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

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.

Committed to diversity. Reg. Charity No. 226227.

As many of you may now have heard Dr John Slatin has passed away on Monday night. He was one of the original accessibility advocates, co-chair of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group in 2005 and 2006 as well as author of “Maximising accessibility”. He was a familiar face at South by South West where he gave panels and presentations on topics such as “Can Stevie Wonder see your website” as well as many other conferences.

He was an inspiration to all of us here and will be missed.

At the start of February I presented at Techshare in Delhi, India’s first ever conference for technology for people with disabilities. It was an eye opening event with people gathered from both government, industry and non-profit from all over India and the world.

It was fascinating to learn about what is happening in India with regards to web accessibility and talk to different people, learn what the drivers are and what needs to be done to promote accessibility. As an invited guest blogger on the UN Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT) I pulled these thoughts into an article. This, I hope, will be the first of a series of articles looking at web accessibility in various locales. Next will be China as I’ll be speaking about the cross over between web and mobile accessibility at the WWW 2008 Conference and gathering information there in April.

Read Putting accessibility to information centre stage in India

Updated drafts of the Authoring Tool Accessiblity Guidelines 2.0 and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Techniques documents were released today.

ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; it also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use the tools. ATAG is introduced in the ATAG Overview

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

WAI encourages you to review the update ATAG 2.0 documents and submit comments on any issues that you think could present a barrier to future adoption and implementation of ATAG 2.0. Please send comments by 14 April 2008 to the comment list, which is publicly archived.

Please read, and comment. These guidelines are just as important as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

This is the news many of us have been waiting for. The announcement that in Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft will be supporting the WAI ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) Syntax.
ARIA is essential to the future of accessible applications on the Internet as it enables developers to define custom controls correctly. This in turn means that access technologies can understand them. The fact that Microsoft are now joining others in supporting ARIA is great news!

Find out more about Microsoft support for ARIA.

So we’ve taken the plunge and set up a group on Facebook and have started to tweet on Twitter!

After much to-ing and fro-ing we thought why not, if people want to follow what we are doing via these channels then what’s to stop us. Don’t worry if you’re not using Facebook or Twitter though - you wont miss anything as all content there is also available and accessible in the Web Access Centre and blog. You can also keep tabs on us by using our RSS feed as well.

E-Access Bulletin has reported that a new British Standard for Accessible websites is to be written.

Back in March 2006 ‘PAS 78: a guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites’ was published by the British Standards Institute (BSi). With Julie Howell, formally of RNIB, as Technical Author PAS 78 was originally commissioned by the Disability Rights Commission, now the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

E-Access reported:

The new standard will relate to procurement or development of accessible websites. It will not set out the technical requirements of accessibility, but will outline a process developers can follow to ensure they are taking all the right actions to make their websites and services as inclusive as possible. In an exclusive interview with E-Access Bulletin published in this issue, Julie Howell says BSi would like the standard to be based on PAS78 but she is also keen to widen it to embrace some of the new types of web service such as social networking. Other issues to be revisited from the PAS include the need for user testing of websites by disabled people; and the need for organisations to produce an accessibility policy.

PAS 78 has been a key document in any website owner or developers toolbox and has been widely recognised all over the world. The web has shifted considerably since March 2006 with Web 2.0 and Social Networking taking over the space. It will be great to see a refresh of such a useful resource taking into account all these changes.

Read the full story of PAS 78’s history so far

Download a copy of the existing PAS 78 for free

At the end of the week I’ll be on the road speaking and attending a number of conferences taking me through to March.

First up is the first ever Techshare India in New Delhi. Techshare is all about technology and accessibility (web, mobile, software, audio, Daisy…) and I’m really looking forward to learning more about what is going on in India specifically and Asia in general. I’ll be giving a workshop on “Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0″ as well as presenting with Brian Hardy from Vision Australia on “Government Web Accessibility Policies”.

After a little bit of time chilling in Goa (yay) and a quick pit stop in the office, I’ll be heading off to SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas. This will be my first year there and I’m looking forward to hearing the great and the good talking about all things web. Most of all I’m looking forward to hearing from Tim Guest, author of Second Lives. I’ll be co-chairing a Core Conversation on “Global Design: Web Sites for the World” with Glenda Sims who is lead of the Web Standard Project International Liaison Working Group which I also contribute to.

Straight after that I’m off to CSUN in LA which is the largest conference about technology for people with disabilities. This is always quite the event and a great opportunity to catch up with the latest technologies as well as familiar faces. I’ll be taking some time out after that to drive up the coast and spend some time skiing before heading up to San Francisco.

So if you are going to be out and about drop me a line, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of meet ups in the evenings to make the most of!