Accessibility Better, Faster, Cheaper

AccessibilityBetter, Faster,

Cheaper

Shawn Lawton Henry

§ Were *not* in accessibility session yesterday?

W3C WAI World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

www.w3.org/WAI/

Screen Magnification

Topics Responsibilities

Business Case

Black, White, Gray

Collaborators with Disabilities

Handouts: Additional URIs

Interdependent Components Myth:

Web accessibility is the responsibility of the Web content producer

Fact:Web accessibility depends on several components working together

Components of Web Accessibility

User Agent(UAAG)

Authoring Tool(ATAG)

Web Content(WCAG)

Make or Break

ACTION ! Actively encourage

improvements in authoring tools

WAI resources:

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)

Selecting and Using Authoring Tools for Web Accessibility

Topics Responsibilities

Business Case

Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Usability

Black, White, Gray

Collaborators with Disabilities

Access for people with disabilities is

it ;however…

Business Case Developing a Web Accessibility Business

Case for Your Organization

Social Factors

Technical Factors

Financial Factors

Legal & Policy Factors

Examples: Access Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Overlap with “digital divide”

Benefits also:

Older people

Low literacy, not fluent in the language

Low-bandwidth connections, older technologies

New and infrequent web users

Employees with disabilities

SEO – Accessibility Overlap

Google's Webmaster Guidelines

www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

“Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.”

Netherlands b

ank

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Make sure that your TITLE and ALT

tags [sic] are descriptive and accurate.”

Accessibility: TITLE read by screen reader

Accessibility: ALT read by screen reader, text browsers

(Usability: search results, bookmarking, title bar)

(By the way, alt is an attribute, not a tag.)

SEO – Accessibility Overlap WCAG: “Provide a text equivalent for every

non-text element”

SEO: Text equivalents for multimedia

(Usability e.g., reporter searching for quote in CEO speech)

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Check for . . . correct HTML.”

SEO: Headings

WCAG: “Use header elements to convey document structure...”

A: Headings navigation

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Make a site with clear . . . text links.”

SEO: “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).”

WCAG: “Clearly identify the target of each link.”

A: Links list

A: Overview by links (sad, but true)

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Offer a site map to your users.”

WCAG: “Provide information about the general layout of a site (e.g., a site map…”

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Try to use text instead of images to

display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.”

WCAG 1.0: “When an appropriate markup language exists, use markup rather than images to convey information.”

SEO – Accessibility Overlap SEO: “Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine

your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.”

A: same as above, substitute: “…then people with disabilities may have trouble using your site.”

Topics Responsibilities

Business Case

Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization

CSR

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Usability

Black, White, Gray

Collaborators with Disabilities

BadGood

BadGood

Prioritize Greatest impact on users experience

Impact many pages

Templates

Style sheets

Elements such as navigation bars and scripts

Prioritize Greatest impact on users experience Impact many pages Pages

Home page

Main pages & functionality for purpose of site, including:

The path to get there

The path to complete transactions

Frequently-used pages & functionality, including path & transactions

Prioritize by Barrier WCAG 1.0 Priorities (WCAG 2.0 Levels)

Approach:

1. Priority 1

2. Lower priorities

Approach:

1. High impact & easy

2. Harder

Prioritize by Barrier Impact on people with disabilities

Depends on context of site

Effort required for repair

Time, cost, and skills

Type of repair, development environment

Resources Improving the Accessibility of Your Web

Site (WAI Resource)www.w3.org/WAI/impl/improving

Understanding Web Accessibility(book chapter online)www.uiaccess.com/understanding.html

Topics Responsibilities

Business Case

Black, White, Gray

Collaborators with Disabilities

Involving Users: Benefits Better understand issues

Understand “why” behind guidelines

Implement more effective solutions

More efficient (thus maximize investment)

Powerful motivator Demo success first, then own

More budget

Note: Alone doesn’t cover all issues, WCAG vital role

Example alt="This image is a line art drawing of a dark green magnifying glass. If you click on it, it will take you to the Search page."

Involving Users: Scope Range

Informal, “Hey, try this”

Formal usability testing

Informal early on & throughout

Diverse users

Experience with Web & AT(too low or too high)

Involving Users: Scope Range

Informal, “Hey, try this”

Formal usability testing

Informal early on & throughout

Diverse users

Experience with Web & AT(too low or too high)

Tips for Involving Users First

Preliminary review

Pilot test

Expert evaluator with first-hand experience

Carefully consider feedback

What’s wrong:markup/code, AT, user knowledge

Resources Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility

Throughout Design (online book) The Basics Accessibility in the User-Centered Design

Process

Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation (WAI Web resource)

Understanding Web Accessibility (book chapter online)

ACTION ! Actively encourage authoring tools

Promote business case

Do the high impact & easy stuff now

Involve users with disabilities throughout

AccessibilityBetter, Faster,

Cheaper

Shawn Lawton Henry