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Path Home > Press Room > Newsletter Index

IT Accessibility Review

Volume 1, Number 11

Breaking News

WCAG 2.0: The New W3C Accessibility Guidelines Evaluated

By Trenton Moss

The second version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is in final working draft and will soon be officially released. Version 1 of the guidelines came under much criticism for being vague, full of jargon and extremely difficult to use. The W3C has been working on version 2.0 of the guidelines for over 5 years now, but has it been worth the wait?

What´s good about WCAG 2.0?

There have certainly been a number of improvements made to the new guidelines. This is of course to be expected - after 5 years you would expect some improvement! Some of these improvements include:

Outdated guidelines removed
A number of guidelines from WCAG 1.0 are well out-of-date. Unfortunately, web developers still implement these out-dated guidelines because they don´t know otherwise. Rather than go on an accessibility training course and learn ´real-world´ accessibility, many web developers and managers tick boxes against guidelines.

Some of the out-of-date WCAG 1.0 guidelines, which have been removed from WCAG 2.0 include:

(Please note, the above isn´t the exact wording of the guidelines - each of the original guidelines has been translated from the official W3C guideline into more easy-to-understand language.)
The above guidelines shouldn´t be adhered to as they have all been removed from WCAG 2.0.

Good real world techniques provided
The document, Techniques for WCAG 2.0 replaces the previous techniques document, and is actually much better. It provides a list of common failures, which the previous version didn´t, and actually offers some excellent examples of common errors.

The other major improvement in this techniques document is that the examples provided are far more real-world. The WCAG 1.0 techniques document used text such as PortMaster 3 with ComOS 3.7.1 in their examples, but who has any idea what this means? The new document is far better in this respect, using examples such as phone numbers and calendars, for example.
The techniques document also provides some clever recommendations, of which accessibility guideline box-ticking developers may not have thought. For example:

How to open a link in a new window using unobtrusive JavaScript
Displaying decorative images through CSS
Combining text and its adjacent image in the same link
Providing a heading at the beginning of each section on the page

...And many more! Do have a good look at the WCAG 2.0 techniques document as there´s lots of useful guidance here using quite easy-to-understand examples.

New guidelines included
A number of new guidelines have been brought into WCAG 2.0. Some of these guidelines are totally new whereas others were hinted at, but not specifically stated, in WCAG 1.0. Some examples include:

Providing text-based error messages for forms
Ensure all pages have a descriptive title
Background noise can be turned off

For a full list of brand new guidelines that don´t map to any version 1 guidelines, have a look at the W3C´s Comparison of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints to WCAG 2.0.

What´s not good about WCAG 2.0?

So there certainly have been some improvements made to the W3C accessibility guidelines. But is it all good news? Have the problems associated with WCAG 1.0 been eliminated for this version 2 of the guidelines? Well not quite, as there are still a number of problems...

Verbose and jargon-filled language
One of the main criticisms aimed at WCAG 1.0 was the complexity of the language used. Have things improved? Hardly! Pretty much every paragraph is littered with jargon of which the average web developer or web manager would be left with no clue as to the meaning.
Clearly aware of the level of jargon, the W3C have made complex terms green underlined links, linking to definitions. This is all well and good in theory, but when most sentences are broken up with one or two links it makes reading these sentences quite difficult.

Even worse though, is that the definitions are just as jargon-filled and difficult to understand as the term being defined! For example:

Ironically, there´s even a definition provided for the word ´jargon´!

Furthermore, it seems that some jargon used in WCAG 1.0, of which webmasters have become accustomed, has been replaced with equally incomprehensible words. For example, we no longer have Priority 1, 2 and 3 to aim for - instead we now have success criteria level 1, 2 and 3.

Awful usability
Another major criticism of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines was how difficult it is to find specific guidance and answers. It doesn´t take too long to discover that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines quite clearly offer the same low level of usability.

Reasons for this poor usability include:

If only the W3C carried out basic usability testing of how people actually use (or are unable to use) these guidelines! What they´d undoubtedly find is that users won´t understand most guidelines and will end up blindly clicking links to find out how to meet these guidelines.

As with WCAG 1.0, clicking on most links from the WCAG 2.0 guidelines simply takes users into the middle of massive pages full of difficult-to-understand text. The text, of course, is densely littered with links. Users will probably click on a link again in the desperate hope that they´ll somehow find some text that clearly and succinctly explains what they need to do. They´ll usually be disappointed.

Organizing the massive amount of content available is certainly not an easy task - but why not, as a start, split up these massive documents into more manageable and less intimidating sets of smaller documents? Then, carry out some usability testing, refine, and test again.

Useful guidelines gone
Although there are a number of useful, new guidelines in WCAG 2.0, a number of important guidelines from WCAG 1.0 have been removed or are referred to only vaguely. These include, but aren't limited to:

(Please note, the above isn´t the exact wording of the guidelines - each of the original guidelines has been translated from the official W3C guideline into more easy-to-understand language.)

Particularly worrisome is the removal of the final three guidelines, all of which relate to the accessibility of content. A major part of any website´s accessibility, and one that´s often overlooked, is the site's usability and how the content is written and structured.

Accessible content is crucial for all special needs users, particularly those with learning difficulties and dyslexia. Perhaps the reason these guidelines have been removed is because content guidelines are fluffier and harder to measure than technical accessibility guidelines. Whatever the reason, this is not a good step for accessibility.

Technology neutral and the concept of the baseline
WCAG 1.0 states quite clearly that alternatives to JavaScript, PDFs and Flash must all be provided, as assistive technologies such as screen readers can´t access these. Although this was generally true in 1999, it´s not the case now, and nowadays JavaScript, PDFs and Flash can all be made accessible to most assistive technologies. (Remember, ´can be´ is not the same as ´are.´)

Version 1 of the accessibility guidelines became quite outdated rather quickly. To prevent this from happening to version 2 of the accessibility guidelines, the W3C have attempted to make WCAG 2.0 technology-neutral. Sounds sensible as now the guidelines won´t become outdated so quickly, right?

In practice, what this means is that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines are extremely vague. So vague, in fact, that they´re almost unusable as they talk in such generic terms.

Additionally, the concept of the baseline has now been introduced, where by webmasters can claim which technologies they assume are supported by site visitors´ browsers. So, if you build a website entirely in Flash and say that Flash is part of your baseline, your website can conform with all the guidelines despite the fact that some people won´t be able to access your site at all!

Discussion

So, was the wait worth it? We´ve waited over 5 years for WCAG 2.0 and certainly a number of improvements have been made. Sadly though, the guidelines continue to be very difficult to actually use, further discouraging webmasters from reading them. The extra vagueness of these new guidelines certainly doesn´t help either.

The W3C just doesn´t seem to get it: People don´t generally want to read through hundreds of pages of text to find out how to implement accessible solutions - they just want answers and specific guidance. For most people, accessibility is just one small part of their job and they don´t have time for all this.

Webmasters are also now being asked to choose a baseline for their website, but how do they even begin to go about doing this? How would you as a web developer explain the concept of a baseline to senior management? How do you decide what you should do so as to comply with any legal requirements? Unfortunately, there's no correct answer to these questions.

Solution?

A solution could be that the W3C simply provides specific guidelines for what web developers and managers actually have to do. Much of this information is already there on their website, but it´s hidden away in the enormous and intimidating Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document. This document could be broken down into manageable chunks, added to and refined, and focus on providing specific, real world guidelines.

Guidelines should be relevant and specific to today´s technology, but would be updated on an on-going basis so as to ensure they don´t become too dated. Why did we have to wait over five years for version 2.0? Why couldn´t we have received versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on during this time? This would surely have prevented WCAG 1.0 from becoming out-dated as quickly as it did.

Most importantly though, the whole WCAG 2.0 section on the W3C website needs to have usability testing carried out on it. The benefits of usability testing are pretty well known by now, and it´s quite clear that the W3C has very little idea how real users are interacting with the website. By carrying out ongoing usability testing, the W3C can learn about its users and ultimately aim for an easy-to-understand and intuitive website.

Source:
WebCredible
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/wcag-guidelines-20.shtml
September 2006

This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton´s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He knows an awful lot about intranet usability and spends much of his time conducting accessibility evaluations of websites.

All our accessibility articles are available for republishing, provided the author bio and links in the bio remain intact.

Firefox Accessibility

In recent months, two words have been spoken together with great excitement and enthusiasm. Those words are "Firefox" and "Accessibility." Firefox is quickly becoming a top choice for those interested in developing accessible content and those wishing to access web content in a more user-friendly and accessible manner.

Firefox is a cross-platform, stand-alone web browser developed by an open source community that is coordinated through the Mozilla project. With a current market share of well over 10% (currently over 26% for the WebAIM site), the Firefox browser is becoming a more popular browsing application, especially in the development community - and now in the accessibility community as well.

When speaking of Firefox accessibility, there are two aspects that must be noted. First is the accessibility of Firefox itself as a web browser. This includes the ability of the assistive technology and browser to work together, usability of the browser interface, and customization for accessibility. Second, the browser and assistive technology must support the accessibility of web content that is accessed by the browser. Firefox supports both of these aspects of accessibility.

The Firefox browser interface is accessible for keyboard users and allows many accessibility customization options, including customizable user styles (for setting font color, contrast, size, etc.) and high contrast, large print themes. Firefox also supports the accessibility features built into web content when used with up-to-date versions of screen readers and other assistive technologies.

The excitement surrounding the accessibility of Firefox can be attributed to its open source nature, focus on standards, and extensibility.

Open Source Accessibility
As an open source project, Firefox is shaped and developed by members of the community. Anyone can contribute to make Firefox better. The needs and wants of the community are represented in the product. This means that accessibility improvements tend to be implemented by users, for users. The Accessibility Project at Mozilla, which coordinates the accessibility efforts across many open source projects, has community members that author code for Firefox accessibility as well as accessibility experts and individuals with disabilities who all contribute to making Firefox more accessible.

Because of the open-source nature of Firefox and the large body of contributors, accessibility has been and continues to be implemented very quickly. Traditionally, screen reader accessibility has been available primarily by using Internet Explorer on Windows. This often meant that new accessibility features were only made available in new versions of Internet Explorer and only if they were implemented into that browser. As of this writing, several assistive technologies (JAWS, Window-Eyes, and ZoomText being the most notable) are available for use with Firefox. Window-Eyes currently provides the best support, but JAWS and ZoomText are being developed to better support Firefox accessibility features.

As a result of the open source nature of Firefox, assistive technology support for Firefox is much easier for assistive technology developers to implement than with other browsers. While accessibility is not yet perfect, the open-source nature of Firefox allows accessibility to increase at a faster rate than previously possible. Because Firefox is a cross-platform product, it opens up many new possibilities for accessibility on other operating systems-there are already several accessibility features, tools, and extensions for Firefox on Mac, Linux, and Unix operating systems.

Focus on Standards
Standards are a driving force for the Firefox development community. Accessibility guidelines have been and continue to be implemented into the development of the browser architecture. With over 1000 contributors to Firefox last year, these guidelines provide a necessary mechanism to ensure that the product meets the needs of all users. The Accessibility (often shortened to a11y - the letter a, 11 characters, then the letter y) Project at Mozilla contributes accessibility work into the Firefox product, as well as across many other Mozilla projects, such as the Thunderbird e-mail client and Sunbird calendar client. XUL (XML User-interface Language), the language which defines the Firefox interface and functionality, supports accessibility. Because these standards and projects are all open-source, anyone can help contribute to making these authoring frameworks more accessible and building Firefox extensions and other tools to enhance accessibility.

The W3C´s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 provide a mechanism for ensuring web content is accessible. However, in order for web content authored using accessibility guidelines to be accessible to the end user, the user agents (browsers and assistive technologies) must support those guidelines. In other words, it does little good to add alternative text to an image if the screen reader does not read it within the browser. The Mozilla development community has authored Firefox to support web content accessibility, as well as HTML and CSS standards. Firefox goes beyond typical accessibility features as outlined in accessibility guidelines and also supports or will soon support accessibility of multimedia content such as Flash, Dynamic HTML, and AJAX applications when accessible authoring guidelines are implemented in the content.

In addition to the work of Firefox developers and the assistive technology industry, there are many extensions for Firefox that are available to make accessibility even better.

Extensibility
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Firefox accessibility is its extensibility. There are many ways that end users and developers can extend and customize Firefox for usability and accessibility. While many customization options are available directly within Firefox, the most common method for customizing and expanding Firefox functionality is through Firefox extensions.

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can provide functionality as simple as a new toolbar button or as complex as an entirely separate application that functions within the Firefox browser. Extensions allow Firefox to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user, while minimizing the size of the application itself.

Because building extensions is relatively easy, thousands of them have been developed. Most extensions make accessing web content easier and faster or provide functionality that is not natively part of Firefox. Many have been written to increase or support accessibility. There are too many accessibility extensions to list here, but I have highlighted a few notable ones.

Web Developer Toolbar
This extension helps in the development of accessible and standards-compliant web content. This toolbar provides more options than could possibly be listed here. This is an indispensible tool for web developers. Beyond the wealth of options of HTML and CSS code development features, the toolbar provides the following functionality to support accessible web development and evaluation:

See our article on Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar at http://webaim.org/articles/evaluatingwithfirefox/.

Mozilla Accessibility Extension
This extension provides many tools for both web developers and end users. A few notable features include:

Fangs Screen Reader Emulator
Displays a visual text representation of a web page similar to how a screen reader would read it.

Fire Vox
A cross-platform extension that turns Firefox into a self-voicing browser. This screen reader allows advanced navigation and includes many other accessibility features.

Colour Contrast Analyser
Get instant feedback about whether the colors used in a web page are of sufficient contrast.

Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is an extension that allows you to apply javascript and DHTML "user scripts" to any web page. They allow you to easily customize pages for increased functionality, usability, and accessibility. Greasemonkey accessibility scripts are available at http://userscripts.org/tag/accessibility and include scripts that change web page behavior to display access keys, add shortcut keys to common page function (such as previous and next links or navigation), make all URLs in a page clickable, remove pop-up windows, allow image resizing and page zooming, and much more.

TAW3 with a click
Verify, with just a click on the browser status bar, the accessibility of the web sites that you are visiting, by means of the TAW3 online service - an online web accessibility analysis tool.

NextPlease!
Assign keyboard shortcuts to jump to next and previous links on multipage articles and search result pages.

Summary
While there is certainly much to be done in improving accessibility of web content and web applications, the Mozilla project and the Firefox browser are making it easier for developers to develop accessible web content and for individuals with disabilities to get to that content. With an open community of programmers, assistive technology developers, and end users working on accessibility of the Firefox application itself and extensions that enhance usability and accessibility, a whole new world of possibilities has been opened up for the accessibility community.

If you would like to learn more or get involved in Firefox accessibility, visit the following sites:

Source:
WebAim.org
http://webaim.org/articles/firefox%20/
13 Sept 2006

Survey Reveals Only 14 Percent of America´s Best Colleges Compliant with Web Standards

Compliant Websites Provide Accessibility for Disabled and Improve Search Rankings

Hannon Hill Corporation, makers of web content management solutions, has announced survey results revealing only 14 percent of America´s Best Colleges ranked by US News & World Report are compliant with HTML/XHTML web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The key benefits to maintaining a W3C standards-compliant website include having better accessibility for a wide range of disabled users and improved search engine rankings.

"Given that standardized tests like the SAT and GRE are major evaluation criteria American colleges depend on for selection processes, it only works to their benefit to apply standardized practices to official college websites," said David Cummings, founder and CEO, Hannon Hill Corporation. "By upholding W3C website standards, colleges take the same approach to making a website accessible as they would to making physical walkways and structures accessible to persons with disabilities. And to understand how these guidelines aid accessibility, it´s important to understand how individuals with disabilities might interact with the web."

For example, people with little or no sight must rely on electronic readers to read web pages to them. Those with severe myopia may use screen magnifiers or text enlarging browser settings. Color defected individuals will miss the nuances communicated by color and must look for other indications which convey the same meaning. People with decreased motor skills generally rely on keyboard shortcuts for navigation. What all these individuals have in common is that they must rely on assistive technology to help them navigate the web and find the information they need.

University of California, Davis is one school that maintains web standards. "At UC Davis it´s our mission to share widely the fruits of our teaching and research, and we feel very strongly that everyone deserves access to those resources," said Craig Farris, webmaster. "Our challenge, at this large decentralized university, is to encourage and support everyone´s compliance with accessibility regulations."

The W3C is an international consortium that develops Web standards and guidelines to ensure long-term growth for the Web. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) was developed by the W3C in an effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web especially, but not only, for people with disabilities. The WAI has developed a number of guidelines that helps to make websites more accessible, especially from the view of physically disabled people.

WAI was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee for the revision of U.S. Section 255 guidelines and Section 508 standards, which include Web accessibility. In addition to following best-recommended practices, being compliant with W3C standards helps colleges to stay current with federal government requirements under Section 508.

"To a large degree, improving a website´s accessibility is not geared toward directly assisting the disabled visitor, but toward helping these various technologies better read the site. Conveniently, many of the techniques that make a website easier to access for assistive technologies are the same techniques that make it more attractive to search engines, and therefore improve a site´s rating," said Cummings.

Web Content Management solutions (WCM), such as Hannon Hill´s Cascade Server, can aid in this process by providing automatic checkers to ensure that all content managed with the solution is valid XHTML/XML, and adheres to the requirements for accessible content. One way colleges can ensure their sites comply with the standards set forth by WAI is to select a WCM solution that automatically checks for compliance. For example, with the click of a button, Cascade Server will check web content for compliance, and alert users to any potential errors.

Hannon Hill also surveyed America´s Best Hospitals ranked by US News & World Report and found that 99 percent are not compliant with HTML/XHTML web standards recommended by the W3C.

For more information about the Hannon Hill surveys for higher education organizations and hospitals, please download the free white paper at www.hannonhill.com.

For more information on accessibility web standards recommended by the WAI, please visit http://http://www.w3.org/WAI/.

Can Accessibility and Usability Live in Harmony?

By Jim Lerza

Accessibility and usability are often discussed in the same breath, and many webmasters usually devise and implement strategies for each around the same stage of a site´s development.

Since usability has taken a more integral role in the design of many of the websites with which we are most familiar, it´s no surprise that this can present an unintended problem from an accessibility standpoint. Before we can determine whether a website can be 100% accessible and 100% usable simultaneously, we must first define each.

Accessibility: "Will every visitor have access to all of my content every time?"

There is more to making a site accessible than simply making sure it looks the same in every browser. As a designer, it is very important to determine what features are absolutely necessary to the site, and which are extras that might be nice.

Usability: "Will every visitor be able to find exactly what they are looking for without difficulty?"

Since there is not yet the technology to read a visitor´s mind and deliver what they seek immediately upon arrival, navigation should be self explanatory and easy to use. The information that any given visitor seeks should never be more than 2 clicks away from the homepage.

On the surface, these don´t look to be conflicting forces. In a small, informational-oriented site, both of these goals are very easily obtained and the implementation of the strategies complement each other. In larger sites, or those that feature complex scripting to achieve the end product, however, quite the opposite is true.

Let´s say we are in the process of designing a site to compete in a field full of high-tech sites. While usability may be our primary objective, we must be sure that we´re not eliminating visitors by creating a site that won´t display at all in a particular browser on a particular platform. In this case, we are obviously going to want as much of the calculation as possible to be done with scripting on the backend, as opposed to placing the burden on the end user´s hardware.

Some usability features are simply not going to be completely accessible. If, for example, you had a Flash-based mp3 player embedded into your site which allowed users to choose which songs to play, you could easily output the values contained in the ID3 information tag for each mp3 to the screen reader for a blind visitor, but you could not easily write a piece of code that would transcribe the lyrics for you automatically. The absence of this feature would certainly not, however, automatically render your site inaccessible.

With this in mind, we can now come up with a general rule for moving forward. While we have determined that some usability features can restrict your site´s accessibility, we can ascertain that any steps taken towards accessibility should never restrict usability. For a site to be completely accessible, it has to be viewable from any browser in any operating system. But it doesn´t stop there. If you´re using animations that require a plugin, you must provide a version for folks who haven´t installed the proper plugins. Most big sites also offer versions for users on the go, visiting on their mobile phones or PDAs.

It´s not always possible to get all these variations of your site to look or feel the same, but it is very important that visitors can find the content they're looking for regardless of which variation they're navigating.

Source:
WebProNews RSS Feed
http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060831CanAccessibilityandUsabilityLiveinHarmony.html
31Aug 2006

NASA Software Achieves Breakthrough in Accessibility

NASA recently released an innovative Open Source software suite that may forever change how blind and vision-impaired users "see" complex graphs.

The Math Description Engine Software Development Kit http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/ (MDE SDK) is a reusable software library that generates text, sound and visual representations of graphs found in both math and science applications.

Visually-impaired computer users access these alternative text and sound descriptions through the use of a screen reader and standard computer speakers.

The MDE (Math Description Engine) distinguishes itself from other accessibility software by determining the key characteristics of a graph "on the fly." Using this determination, it builds natural-language text descriptions that enable visually-impaired users to view spatial relationships through sound alone.

Designed with both flexibility and ease-of-use in mind, the SDK (Software Development Kit) allows web and software developers to adapt the MDE´s graph descriptions to a variety of applications. Some key audiences who might benefit from the MDE SDK include, but are not limited to:

The NASA software program, MathTrax, is one example of how MDE technology serves as a powerful learning tool for sighted users as well. Acting as a virtual math and science assistant, MathTrax engages both the eyes and ears of these students to increase overall comprehension.

The MDE software library was created by NASA´s Information Accessibility Lab (IAL), under the direction of Dr. Robert O. Shelton, a blind mathematician. The IAL´s mission is to develop technologies that increase accessibility to NASA´s vast library of outreach products and to release these same technologies to the public for further application and development.

The MDE SDK is currently available for download under an Open Source license at http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/mde. Visit the site today to learn more about the program and how you can play an integral role in developing the future of accessible graphing technology.

To learn more about the MDE SDK or MathTrax, please email Terry Hodgson at
terry.r.hodgson@nasa.gov.

The NASA Learning Technologies Team Information Accessibility Lab
http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov

Computer Science Majors Get IBM Accessible Technology Tools

By K.C. Jones

IBM has announced a program to give computer science majors the technical skills to develop or adapt computer programs for people with special needs.

The program aims to improve access to Internet and workplace technologies for people with disabilities, the aging, and non-native language speakers. IBM's new Web-based lecture teaches techniques to make electronic documents and the Web more accessible.

"While there are many courses on programming skills, few, if any, lectures are devoted to encouraging students to consider the needs of computer users with sight, hearing or mobility disabilities when they write software code," Wayne Dick, Chair of the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California State University, Long Beach, said in a prepared statement. "IBM´s considerable expertise in assistive technologies will help computer sciences majors differentiate themselves in the job market, and give the students the satisfaction of helping others and solving challenges."

Between 750 million and 1 billion people have a speech, vision, mobility, hearing or cognitive disability, according to the World Health Organization. One-quarter of the U.S. population turn 55 by 2008, and about two-thirds will have a disability after turning 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The census and the American Association of People With Disabilities estimate that people with disabilities have a collective income of $1 trillion and control up to $10 trillion in financial assets.

IBM´s new program complements the company´s University Relations Academic Initiative, which provides education-related tools and technologies to encourage the use of open computer standards and open source among teachers. More than 1,900 institutions, 11,000 faculty members and 450,000 students are involved in that initiative. Participating schools receive free access to IBM software, discounted hardware, course materials, training and curriculum development.

IBM hired its first disabled employee in 1914. The company has countless products and applications for the disabled as well as accessibility centers around the world. It employs more than 100 researchers, computer scientists and experts dedicated to accessibility. The company is one among many adapting technology for people with disabilities. Apple, Microsoft and countless smaller technology players offer accessible products and applications.

Through the new program, computer science professors can incorporate IBM´s material into their curriculum, and students can compete in a contest to create open source software for people with disabilities. IBM is seeking student entries based on a new international standard, the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for its Accessibility ODF Coding Challenge 2006.

Gartner predicts that 50 percent of governments and 20 percent of commercial organizations will require ODF by 2010.

"This contest brings together three critical ideas that have significant importance in the computer industry today: open standards, open source, and accessibility," Bob Sutor, IBM Vice President, Standards and Open Source, said in a prepared statement.

Computer-based jobs are one of the fastest growing occupations through 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some of those, like systems analysts, database administrators, computer scientists, are forecast to grow 40 to 70 percent in the United States.

Frances West, director of IBM´s Human Ability and Accessibility Center, said IBM is distilling its experience and "bringing it to bear for the generation of computer scientists-in-training, who can really make a difference in their professional careers."

Source:
Techweb.com
http://www.techweb.com/wire/192300665
28 August 2006


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