery. We were very rigorous in our methodology but even taking that into account, it is still much worse than expected," he said.
Although separate figures for the UK were not available, Christopherson noted that countries tend to fare better if they have a high "index of engagement", as the UK does. This means there are laws requiring accessibility for sites, and a recognized body in charge of accreditation systems, he explained.
Under the UK´s 1999 Disability Discrimination Act it is an offence for major commercial and public sector sites to be inaccessible to disabled people, yet many government sites are still falling short.
"In the first three or four years it was probably a substantial enough defense to say you didn´t even know [the act existed]," Christopherson said. "There were very few access-checking tools, few consultants to help, and a general lack of knowledge, so the Disability Rights Commission gave companies a large period of grace."
He added that many web site designers do not have the knowledge to construct adequately accessible web sites and there is still a shortage of good tools and materials to help. "The sort of fluid design [needed to create standards-compliant web sites] is out of the comfort zone of your average designer," Christopherson said.
Nuance´s Axelrad added that in the private sector too, many sites fail to meet accessibility standards, even though there is a strong business case for compliance.
It is widely accepted that easily accessible web sites are simpler and cheaper to maintain, as they are not bloated with unnecessary code. And they are also likely to attract more online customers.
According to AbilityNet, sites that follow good practices for accessibility are 35 percent easier to use for everyone.
Source:
http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/analysis/2150099/poor-accessibility-price
09 February 2006
Websites Fail Europe´s Disabled
By John Lamb
The government plans to issue new, less technical guidelines on how to make public-sector websites accessible to disabled people. The move follows two surveys by the Cabinet Office that reveal that disabled people are unable to access public-sector sites in Europe.
A study of websites run by the 25 member states of the European Union (EU) found that 97% failed to pass the most basic, internationally agreed standard of website accessibility. A second, as yet unpublished survey of 500 sites in the UK with the "gov.uk" domain name, carried out at the same time by the Cabinet Office, shows a 96% failure rate.
The lack of accessibility means many of Europe´s 37m disabled citizens cannot log on to public-sector websites, despite years of discussion about the issue. Four years ago the EU adopted the World Wide Web Consortium´s Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the norm for public-sector websites.
This is the first time that government websites have been tested to see whether they meet the guidelines´ criteria, but only a dozen out of 436 sites were able to pass Level A of the standard; none met the more stringent AA or AAA levels. None of the sites tested were more sophisticated transactional ones that allow users to fill in forms, buy licences or pay taxes. They merely provided information.
"As a result of both studies, we have hard and fast evidence of best practice and of the weaknesses of sites," says Tom Adams, senior digital media consultant with the Cabinet Office´s e-government unit, which commissioned one of the studies, entitled eAccessibility of Public Sector Services in the European Union. "Our first effort is to improve near-miss websites."
The Cabinet Office is revising the guidelines it produces for public-sector web designers to make them less technical, particularly since many more people are now involved in developing websites than when the guidelines were developed a few years ago.
This month, the Disability Rights Commission has launched a document called Publicly Available Specification 78 (Pas 78), which has been written with the aid of 150 accessibility experts for the British Standards Institution. Pas 78 will explain existing accessibility standards and how best to use them.
The Cabinet Office tests, which involved both automatic and manual inspections, were carried out by researchers from UK charity AbilityNet, Dublin University, the RNIB, the RNID and the Society of IT Management (Socitm) as part of the UK´s presidency of the EU last year.
Easy to correct
The testers found that many sites had flaws that were easy to correct. The most common failing of web designers and people posting fresh content on sites was to omit alternative text for images, or to provide inappropriate text, with the result that screen-reading software designed to read web content aloud for blind and dyslexic users or people with learning difficulties did not work properly.
A second major shortcoming highlighted by the report was a failure to properly title frames on websites, which again confused screen readers. The EU report recommends that website owners avoid using frames altogether. Around a third of the sites that fail to meet WCAG´s Level A could achieve it by fixing the alternative text and frames problems, say the report´s authors.
Other flaws identified by manual tests included poor scripting, forgetting to indicate when a human language changed on websites and incorrect presentation of tables. The EU study also blamed the slow progress towards accessibility on a lack of training, which meant that site developers and people who provide content were simply unaware of the need to make sites accessible or how to do it.
Often websites are developed by designers who understand the need to make them accessible, but whose work is undone by those responsible for the day-to-day running of a site. The process is not helped by the complex WCAG rules, which are being overhauled with the aim of making them simpler.
Many European web designers find it difficult to meet accessibility standards because they are not available in their own languages. No guidelines are published in the national languages of Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia, although translations for some of the languages are in the pipeline.
The study urges web managers in public-sector organizations to bring existing websites up to Level-A standard by the end of this year and to Level AA by the end of 2008. Governments should ensure all websites meet AA standards by 2010, it argues. Those buying software and web design services should insist on accessibility.
European governments recently brought out an e-Accessibility document that proposed legislation to ensure disabled people can gain access to websites, and said they should be tested more regularly to ensure they comply with WCAG standards.
"I go through periods when I´m thoroughly depressed, but all I have to do is look back at websites I was working on six years ago," says Donna Smillie, senior web accessibility consultant at the RNIB and one of the accessibility report´s authors. "There has been a huge shift; the only thing is that it has been extremely slow."
"In the web world there´s a growing awareness of accessibility as an issue. I think we are hitting a tipping point where things are really beginning to take off. Up until now when people have talked about accessible websites they have thought of dull, plain ones. Now designers have got their heads around it and we are seeing good, interesting, well-designed websites. In another five years, accessibility will be just part of mainstream web design."
In the UK, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is insisting that all local government websites achieve the AA standard by the end of March as part of its local government online programme. Only a few will meet the deadline, although 50% more local government sites meet the WCAG Level A criteria than sites in the rest of the public sector.
Local authorities in the UK are considered to lead their counterparts elsewhere in Europe - a view confirmed by Socitm´s latest Better Connected survey.
"The position is more optimistic in local government because they have been set clear, prioritized targets to achieve," says Martin Greenwood, programme manager of Socitm´s Insight program. "In reality it will just be a handful [who meet the AA standard] because they have been set an impossible target."
"It is appalling that websites are not more accessible than they are - not just because disabled people are excluded, but because everyone stands to benefit from accessible websites that are easier to use."
Source:
Guardian
Wednesday March 29, 2006
SocietyGuardian.co.uk C Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
John Lamb is editor of Ability magazine: www.abilitymagazine.org.uk
Disabled Users to Test Websites
Disabled people are being drafted in to help ensure websites are usable by all. The pool of disabled surfers has been brought together by the Usability Exchange, which aims to give instant feedback on website navigation.
Website managers can use remote viewing software to watch how easily the surfers are able to move through a site as it is tested.
Testing Times
The idea for the service came to Stefan Haselwimmer, also managing director of the Phone Anything website, in 2004, during talks with local authorities about access to their websites.
"We were surprised by how few had tested their websites with disabled users," he said.
"Most councils wanted to carry out disabled-user testing but didn´t know how to get hold of disabled testers or how to conduct usability tests," Mr Haselwimmer explained.
"At the same time, we knew lots of disabled people happy to test websites."
Through the Usability Exchange, website operators will be able to create a variety of user tests and submit them to a range of users with different disabilities.
Once tests have been submitted, website managers get feedback about how people fared on the tests and how easy the site was to use.
They can also use remote-viewing software to watch how users get on as they navigate around a site.
All the testers for the Usability Exchange are paid for their time.
The launch of the Usability Exchange comes as the British Standards Institution and the Disability Rights Commission issue a new set of guidelines that recommend website creators involve disabled people in testing.
Julie Howell, policy development manager at the RNIB, said: "Research published by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004 showed that testing with disabled users may uncover 45% more accessibility problems than testing with software alone."
Although she welcomed the arrival of the service, Ms Howell said she had a couple of concerns.
Firstly, she said Usability Exchange had to demonstrate the quality of the testing work being done.
"It´s one thing to put businesses in touch with disabled people," she said, "but what´s the quality of the process involved here?"
The company would have to work hard to ensure the information fed back to clients was useful.
"That does not mean making it all positive but making it all honest," said Ms Howell.
The last thing any business would want was to test with Usability Exchange and then find that disabled people cannot use their website.
Ms. Howell said she also had worries about the well-being of the disabled testers employed by Usability Exchange.
She urged those taking part to let the government know they were taking on employed work.
Already the Royal Mail, Orange, Fortune-Cookie, Adult Dyslexia Organisation, Scottish Parliament, Wandsworth Council and Leicestershire Council have submitted their sites to the exchange for testing.
The Disability Rights Commission also plans to start evaluating the Usability Exchange service from April 2006.
Source:
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4816118.stm
Published: 2006/03/17 10:09:06 GMT
C BBC MMVI
Disabled Web Users Rank Their Usability Priorities
Effective in-site search, good navigation, and clear, well-constructed content are the most important usability issues for disabled internet users, according to new research which also found many visually impaired users rejecting the importance of ALT tags.
User experience consultancy, User Vision surveyed a cross section of 208 internet users throughout the UK with impairments which affect the way they use the internet, comprising the visually impaired/blind, hearing impaired/deaf, physically disabled, and those with dyslexia/learning difficulties.
The users were asked to rank, in terms of importance, the factors which aid their ease of use when online. Clarity of content - using straightforward language and a clear, simple layout - was regarded by 88% as ´very important´. Good navigation - the ability to know where you are within a site - was regarded as very important by 65%, followed by the use of meaningful and clear hyperlinks (63%).
Two of the three factors traditionally perceived as the fundamental accessibility issues have become comparatively less significant. Good use of ALT tags - which provide text alternatives for images - was only regarded as ´very important´ by a third of respondents. Surprisingly, among the visually impaired users, 25% found ALT tags not important at all.
Respondents were also asked to rank the most annoying features on websites and most useful features. Elements that aid users in finding content easily and navigating round sites came up high on the lists, whilst avoiding pop-ups was only fourth in the list of top five annoyances, thanks mainly to the increased use of blockers which eliminate them before they appear. Inevitably scalable text remains an important issue, particularly for visually impaired users.
Top 5 annoyances:
- Not having in-site search
- No sitemap
- No internal page navigation/skip to content/back to top links
- Pop-ups
- Inability to change font size/color contrast
- Having in-site search
- Having a sitemap
- Clear, well labeled links
- Having internal page navigation
- Ability to personalize page view/font size
Chris Rourke, Director of User Vision, said: "The broadband revolution has led to web sites becoming more sophisticated and content-rich, which inevitably increases the risk of creating barriers for impaired users. As a result, factors such as an effective in-site search and navigation are becoming increasingly significant considerations which need to be moved up the development agenda."
He added that web designers must consider how changes in functionality affect accessibility, and ensure that sites are regularly tested using the wide array of devices which those with impairments are using to access the internet.
Other barriers to good usability for impaired users, according to the research, include: Flash movies; the necessity to ´sign-in´; too many hyperlinks; and online forms where fields/labels have not been marked up properly.
The research also asked respondents to name the web sites which they found most and least usable. Google was unanimously voted as easiest to use - thanks mainly to its clear layout and uncluttered design - followed by Yahoo! and BBC News Online. Educational sites, web mail and travel sites all featured heavily in the ´least usable´ category.
Source:
OUT-LAW News, 08/11/2005
http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=6314
Does Your Website Overstate Its Accessibility?
The research was conducted by Professor Helen Petrie of accessibility and usability firm Designed for All. Her team studied 500 websites: 250 UK or UK-oriented e-commerce sites and 250 financial sites based in the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the US.
Of the 500 sites, 40 (8%) had an accessibility statement or logo. However, when 20 of these sites were inspected further, only six were found to be accurately stating their accessibility.
Professor Petrie does not suggest that website owners are deliberately misleading people; but she highlighted some of the risks for those who get their statements wrong.
"A company´s accessibility statement is a reflection of its values towards disabled people," she said. "People´s trust will be affected if a company makes a public statement that is not reflected in how it actually behaves."
Professor Petrie previously led a team that worked with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to produce Britain´s most comprehensive report to date on the state of web accessibility, published in April 2004.
That report confirmed what accessibility professionals already knew: most sites display woeful levels of accessibility. Of 1,000 sites tested, 81% failed on automated testing to reach Level A of the best known guidelines, the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative´s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, known as WCAG Version 1.0.
More important than the statistics in the DRC report was the impact: for the first time it brought the legal, commercial and ethical arguments for web accessibility to the attention of the mainstream media and board rooms.
The exaggeration of accessibility statements is a known problem. In March 2004, one month before the DRC´s landmark report, web testing specialist SciVisum found that 40% of a sample of more than 100 UK sites claiming to be accessible did not meet the WAI checkpoints for which they claimed compliance.
OUT-LAW put the DRC report and SciVisum´s research to Judy Brewer, the W3C´s Web Accessibility Initiative Domain Leader, in April 2004. She told OUT-LAW that "over-claiming a site´s accessibility by as much as a-level-and-a-half is not uncommon."
Reasons for inaccurate claims
Brewer acknowledged a problem with the WCAG checkpoints: the way WCAG Version 1.0 is written, it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether various checkpoints are satisfied.
At the time, she was working on WCAG Version 2.0 which promises to make it easier for web developers to know that they have met the guidelines. Version 2.0, Brewer explained, should be more precisely testable. (The final version of Version 2.0 is still awaited.)
But interpreting accessibility guidelines is not the only problem.
Lèonie Watson, chair of the Association of Accessibility Professionals (the AAP was formerly called the Usability and Accessibility Working Group) said: "I believe the problem is that there is a great deal of focus given to attaining accessibility targets at the time of launch, but that very little is done to try and sustain those achievements as the site evolves."
Watson continued: "An ongoing quality assurance process is needed to ensure that the level of accessibility is maintained as new content is added and the site expands. The fact that such solutions are rarely implemented makes it very easy for accessibility statements to fall out of date and become inaccurate."
Another problem is that some developers think they know more about accessibility than they really do.
Steve Green, a director with Test Partners Ltd, told OUT-LAW: "We test a lot of sites before they go live, and although the developers we work for usually have a good understanding of accessibility we have never seen a site that claimed to meet WCAG Level AA or AAA that actually did. A lot of sites met their claim of Level A, but that´s usually because they kept things simple by avoiding frames, tables, JavaScript, image maps etc."
He added: "In my opinion, the vast majority of website developers do not understand the reasoning behind most of the WCAG criteria, don´t know how to implement them appropriately and wouldn´t know how to test whether they met them."
Suppliers who exaggerate their skills, even in good faith, make the commissioning of accessible sites very difficult for non-experts. To address this, the AAP is developing an accreditation scheme for suppliers. The scheme will make it easier for those commissioning sites to identify qualified suppliers who will have undergone a peer review to carry the accreditation.
Source:
OUT-LAW News, 12/01/2006
http://www.out-law.com/page-6529
