Web Access Centre Blog

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) published a Working Draft of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 yesterday.

The following is taken from the email sent to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Interest Group:

ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use the tools. An overview of ATAG is available for those who are new to the guidelines.

In this update, Part A, which addresses authoring tool user interface accessibility, is refocused. Part B is restructured to replace the concept of “Web Content Accessibility Benchmark” with a more straightforward relationship with WCAG 2.0. The Working Group welcomes feedback on these changes.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) encourages you to review the updated 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 6th January 2009 to the comment list, which is publicly archived.

Further Reading

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG)
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Interest Group
• How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process

Everybody loves a good analogy and surprise surprise I’m no different! I want to revisit an issue that I’m sure has been raised numerous times before – the differences between guidelines and user testing and the benefits of each. Now feels like an important time to talk about this again given the imminent release of the next version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). At the recent Accessibility 2.0 conference held by AbilityNet, there was also some talk of how useful guidelines actually were compared to user testing, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to put my opinion out there.

So, with all that in mind, let’s talk about food instead!

Continue Reading »

Chris Mills, who looks after Dev Opera has gathered together the great and the good from the world of the web and developed the first instalment of the Web Standards Curriculum.

The Opera Web Standards Curriculum is an education program to help propagate best practices and increase web standards usage on the web. It provides a thorough grounding in all the skills you need to be a proficient front end developer, including web background theory, in-depth HTML and CSS, design principles and introductory DOM/JavaScript.

This is a fantastic resource aimed at web developers, designers, students, educators; just anyone who wants to learn web design the right way. Whether you’re starting out or simply want to refresh your understanding this is the place to go. Written by experts such as Mark Norman Francis, Jonathan Lane, Linda Goin, Paul Haine, Roger Johansson, Ben Buchanan, Jenifer Hanen, Craig Grannell and Christian Heilmann you can hardly go wrong.

Presented as if you are working on a project from start to finish, the Web Standards Curriculum is broken down into a series of articles taking you from information architecture and wire-framing through to design and build of pages using (X)HTML, CSS and so on. It kicks off with some necessary scene setting describing the origins of the Internet and the Web which in turn provides the backdrop for the rationale of why we need web standards. What’s so great is that while you can opt to read the Curriculum from start to finish you can also just dip into it as it works just as well as modules.

I particularly liked the articles about colour theory, colour schemes and design mock-ups. While I may understand colour from an accessibility point of view this opened up my understanding of how uses of colour can be manipulated to enhance typography, forms, lists, tables and images, all of which are covered in more depth in other articles.

All this lovely goodness doesn’t stop there however. In total there will be fifty plus articles with future additions planned to cover accessibility, CSS and JavaScript. The Web Standards Curriculum will also be maintained to ensure that you get the most up to date information. The best bit however is that it’s for you to use not just as a resource for yourself, but also when teaching others either in schools and colleges or at work.

Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum is also supported by the Web Standards Project (WaSP) who are themselves developing The Curriculum Project. This will be a resource that is intended to be used by those in education, as well as anyone needing to update knowledge on web related technologies.

As Glenda Sims, Senior Systems Analyst University of Texas, and co-lead of WaSP says of Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum says:

Web development and design are ever evolving professions. Anyone teaching these subjects must ask themselves if they are equipping their students with best practices or burdening them with impractical methodologies. All of us in this field can benefit from this resource and use it as a catalyst to further the W3C vision of ‘Web for Everyone. Web on Everything.

Enjoy, share, teach and be part of the movement to build a better web!

Further resources

• Dev.Opera - Dev Opera is a community resource site where developers can share tips, tricks, extensions and more.
• Web Standards Project (WaSP) - a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
• Business Case for Web Standards wiki - a resource that logs case studies and information supporting the business case for web standards.
• A List Apart - A List Apart Magazine explores the design, development and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
• WebAim - Web Accessibility In Mind.

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!