Web Access Centre Blog

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) have just announced that WCAG 2.0 is to go into Candidate Recommendation. This is the final stage before WCAG 2.0 formally takes over from WCAG 1.0. In Candidate Recommendation the community are invited to use the guidelines on their web projects and feedback to WAI their findings. This means that comments and feedback from Last Call have met a broad consensus and now you get to effectively test drive the guidlines before they are formalised and have the chance to feedback your findings to the WCAG Working Group.

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.

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 W3C Process stages are described in How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process.

The primary purpose of this CR stage is for developers and designers to “test drive” WCAG 2.0 to demonstrate that WCAG 2.0 can be implemented in Web sites. WAI encourages a broad range of Web sites and Web applications to use WCAG 2.0 at this stage, and share implementation experience. For information on submitting your implementations, see WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Implementation Information

If you plan to provide implementations, please let us know your intentions by 23 May 2008.
Actual implementations are due by 30 June 2008.

It is important to note that some WCAG 2.0 requirements are at risk; that is, they may not be included if there are not sufficient implementations. Items at risk are listed under “Items at Risk” in WCAG 2.0.

While the focus of this stage is to collect implementations, the comment form and email address are still available from Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents.

The different WCAG 2.0 documents that the WCAG Working Group updated with this publication are introduced in Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Documents.

A key tool for using WCAG 2.0 documents, which was previously called the “Quick Reference”, is:
How to Meet WCAG 2.0: A customizable quick reference to WCAG 2.0 requirements.

For more information about the Candidate Recommendation status of WCAG 2.0 and the changes since the last publication, see “Status of this Document” section of WCAG 2.0

WCAG 2.0 is part of a series of accessibility guidelines/standards developed by WAI, which are listed in WAI Guidelines and Techniques

At W4A today there was a demo given of WebAnywhere which is a free screen reader that can be accessed from any PC anywhere. Produced as part of the University of Washington and the WebInSight project from the Univeristy of Washington the software will be fully available in MAy 2008.

WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card.

All you need to do is switch a PC on, plug in your headphones, execute a couple of keyboard commands so that you open up the WebAnywhere home page, switch it on and away you go. What sets WebAnywhere apart from other text-to-speech software, free or otherwise, is that it can be used on any website rather than only sites where that software is installed.

This is fantastic on so many levels:

• Enables people who can’t afford costly screen readers to access the web
• Enables people with slight sight problems who don’t yet use a screen reader but may want audio support to have it
• You can use it on other PC’s and laptops if you’re traveling or unable to access your own i.e in libraries, schools and colleges
• Enables people with reading problems to get reading and audio support
• People browsing in a second language can use it to help understand written text
• Is an additional tool in the web developers toolbox when testing websites for accessibility

The software is also open source which is a huge bonus.

Visit their site to see WebAnywhere being demo’ed.

If you haven’t already booked to attend the first Accessibility 2.0 Conference, now would be a good time to do so. The conference, organised by AbilityNet will be held this Friday, 25th April, at City University, London.

The conference will focus on web accessibility in the Web 2.0 world. So if you’re involved in the development of social networking portals, sites using Ajax or rich in user generated content, it really should be in your diary.

AbilityNet have brought together an impressive line-up of experts on a wide range of issues that keep raising their heads whenever the words Accessibility and Web 2.0 crop up in the same sentence. The conference promises practical solutions to the Web 2.0 accessibility problems, showing cutting edge techniques and offering realistic solutions.

The Accessibility 2.0 web site, has full information on the schedule and how to book online. See you there!

I arrived at Web 4 All in Beijing this morning and one of the first people I bumped into was Charles Chen over at Google. Charles is the guy behind FireVox, the screen reader extension for FireFox, and has been busy working on a solution to incorporate translation into Google instant messaging in a way that makes it screen reader accessible. This means that a screen reader will be able to read it it the correct language and seemlessly jump between the two. Pretty impressive.

The tool is essentially your regular Google instant messaging box but with translation support added so you can have text translated on the fly. It works using ARIA and the AxsJAX library together with Google Translate.

To start using this all you need to do is add a translation feauture as a friend and chat as normal. When you send text it will appear in the original as well as the translate language. The ARIA support then allows the translated text to be read out loud by screen readers.

There are roughly 25 languages supported distinguished by their own two letter identifier in an email address. If you want to try it in Chinese, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. If you want to chat with someone you then just add them to the conversation and away you go.

We’re looking for another Web Accessibility Consultant to join our busy and growing team. You’ll have experience of working in a web-related environment and a familiarity with, and understanding of, the Web Content Accessibility guidelines (WCAG1 and WCAG2) published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

You’ll also have in-depth knowledge of HTML and CSS and will be comfortable discussing finer coding issues with website developers as well as being experienced accessibility specialists with expertise in providing accessibility consultancy
services to blue chip organisations. You’ll carry out accessibility audits and deliver reports for clients, provide first line support and answer general technical queries about web accessibility, keeping abreast of relevant trends and developments.

To find out more and apply (quote 4711) or email recruitment@rnib.org.uk or call 020 7391 2363.
Closing date: 17 April 2008.

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