We are pleased to announce new dates for our popular web accessibility training courses for the remainder of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. We offer five courses in total: Day 1: Demystifying accessibility. Day 2: Working through WCAG 2.0. Day 3: Accessibility - beyond the basics. Day 4: Practical accessibility testing. Day 5: Accessible Rich Internet Applications - understand and use WAI-ARIA. The courses will be held on the following dates and locations: Cardiff; 20 to 24 September 2010. Edinburgh; 18 to 22 October 2010. London; 22 to 26 November 2010. Liverpool; 13 to 17 December 2010. Cardiff; 17 to 21 January 2011. Edinburgh; 21 to 25 February 2011. London; 7 to 11 March 2011. Please visit our main web accessibility training page for a general over view of our courses...
Read more about RNIB Web Accessibility Training Courses.
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Posted at: 27/07/2010 12:00 PM by Marco Ranon
After a number of months away, we're really pleased to have the Web Access Centre blog back up and running! We're planning a series of new posts but we thought we'd start by moving all of the legacy posts and comments over from our previous blog first. We know these are an extremely valuable resource for many current and future web designers and developers interested in learning more about accessibility. Unfortunately, due to constraints around our current and previous systems, we need to move this content over by hand. Please bear with us whilst we get it all in place over the next few weeks. Comments won't have the original author's name next to them we're afraid, but the conversation and points added to the original post will still be intact. If you're new to the Web Access Centre, here's just a little bit of information about what we do. The Web Access Team is part of the RNIB's Access Consultancy Services...
Read more about Welcome to the new WAC blog!.
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Posted at: 28/04/2010 1:03 PM by Verity Cork
By henny Today I attended a presentation at CSUN on Creating Blogs, Podcasts and Use of Social Media Tools with Screen Readers presented by Mika Pyyhkala from the Association of Blind Citizens. The focus of the session was to walk blind and partially sighted users through how to blog using Wordpress, use Twitter, Facebook and what poscasting tools there were out there. It was a really well thought out presentation which was written up in a Wordpress blog together with tools, resources and links. This was made all the better as everyone was sat at a laptop or PC all of which had a screen reader running. Twitter was the area Mika seemed most excited about and talked the most in depth about. In fact his enthusiasm was such that when he asked how many people in the room used Twitter only two said yes. By the end of the session people were signing up and following his feed...
Read more about Creating Blogs, Podcasts and Use of Social Media Tools with Screen Readers.
Tag: Access technology
Posted at: 13/03/2008 10:45 PM by Verity Cork
By henny With the help of Barrier Break Technologies we have pulled together a list of Jaws and WindowEyes keystrokes for Flash and PDF. These are based on certain versions of each screen reader, Flash and PDF. Most of these are standard keystrokes but useful to flag within the context of using or testing accessible Flash and PDF. Also included are some useful links. We'd be interested to hear your feedback, how you get on with the keystrokes, or if you have any more tips and advice that others may find useful. JAWS keystrokes for PDF Following is the list of JAWS 7.0 keystrokes for PDF 7...
Read more about Jaws and WindowEyes keystrokes for Flash and PDF.
Tag: Access technology
Posted at: 6/03/2008 12:05 PM by Verity Cork
By Bim In the last two months I've come across more examples of the LONGDESC attribute in use, than I've seen in as many previous years. Due to this apparent rise in its popularity, this seems like a good time to look at when the LONGDESC can be useful, and when it's just a waste of code. This seems to deserve an airing because, in the eleven times I've encountered it this year, only one functioned as it should. The other ten either couldn't function, or had no description to offer. With that in mind, lets look first at the purpose and correct way to add a LONGDESC to an image. What is a LONGDESC? It's no more than a long description for acomplex image. When there's so much information within an image, that the ALT attribute would be too long, the LONGDESC gives you the opportunity to provide a subtle link to a different page, where the image is fully described. The value applied to the LONGDESC attribute needs to be the uri of the descriptive HTML or text page...
Read more about The rise and fall of the LONGDESC.
Tag: Too much accessibility
Posted at: 12/02/2008 6:13 PM by Dave Wailing
By henny The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has just published some great resources on the cross overs between the mobile web and accessibility. The good news is that reading through these you'll see how designing with accessibility in mind makes your site work much better on mobile devices and that if you follow mobile web best practices you will already be enhancing the web accessibility of your site. Yet another nugget to add to the business case for web accessibility or mobile web best practices. This really does show how standards are mutually supportive and work together killing two birds with one stone: Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines First Public Working Draft It doesn't stop there however...
Read more about Is your content accessible and mobile?.
Tag: WCAG
Posted at: 23/01/2008 5:06 PM by Sarah Raisanen
By henny The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has been hard at work over the last few months to review comments submitted in response to thier previous Last Call. Below are the details of the next Last Call, how you can provide feedback and information about other documents that have also been updated: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group invites you to review the second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft published on 11 December 2007. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make Web sites, applications, and other content accessible to people with disabilities. Please submit any comments on the second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft by 1 February 2008. This second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft is provided for public review of the document now that it has all resolutions from previous comments incorporated...
Read more about Call for Review: WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft.
Tag: WCAG
Posted at: 12/12/2007 5:39 PM by Sarah Raisanen
By henny The Web Accessibility Initiative have just published a set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 presentation materials. The presentation "slides" and extensive notes are designed for presenters to use for their own presentations and is also available for anyone who wants to learn about WCAG 2.0. Topics covered are: the benefits of WCAG 2.0 shortcuts for using WCAG 2.0 how it differs from WCAG 1.0 related topics The About WCAG 2.0 presentation is available in "Presentation format" (compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint, Open Office Impress, and some other presentation software) or "Web format" (HTML/CSS) the presentation, notes and instructions can be downloaded from the WAI site. ...
Read more about WCAG 2.0 Presentation Materials .
Tag: WCAG
Posted at: 1/11/2007 3:12 PM by Sarah Raisanen
By bim At Techshare 2007 I had the honour of being allowed to speak on one of my hot topics within the field of web accessibility. The presentation, on how to avoid some of the hidden barriers that make web sites difficult for disabled people who don't have the benefit of screen readers was well received, (phew), and I promised to make it available as a download.. . So for those of you who have been expecting it, and anyone else who's curious, download Avoid the hidden barriers to accessibility (zip file) 495KB. Please note: Use Internet Explorer to view the presentation. It refers to issues that don't affect other browsers. Thanks to Sheena for pointing out that I hadn't given enough emphasis to this point. Lastly, many thanks to all of you who attended Techshare 2007, perhaps had no homes to go to, and stayed for my presentation, which was in the last time slot of the last day of the conference. ...
Read more about Avoid the hidden barriers - presentation download.
Tag: Access technology
Posted at: 21/10/2007 5:58 PM by Verity Cork
By henny In June 5th of this year Shawn Henry from the World Wide Web (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) presented on "What's new, WCAG 2.0, and current issues" hosted by RNIB in London. Shawn gave a great overview of what is happening with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2 (WCAG 2.0) as well as spent some time answering some really interesting questions from the audience. It's taken a bit of time to get the transcript finalised (see an earlier post on the trials and tribulations of podcast transcription) but we're there now. A huge thank you to Stuart Colville of Muffin Research who helped organise the even and the University of Westminster where it was held. What follows is a transcript of the talk. Henny Swan: Hello and thank you very much for coming tonight. Lots of familiar faces and some new faces, which is great. My name's Henny Swan; I'm Senior Web Accessibility Consultant, RNIB, where we carry out audits, consultancy, and training...
Read more about "What's new, WCAG 2.0, and current issues" by Shawn Henry from W3C WAI.
Tag: WCAG
Posted at: 27/09/2007 7:10 AM by Sarah Raisanen