Download WAI Best Practices Exchange Training Introduction

Accessibility
Better, 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
Web Content
(WCAG)
Authoring Tool
(ATAG)
User Agent
(UAAG)
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.”
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
Good
Bad
Good
Bad
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
Accessibility
Better, Faster, Cheaper
Shawn Lawton Henry