Web Access Centre Blog

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.

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

I’m at the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Plenary which is held during the W3C working groups annual meetings week, a time when we gather to have face-to-face meetings to discuss the work we are doing (I’m in the Education and Outreach Working Group in the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Being an organisation that sets standards for the web it’s unsurprising that one of the lightning talks, given by TV Raman from Google, touched upon the very essence of what W3C do and asked the question what makes standards succeed?

Whether you’re into web accessibility, mobile best practice, internationalisation or software accessibility (or a combination of the above) you’ll be dealing with standards and their implementation every day. Raman was very clear in saying “standards that work are ones that allow you to build on what you have done” and suggested the following are essential ingredients:

• Adaptation within the community
• Adaptation outside the target community
• Adaptation by follow-on work

We all bring something to the table whether you are a designer, developer, content editor, marketing person, manager, advocate, consultant, trainer the list goes on. But I’m curious to know, what do you think makes standards succeed?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Christian Heilmann, over at Yahoo! has set up a Wiki dedicated to the business case for web standards.

Now I’m really happy about this not just because of the power of the Wiki but also because it is about web standards in general and not just the business case for web accessibility. Accessible web design really is an integral part of a greater whole. Christian has also pinpointed a subtlety that myself and my team encounter every day which is of putting together a business case that is relevant to the audience you are talking to:

The first problem I realized is that a lot of presentations start from the premise that the person we are trying to convince knows and is interested in web standards. This might not be the case, therefore I am thinking that we need to approach the sale with the premise that we need to solve the issues the person has and find the solutions web standards provide that relate to these.

So whether you are putting a business case together for the budget holder in your organisation or aiming to get buy-in form your developers and designers the approach, or sale, needs to be well thought through, tailored and pitched to address their particular concerns. This Wiki is a great place to start together with some background on the business case in the Web Access Centre as well as resources on the business case from the Web Accessibility Initiative.

It’s a great resource, enjoy!