Accessible Web Scott WilliamsOffice of Institutional Equityswims@umich.edu@swimsy

Disabilities and the web

Visual: blindness, low-vision, color-blindness

Hearing: partial to total deafness

Motor: inability to use a mouse or physical keyboard, slow response time, limited fine motor control

Cognitive: Learning disabilities, distractibility, dyslexia, inability to remember or focus on large amounts of information

1in 5 people have a disability

People with disabilities in the U.S: 54.4 million

People in U.S. with disabilities that impede them using the internet: 24 million

People age 15 and older having difficulty hearing a normal conversation: 8 million. Completely deaf: 1 million

People age 15 and older having difficulty reading ordinary newsprint (even with glasses):

8 million. Completely blind: 1.8 million

More stats

Cognitive disabilities Greater number than physical and perceptual

disabilities combined Adults with ADD/ADHD: 16 million 38% of soldiers, 31% of Marines and 49% of National

Guard members returning from combat report psychological conditions such as TBI and PTSD

Mobility issues—8 million Americans have difficulty using their arms or hands

11 million people 6 and older need assistance with everyday activities

Even more stats

8.3% of the U.S. population have 2 or more disabilities

40,000 people the in U.S are both deaf and blind

41 percent of adults 65 and older have a disability

8.7 million people with disabilities are poor

70% of disabled are unemployed

Most influential disabled user?

Google, “the blind billionaire” — Jeffery Zeldman

The web offers unprecedented opportunities for disabled

Education

News

Commerce

Social

Web is an enabling technology

Legal

Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991, both of which prohibit colleges and universities from discriminating against students, faculty, and staff with disabilities

Users with disabilities must have the full and equal enjoyment of all goods, programs, and activities

If users with disabilities are forced to use separate access, it must be equally effective

Legal cont’d

DOJ is in the process of revising Title II and III of the ADA to include online resources of state and local entities

ETA of revised rules: 2 years out

Smart money: will be based on W3C WCAG 2.0 Level A or AA

DOJ not interested in the budgetary or logistical reasons for why you are violating someone’s civil rights

Case law—individuals or entities can file civil rights complaints, e.g., PSU, Google, JetBlue, Target, Southwest Airlines, Priceline.com, Ramada, Kindle, and LSAC

NFB (the heat)

National Federation of the Blind

Litigates educational institutions who violate civil rights and to get to non-compliant companies

“My job for the foreseeable future is to travel around to universities with a torch and a can of gasoline and start as many fires as possible!”—Dan Goldstein, chief litigator for the NFB

PSU received notice without warning on Christmas Eve

How to keep Dan away

Procurement policies must include accessibility requirements

New technology must be tested before purchasing to verify accessibility claims

Self audit

Remediation plan

Policy

Accessibility coordinator

What is web accessibility?

Making the web accessible for the widest possible audience

Inseparable from usability: improve one and you improve the other

Best way to accomplish accessibility? Adherence to standards

WCAG 2.0

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

De facto standard world-wide. Cited in U.S case law. Adopted by governments. Future basis for ADA and Section 508 compliance.

WCAG 2.0 is principle-, not technology-based

The four principles (POUR): Perceivable Operable Understandable Robust

Perceivable

Provide text alternatives for images and form elements

Provide captions and transcripts for video and audio

Use correct semantic markup so content can be presented in different ways

Make it easier for users to see content by using good color contrast

Avoid movement and distractions on page

Operable

All functionality is available from the keyboard!

Users have control over timing and limits

Do not cause seizures (don’t flash content)

Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where they are

Understandable

Economical and plain use of language

Text supplemented with illustrations, videos, and other formats where appropriate (i.e., use good Universal Design)

Navigation, information structure are discernable and consistent

Make pages operate in predictable ways

Help users avoid and correct mistakes

Robust

Functional across various technologies

Syntax errors that don’t affect visual presentation may hamper assistive technology and accessibility evaluation tools

Adhering to W3C standards ensures future compatibility

Validate your code at validator.w3c.org

Screen reader demo

Best Practices

1. Navigation

Navigation

Navigation is a critical aspect of accessibility

Information being apparent isn’t enough

Sighted users have tried and true visual cues to orient them on a page Banner Search box Main navigation box Content well

Blind and low-vision users rely on proper coding of page for orientation

What if you can’t see?

Title of page lets you know what page you’re on when page loads

Proper heading placement and hierarchy conveys organization of page and allows SR users to skip navigation

Link descriptions need to be unique and make sense out of context

ARIA document landmark roles highlight geographic regions of webpage

Browser “find function” used as well

Skip-to-content links

Not just for screen reader users

Allows those who cannot use a mouse to avoid tabbing through entire menu and sidebar. Need to be visible when they receive focus

Place at top of document; limit to 3

Jump to <h1> tag, which should always directly precede main content

Should be visible on keyboard focus so sighted keyboard users will know it is there

Proper headings

Screen readers can find and list headings

<h1> heading uniquely identifies the page in the website

Should be placed directly in front of the main content of the page

The <h1> header should also match at least a subset of the the page <title>

Other headings convey content organization

Meaningful link text

Screen readers can find and list links

Descriptions for the links must be meaningful out of context, via tabbing or presented in a list

Don’t use “here”, “click here”, “read this”, and “more”

Don’t use URL as a link description—will sound like gibberish, unless very short and intuitive

Accessible menus

Main navigation needs to be operable using the keyboard only

Subcategories should be visible on keyboard focus

Main menu items link to index pages that list subcategories

Complex menus with multiple columns and headings have negative effect on those with cognitive impairments, low vision, and motor impairments

Document landmark roles

They do what good visual layout does for sighted users—call out main geographic areas of web page: Banner Navigation Search Main content Auxiliary content Posted content Footer information

<div id="maincontent" role="main"></div>

2. Text equivalents

All informative non-text elements must be accompanied by text equivalents Informative images graphical representations of text (including drop

caps, equations, and symbols) form controls and text fields graphical buttons and links audio files and podcasts Videos

<img src="mlogo.gif" alt="University of Michigan Block M logo">

   3. Forms

Use <label> tag to describe form fields and controls to screen reader users (is a form of alternative text)

Use <fieldset> and <legend> tags when necessary to group form elements together (not for layout)

Keep form labels close to their associated controls

Make sure the form is operable using just the keyboard

Form example

Label attribute matches input id — not name

4. Data Tables

Provide a table summary

Use table headings

Use the scope attribute to indicate columns and rows

5. Scripting

Using javascript does not necessarily make your site inaccessible

Most screen readers can interact with javascript

Most SR users (98%) have Javascript enabled

Ensure that users can operate widgets using the keyboard only

Ensure that updated page content is apparent to a screen reader

Mouse-dependent Event Handlers

onClick

onMouseOver and onMouseOut

OnMouseDown

onChange used with onSelect

onHover (must die)

AJAX and ARIA

ARIA = Accessible Rich Internet Applications

The use of AJAX introduces new challenges in accessibility

Updating information on a page without a page refresh can disorient assistive tech users or leave them unable to view the updated content

ARIA roles and properties are a means of making AJAX widgets accessible and info apparent

The scope of ARIA role and property code is limited to assistive technologies

ARIA resources

Paciallo Group’s ARIA examples :(http://hanshillen.github.com/jqtest/)

CodeTalks website(http://wiki.codetalks.org/)

AOL Developer Network accessibility website(http://dev.aol.com/topic/accessibility)

6. Color

An often overlooked aspect of web accessibility

Many more people are visually impaired or color blind than are legally blind

There are tools that quantify the contrast between text and its background

Check your web templates’ color contrast during design phase

What is color contrast?

You intuitively know when something has poor contrast

There is an algorithm for determining a numerical value

Ratio of foreground luminance to background luminance

Big is good: 4.5:1 or greater for Level AA

Don’t use color alone to convey meaning

Test in gray scale …

Accessibility Resources

U-M: http://umich.edu/webaccess/

WebAIM: http://webaim.org

Online accessibility checkers: http://www.achecker.ca/ http://wave.webaim.org/