CSS for Accessibility by Ann McMeekin

Day 13 of 24 Ways brings us CSS for Acces­si­bil­ity by Ann McMeekin. Ann dis­cusses the proper use of line-height for users with dyslexia and how to use the :focus pseudo class to let key­board users (even those using Inter­net Explorer) know when they are focused on a link.

Personas of Persons with Disabilities

I recently pre­sented on dis­abil­ity aware­ness in build­ing acces­si­ble web­sites to a group of inter­ac­tion design­ers. At the end, I was asked about exam­ples of a spe­cific per­son with a dis­abil­i­ties as well as design con­sid­er­a­tions for that per­son. This is what I found:

Per­sonas of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties and Rec­om­mended Design Considerations

• Fluid, a user expe­ri­ence project for open source projects, cre­ated the per­sona of Sara Wind­sor, a fac­ulty mem­ber who is blind and out­lines some con­sid­er­a­tions in design­ing an acces­si­ble user expe­ri­ence for her.
• Liv­ing with Dis­abil­i­ties, pro­files for a blind per­son, low vision, hear­ing impaired, motor con­trol impaired, and cog­ni­tively chal­lenged, with design con­sid­er­a­tions for each– from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Per­sonas of Per­sons with Disabilities

• Two per­sonas– Roger Retiree and Kim, College-Student
• Exam­ples for Per­sonas from a Web Acces­si­bil­ity Project (PDF) , fea­tur­ing Tracy Young rep­re­sent­ing young peo­ple with visual impair­ments and Ger­ald Old­man rep­re­sent­ing old peo­ple with disabilities.
• Dis­abled Per­sonas from JA-SIG includ­ing Brent Blind­man, Melissa Motorim­paired and Clark Colorblind.
• Uni­fied Mod­el­ing Lan­guage Actors: “Per­sonas with Dis­abil­i­ties”, I’m not sure what the title means, but this arti­cle con­tains a list of per­sonas and a descrip­tion of how they were created.
• The WAI has a draft of the per­sonas that they used in their redesign, includ­ing a per­son with a disability

Regard­less of whether or not you use per­sonas, the exam­ples are help­ful to go through to bet­ter under­stand acces­si­bil­ity from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, even though that per­spec­tive is that of a make believe person.

If the per­sonas aren’t doing it for you, take a gan­der at some of these videos and expe­ri­ences to get a bet­ter feel for how per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties access the web:

• Assis­tive­Ware videos on com­puter acces­si­bil­ity, don’t miss the user pro­files of the peo­ple in the videos (via Roger Johans­son).
• WebAIM Dis­abil­ity Simulations
• Screen reader and screen mag­ni­fi­ca­tion videos

Addi­tional Resources

• Includ­ing Acces­si­bil­ity Con­sid­er­a­tions in Personas
• Usabil­ity: more than skin deep from Lisa Her­rod (audio avail­able here)
• How many users with dis­abil­i­ties should you include when con­duct­ing a usabil­ity test for accessibility?
• Per­sonas on Wikipedia
• From Where I Sit” Video Series, eight stu­dents from the Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences in the col­lege class­room as stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties (via Do-IT Videos page)

Icons, Symbols and Cognitive Disabilities

Guide­line 1.3 Cre­ate con­tent that can be pre­sented in dif­fer­ent ways (for exam­ple spo­ken aloud, sim­pler lay­out, etc.) with­out los­ing infor­ma­tion or structure

Draft Guide­line 1.3 of the Web Con­tent Acces­si­bil­ity Guide­lines 2.0 dis­cusses the impor­tance of mak­ing infor­ma­tion avail­able in a form that can be per­ceived by the user– either directly or through an assis­tive tech­nol­ogy. For exam­ple, if a site uses an image to con­vey mean­ing, then the alt text should be present so that it can be seen (in a text-only envi­ron­ment), heard (by a screen reader) or even felt (through a refre­sh­able braille dis­play). This per­tains to both pre­sen­ta­tion and structure.

The tech­nolo­gies men­tioned above– text-only browsers, screen read­ers and elec­tronic braille– all do a good job at pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion to the appro­pri­ate audi­ence. How­ever, what about users with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties? Text read aloud may be help­ful in some sit­u­a­tions, but what about a graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of con­tent? There are already some efforts in this area with the Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide sym­bol sup­ported browser that claims to be able to rep­re­sent over 29,000 words with sym­bols and while I applaud their efforts, with a Windows-only, pro­pri­etary, subscription-based prod­uct, I doubt there will be any wide­spread adop­tion in the near future.

Per­haps one day there will be an open sys­tem that will facil­i­tate the col­lec­tion and use of sym­bols in every­day tools. Until then, here are some other project/ideas that are explor­ing the use of symbols:

• Merriam-Webster Visual Dic­tio­nary
  Over 6,000 images orga­nized hier­ar­chi­cally under 15 major themes
  
• Zlango Over 200 icons divided into 8 major cat­e­gories devel­oped for use on mobile devices. Read Romeo and Juliet in Zlango speak.
  
• sosym­bol There isn’t a lot of infor­ma­tion on this site, but they do have a col­lec­tion of stan­dard­ized icons and you can con­tribute your own using their online sym­bol cre­ator after you have logged in.
  
• Icon­finder Icon search engine
• Sym­bol Signs from the AIGA 50 freely avail­able passenger/pedestrian symbols.
• Symbols.com Sim­ple sym­bols for a num­ber of words.

Does your mail client support email standards?

Email Stan­dards Project

The Email Stan­dards Project works with email client devel­op­ers and the design com­mu­nity to improve web stan­dards sup­port and acces­si­bil­ity in email.

Online Video Captions

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have announced their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Inter­net Cap­tion­ing Forum (ICF) estab­lished to pro­mote the use of cap­tion­ing for online video. They will be work­ing with the National Cen­ter for Acces­si­ble Media (NCAM) at WGBH Boston. You can read quotes from Vint Cerf and other rep­re­sen­ta­tives from each of the big four at the National Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy Inno­va­tion regard­ing the effort.

I am nei­ther deaf or hard or hear­ing, but the cap­tions are almost always on when the tele­vi­sion is on in our home. I enjoy the view­ing expe­ri­ence and miss fewer words mum­bled here and there when I can look down and glance at the words when needed.

Google video cur­rently pro­vides detailed instruc­tions on adding cap­tion­ing to videos. Addi­tion­ally, in the Google Video Help Cen­ter, this ques­tions is asked, “Do you gen­er­ate captions/subtitles for my video?” and the answer they pro­vide is a promis­ing “Not at this time.” They also have a sec­tion where you can view exam­ples of cap­tioned videos.

NCAM Press Release

(hat tip: The Assis­tive Tech­nol­ogy Blog)

Alt Text, Less Can be More

Aaron Can­non at NorthTemple.com offers insight from the per­spec­tive of a blind user on the impor­tance of alt text. First from Aaron, as quoted by Ted Boren:

For some rea­son, some folks get it into their heads that being blind is really ter­ri­ble and the only way our lives can be whole is for us to have all the pretty pic­tures in the world described to us. Where, in actu­al­ity, most blind folks couldn’t care less about most of it.

Aaron then expounds:

…if there was a pic­ture of a man using a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, I’m really not inter­ested in hear­ing “pic­ture of a man look­ing pleased as punch to be using the new ultra-lite USB hair drier,” or worse, “pic­ture of a man.” I really don’t care about what image the design­ers chose to use as eye-candy. I can’t see them, and descrip­tions of mean­ing­less images just waste my time and delay my get­ting to the infor­ma­tion I’m really inter­ested in.

Read the entire post for an apt com­par­i­son of web acces­si­bil­ity to bread mak­ing. Thanks Aaron, I’ll think twice the next time I feel an urge to wax poetic in my alt text.

Acces­si­bil­ity guide­lines make clear that null alt text should be used for images that do not con­vey mean­ing, dec­o­ra­tive images. Is the point at which an image goes from mean­ing­ful to mean­ing­less unclear to any­one else?

Using Symbols to Access the Web

From the AT Tech­NET @ VCU: Assis­tive Tech­nol­ogy Blog, a link to Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide, the first symbol-supported web browser. Every­thing hap­pens in the browser where you can view pages in nor­mal view, with plain text or using sym­bols. Their icon library con­tains over 29,000 words. It also reads any text that you highlight.

Is this type of tech­nol­ogy the answer for some users with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties? What about a poten­tial user who can’t access your mate­r­ial even when you have gone great lengths to sim­plify your writ­ing. Also, while indi­vid­ual sites may pro­vide their own visual ele­ments to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent ideas, is their value is hav­ing a stan­dard set of icons? Per­haps the ideas would be to allow users to asso­ciate sym­bols with the words them­selves, or at least have the option to over­ride the default icon.

Com­mu­ni­cate: Web­wide is pro­vided on a sub­scrip­tion model and is PC-only (30-day demo available).

Does it work with any site? Prob­a­bly not, from their guidelines:

While Web­wide inter­prets clear, well-written HTML; some lay­outs and styles will be more effec­tive than oth­ers. To this end, we will be pro­duc­ing guide­lines for web design­ers who would like to make their infor­ma­tion acces­si­ble through Webwide.

Hope­fully their guide­lines are in line with already estab­lished web stan­dards and guidelines.

The Other Web Accessibility 2.0

There is plenty of dis­cus­sion hap­pen­ing on the upcom­ing ver­sion 2.0 of the WCAG. For­tu­nately, there has also been some good dis­cus­sion regard­ing impact of the Web 2.0-volution on acces­si­bil­ity. The rush to ajax­ify user inter­ac­tions and the open­ing of the flood­gates of user con­tributed flood­gates has not nec­es­sar­ily been a good thing for accessibility.

Bruce Law­son noted his con­cerns back in 2005:

I also worry about acces­si­bil­ity. It strikes me that peo­ple are so busy adding extra Ajax love­li­ness that the separatestripped-down “html-only” ver­sions they offer are unthink­ingly accepted as a legit­i­mate sop to peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. We reject sep­a­rate “text-only sites” in Web 1.0 ; why should we accept them in “Web 2.0″?

Roger Johans­son echoes those sen­ti­ments (with some good com­men­tary from his readers):

There is some truth to Bruce’s obser­va­tions, and it would be a sad step back­wards if the per­ceived cool­ness of “Web 2.0” brings back the old days of non-graceful degradation.

Ian Lloyd com­ments with a post titled, AJAX, Acces­si­bil­ity & Screen Read­ers:

There’s some­thing of an oxy­moron going on there in the head­ing. Can you spot it? The words ‘acces­si­bil­ity’ and ‘AJAX’. They really are not the best of bed fel­lows, as many peo­ple have discovered.

Joe Clark pro­vided notes from a pre­sen­ta­tion titled Build Half a Prod­uct: Is Ajax acces­si­ble? At all?, includ­ing the results of some usabil­ity tests on pop­u­lar Web 2.0 appli­ca­tion Base­camp.

There’s more where all of that came from:

• AJAX and Screen­read­ers: When Can it Work? by James Edwards,
• AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity Overview from Becky Gibson,
• AJAX and Acces­si­bil­ity from Peter Krantz,
• Is AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity a major issue? by Chris Cor­nutt (also note some of the other posts in their acces­si­bil­ity cat­e­gory),
• Web 2.0: A step back­wards for acces­si­bil­ity? by Cath Everett, and
• Devel­op­ers Work­ing to Over­come AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity Issues by Dar­ryl K. Taft.

Every­one seems to agree that there is a prob­lem. For­tu­nately there are also some great resources to set you in the right direc­tion if you are work­ing to cre­ate an acces­si­ble Web 2.0 application:

• Acces­si­bil­ity of AJAX Appli­ca­tions from WebAIM,
• Web 2.0 & Acces­si­bil­ity for Dis­abled Users by Kath Moonan,
• Acces­si­ble Web 2.0 Appli­ca­tions with WAI‑ARIA by Mar­tin Kliehm, and
• a great list of other resources from Max Kiesler (via find­abil­ity).

In this out­dated com­ment on Bruce Lawson’s above post, some­one from Wild Apri­cot states:

Unfor­tu­nately, we could not afford to make the sys­tem back­end sup­port all the acces­si­bil­ity stan­dards because it would mean two or three times more cod­ing (not 10% or 25% — and I am NOT exag­ger­at­ing). Cre­at­ing inter­ac­tive AND usable inter­faces is very hard — and I do not know if many devel­op­ers can man­age to do it on their own. Devel­op­ment frame­works and browsers have to help too.

What is your expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing acces­si­ble Web 2.0 sites or appli­ca­tions? What AJAX/Javascript frame­works do you use that encour­age acces­si­ble best prac­tices? What are some good exam­ples of acces­si­ble Web 2.0 experiences?

Where to Discuss Accessibility– Forums, Mailing Lists and Blogs

Let’s say that you have a burn­ing acces­si­bil­ity ques­tion that you are dying to ask some­one and your roommate/spouse/pet are no help at all– where do you go? Here are a few good places to start:

• Acces­sify Forums from the good folks at Acces­sify. The forum has been around since August of 2003 and has over 6000 mem­bers and more than 50,000 posts. If your ques­tion hasn’t already been asked and answered, chances are there is some­one hang­ing out over there who can answer it. The top­ics range from begin­ner to expert and runs on a mod­i­fied ver­sion of phpBB.
• Web Acces­si­bil­ity E-mail Dis­cus­sion List from WebAIM. The list archives show that the first posts showed up in Novem­ber of 2003 and there have been hun­dreds of posts since then, with over 1400 posts that include “pdf” alone! If you are not a list­serv per­son, you can also use their WebAIM Acces­si­bil­ity Forums run­ning on PunBB.
  (Update 9/13 The WebAIM List started in 1999)
• The Guild of Acces­si­ble Web Devel­op­ers offers a few meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but they are pri­mar­ily off-limits to any­one who is not a mem­ber. GAWDS has an IRC chan­nel #gawds on irc.freenode.net as well as a forum and mail­ing list that are both for mem­bers only. I am not a mem­ber, so I don’t know how much any of these are used– any­one have more infor­ma­tion on any of these resources?
• The UACCESS-L list­serv from the Trace Cen­ter is per­haps more gen­eral as a “dis­cus­sion of uni­ver­sal access to infor­ma­tion sys­tems” list with posts in the archive going back to Decem­ber of 1998. They also have a sep­a­rate Sec­tion 508 list­serv.
• The Web Acces­si­bil­ity Ini­tia­tive Inter­est Group (WAI IG) mail­ing list may not be for every­one, but the archives there go back to April of 1997 with thou­sands of posts. The WAI also has a num­ber of other groups, includ­ing the WCAG Work­ing Group.

If none of those suit your fancy, there are a few other options. Some of the largest web devel­oper com­mu­ni­ties have forums specif­i­cally for acces­si­bil­ity issues, such as the acces­si­bil­ity and usabil­ity forum at the Web­mas­ter World and the acces­si­bil­ity forum at Webdeveloper.com. Even if there isn’t a spe­cific forum at your favorite web devel­op­ment form, peo­ple are likely still talk­ing about acces­si­bil­ity (from Dev Shed).

Also, while you may not be able to ini­ti­ate the dis­cus­sion, there are always lots of great dis­cus­sions hap­pen­ing at your favorite acces­si­bil­ity blog (thanks Jared) or web mag­a­zine.

If you are look­ing for a more spe­cific cat­e­gory of acces­si­bil­ity, it may be out there some­where as well. For exam­ples, check out the fairly active Yahoo! Group on Cap­tion­ing or the Java Access list­serv from Sun Microsys­tems. Sim­i­larly, there are a num­ber dis­cus­sion lists and forums that are spe­cific to a dis­abil­ity pop­u­la­tion, such as the Com­puter Use by and for the Blind list

Lastly, don’t miss out on any local groups. There are a num­ber of uni­ver­sity and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide venues to dis­cuss acces­si­bil­ity issues with peo­ple in your own back­yard– any­one from the Phillip­ines?

Where do you go to ask that burn­ing acces­si­bil­ity question?

10 Reasons People Care About Accessibility

I don’t know why you are read­ing this blog, but I there are a num­ber of rea­sons that peo­ple become inter­ested in acces­si­bil­ity issues. Do any of the below cat­e­gories sound famil­iar to you or maybe some­one you have worked with? Pre­sented with no author­ity and in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Why do you care about accessibility?

1. Fol­low­ing the Crowd. My favorite A-list blog­ger keeps talk­ing about acces­si­bil­ity and I don’t want to be left behind.
2. Curios­ity Killed the Cat. Enough about alt tags already, what’s the big deal with accessibility?
3. Work­ing for a Liv­ing. My boss cares and there­fore so do I.
4. The Plain­tiff will now Approach the Bench. The lawyer guy keeps telling me that I need to care about accessibility.
5. Me, Myself and I. I have a dis­abil­ity– I cre­ate acces­si­ble sites so that I can use them.
6. We are Fam­ily. I have a fam­ily member/friend with a disability.
7. We are the World. You know, “It’s true we’ll make a bet­ter day. Just you and me”.
8. Pow­er­ful Mar­ket Forces. Why on earth would I make my site harder for cus­tomers to use?
9. Pride cometh Before the Fall Of course my site is acces­si­ble, it also val­i­dates as XHTML Strict, I have never used a table in my life and I read W3C meet­ing min­utes for fun.
10. I don’t. Oh, okay– fine. (there– that makes 10).

Any oth­ers you would add to the list?

As long as a web devel­oper is moti­vated to cre­ate an acces­si­ble site, does it mat­ter what their moti­va­tion is?