Web Access Centre Blog

Websites that have been awarded the See it Right logo now have access to information on the real world benefits they provide.

The See it Right logo page has links to explain the practical benefits that users can expect to find in a See it Right accessible website as well as how achieving this standard of accessibility can benefit website owners, and the current list of See it Right logo holders.

The page on benefits for users is particularly useful, as it can form the basis of an accessibility help section for sites that have the See it Right logo. It’s written from the user perspective, telling visitors what steps have been taken to ensure their access to information and functionality on the website.

I’m really pleased to say that I’ve been accepted into the Web Standards Project (WaSP) International Liaison Group (ILG).

Whilst always having an eye on making web sites accessible with a view to what’s going on globally, this gives me a great opportunity to roll my sleeves up and start looking at how standards work together to make the web more available regardless of who’s accessing, where and how.

Internationalization (referred to as i18n for short) looks at how to make web technologies work with different languages, scripts, and cultures. It’s a web standard, just as web accessibility and the mobile web are, promoted by the W3C as well as WaSP.

I’m looking forward to learning from the impressive list of people from around the world involved in ILG whilst contributing to both the group and everybody I work with on a day to day basis. Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing more about what i18n is and how it helps not just your users but also your business and is an integral part of good web design for all.

For more information visit:

WaSP International Liaison Working Group

W3C Internationalization Working Group

Internationalization Quick Tips for the Web, W3C

The W3C today released a press release annoucing that it has opened an office in Pretoria, South Africa. This comes as a welcome addition to its ever increasing number of offices around the world which now totals 17. W3C also took the opportunity to invite technical experts of South Africa’s rapidly growing economy to join its web standardization activities for W3C technologies, accessibility, internationalization and the mobile web.

To learn more about the W3C South Africa office, read the press release, and find out more about how to participate visit the W3C website for news and the press release.

Over the last few months I’ve been closely watching the progress of the December 2006 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This marks an exciting shift in the accessibility arena as it is the first time that accessibility is mentioned in an international human rights initiative. While the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) publishes technical guidelines on how to make websites accessible there has been no global movement to date that outlines the framework of what must be done.

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Across the world, millions of PDFs are generated every day. Organisations, businesses and governments use them, small companies and individuals use them - they are everywhere, but why?

Printing - paper is still very popular and PDFs print out reliably.
Protection - the information is locked.
Design - a company can implement its corporate branding guidelines and know that everyone seeing that document is getting the same experience.
Foolproof - its not complicated to create a PDF, just a couple of clicks and its done.

PDF’s should really be intended for reading in their printed format and not on screen. This becomes even more relevant for screen reader users.

As a screen reader user myself I’ve hit up against lots of problems trying to access and read information presented in PDFs. More often than not PDFs are much harder to navigate and read than other document formats and leave me confused or doubting the accuracy of what I’m hearing.

Help is at hand - we’ve produced Accessing PDF using JAWS: a users guide.

This guide is aimed at you the screen reader user, those people who support you and of course policy makers and IT managers. The guide is from a screen reader users’ perspective and sets out tips on reading PDFs, Adobe’s official guidelines, what’s inside a PDF, links to conversion resources and a section that somewhat bravely comments on the legal aspects.

Please use the guide and tell us what you think and share any tips you may have.

Together we can make PDFs what they were designed to be: a way of sharing information irrespective of location or platform.

Hugh