accessibility Archives - Page 44 of 60

Useful Links

I mentioned alt text in the report about WCAG 2. There are two new articles about alt text and the whether it should be required or not coming from the group working on HTML 5. See HTML5 Alternative Text, and Authoring Tools by Gez Lemon and HTML5 and alt: The Editors New Clothes by Steve Faulkner.

The HTML WG folks are talking about alt text, too. See alt Attributes Authoring Practices by Karl Dubost.

I like the idea of making a rule that all decorative images have to be inserted as background images using CSS. Then they won’t be in the HTML at all and the question of when to use alt text and when not to use alt text will be solved. It’s accessible, too. Maybe then Tweets like this one won’t show up in Twitter: “stefsull loves it when people think about accessibility as they build web sites. But THIS as an alt attribute? [alt=”Non Descriptive Image”] C’mon.”

WCAG 2.0 released as Candidate Recommendation: Test Drivers Wanted

The WCAG working group sent out this information this week. They want testing and feedback from people who implement the candidate recommendation on working web sites.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group is excited to
announce the publication of WCAG 2.0 as a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 30
April. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make Web sites, applications, and other
content accessible to people with disabilities, and many elderly users.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-WCAG20-20080430/

Candidate Recommendation (CR) is a major step in the W3C standards
development process; it signals that there is broad consensus in the Working
Group and among public reviewers on the technical content of WCAG 2.0.

The quick reference to the recommendations is now customizable. You can now pick only the sections you want to see. Otherwise, it is pure W3C, with multiple clicks needed to get to what you want.

In the past, there has been a blanket demand for alt text for all images (at least by the accessiblity validating tools) that is up for change. Here’s one of the success criteria for non-text content.

Decoration, Formatting, Invisible: If non-text content is pure decoration, is used only for visual formatting, or is not presented to users, then it is implemented in a way that it can be ignored by assistive technology.

I fervently hope that this means if an image is decorative only, alt text will no longer be required to pass the validation tests for proof of accessibility. This is a needed step.

The success criteria for navigation by keyboard or with screen readers include:

This used to be called skip navigation. Now they are calling it “bypass blocks.” The criteria also include bypassing with structural elements such as headings. :

Providing heading elements at the beginning of each section of content (HTML)
Using structural elements to group links (HTML)
Using frame elements to group blocks of repeated material (HTML) AND Using the title attribute of the frame and iframe elements (HTML)
Using an expandable and collapsible menu (future link)

It will be interesting to see what the future information on expandable and collapsible menus becomes, with accordion panels becoming so popular on the web.

Summary of eHow articles for March

Welcome to Spring, and to that indescribable and delicious time of year known as SXSW Interactive. Here’s what I was thinking about during March at eHow.

Useful Links

A WCAG 2.0 Implemention site by Mike Cherim explains a bit about a AAA compliant site he made using WCAG 2.0 guidelines. You’ll find a link to the site. too.

SXSW Videos (not part of the official SXSW site) has lots of flavor for those who couldn’t make the event.

Hey ladies, want to go to business school? 10,000 Women is for you. Goldman Sachs says they want to help you get an MA or an MBA. Bravo to Goldman Sachs.

Earth’s climate is humanity’s operating system . . . what temperature we choose determines what functional calls we have, how stable the platform is, and what chances there are that we crash the OS and have to reboot. –Saul Griffith at How to Become Energy Literate and Battle Climate Change.

Arab Women’s Network is an interesting project helping Arab women learn to blog for a chance at an award and a role in the social media conversation.

WCAG Samurai Errata now finalized

The WCAG Samurai Errata published a final version of their suggested improvements. This is the work of a group of independent accessibility experts formed by Joe Clark to attempt to address shortcomings in the WCAG, a W3C recommendation from 1999. From the Introduction:

The first thing to understand is that you do not have to comply with these errata. The WCAG Samurai errata are an optional addition to WCAG 1, which we use as a base. You start by reading and understanding WCAG 1, then you read these errata as a correction to WCAG 1.

Read the Introduction for an overview and summary of the main points. Then you can get into the details. A few highlights of the recommendations by the Samurai are that you must comply with all Priority 1 and 2 guidelines, but you must not attempt to comply with Priority 3 guidelines. Layout tables, frames, and untagged PDF documents are banned. Video soundtracks must be captioned. Sites must use valid code and correct semantics for content.

There are separate documents for color and PDF.

If you do choose to comply with these guidelines, there is suggested phrasing for inclusion on your website. An example: “Our site is built to comply with WCAG+Samurai.” There is no mention of which tools are capable of making an evaluation such as this.

I’d like to see a standards advocacy group like the Web Standards Project or a Samurai-like group take on one more thing that is a constant concern to me. I use ads and other third party content on my site from sites like Amazon, Google, Flickr, and Yahoo. These third party sources do not provide valid HTML. Pressure on vendors to provide valid HTML would be an important project to improve the web. I know this wasn’t the aim of the WCAG Samurai, I’m just saying . . .

Useful links

Reset CSS from Eric Meyer has finally earned a home of its own at meyerweb. Now you won’t have keep track of each iteration, it will always be easy to find (thanks, Eric). He also created a permanent home for the CSS Diagnostic tools he’s known for.

Jon Tan has a really helpful article about using ems and elastic layouts. How to calculate font-size, layout width and all sorts of great em info. Elastic layouts are the most accessible of all layouts and this well-done article could help you or your students come to grips with the concepts.

Anatomy of a Digg at Infotropism, Kirrily Robert’s blog, tells you how to prepare for a traffic spike. Good advice even if you never get dugg. If you’re using WordPress, she suggests wp-cache, among other things. Some of the techniques are similar to those described by Michael Dame at HighEdWebDev when he described how Virginia Tech responded to the huge surge in hits after a gunman went on a rampage on that campus.

Save the Internet blog reports on a newly introduced bill to spur the discussion about net neutrality anew. With Comcast trying to promote the notion that they can “manage” your bandwidth requirements better than you can, maybe this bill will get people fired up about net neutrality again.

Accessibility and Disability Resources

Low Visionary is from a low vision blogger in New Zealand.

BBC Ouch! Disability Magazine has bloggers, podcasts, news, message boards, newsletters and a columnist called Disability Bitch.

A Ragged Edge Online has all sorts of disability information, not just in technology areas but it all of life’s areas.

Disability Studies: Temple U sports the worlds most valuable blogroll where accessibility is concerned. Again, the focus is broader than just web accessibility.