The problem with automated accessibility tools

Link to us : http://snipr.com/upwda

Do you all know what is an automated accessibility tool? Automated accessibility tool is a piece of software which can evaluate a web page, or even an entire website for accessibility purpose. Furthermore, automated accessibility tools are useful because they can save a huge amount of time.

But are these tools a little too good to be true?? Can you really assess a website for accessibility so easily? Unfortunately the answer is NO. There are a number of underlying problems associated with using just automated tools to check for accessibility.

The problem are as below :

1) Can't check many coding issues
The vast number of accessibility guidelines tend to be related to how the site is coded. Automated accessibility tools are unfortunately unable to check for many of the coding too. For example, HTML-related accessibility considerations which these tool's can't check for the coding as well.

2) Outdated guidelines are used
Automated accessibility tools generally uses the W3C accessibility guidelines, which by now are over five years old. As such, a number of guidelines were outdated and do not apply on it anymore. In fact, some of them are now thought to hinder accessibility rather than help, so it is better to totally ignore these outdated guidelines.

3) Most guidelines aren't properly checked
Automated accessibility tools can check for a number of guidelines, and can tell you when a guideline is not being adhered too. However, when the tool claims that a guideline is being fulfilled this may in fact be a false truth as automated accessibility tools were hardly recognize outdated guidelines.

4) Warnings may be misinterpreted
The reports generated by the automated accessibility tools provide warnings, as well as errors. These warnings are basically guidelines that the automated tool can't check for, but which may be errors. Often they are not, and in fact they are often not even relevant to it. However, some people reading a report may try to get rid of these warnings message by making an appropriate changes to their site for precaution. By doing this, they may be implementing guidelines that needn't be implemented and inadvertently lowering the website's accessibility.

As a conclusion, automated accessibility tools can be useful sometime as they can save a large amount of time in performing some very basic check for accessibility. However, they must be used with caution and they cannot be used as a stand-alone guide for accessibility checking. Indeed, some expert accessibility knowledge should always be applied in evaluating a site's accessibility not only replying on an automated accessibility tool itself.

Source: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/automated-tools.shtml

The trouble which met by web-accessibility

Link me: http://snipr.com/ufazv

Do you know, web accessibility have benefits but there are trouble occur too. Actually, the web-accessibility community is in deep trouble. The trouble in 1 will be FLASH.

As we know, the technology today's is evolving every moments. Since the Web content accessibility Guildline 1.0 was published as a W3C recommendation on 5th May 1999. That's now well over few years ago. Microsoft's Internet Explorer had just eclipsed Netscape Navigator 4 as the top dog browser.

Few years later, technology has moved on. Using web standards is now a feasible development approach. Flash has come along in leaps and bounds. Unfortunately WCAG hasn't. A WCAG 1.1 would look quite different if it were a snapshot of technology perhaps even of two years ago. (WCAG 2.0 looks drastically different in its accommodation of technologies - for example, the baseline approach.)

Technology evolving! It improves, especially in its ability to make content accessible. Technology is one very important factor in web accessibility today's. In the days of Flash 5, when accessible Flash was an oxymoron. But wake up. It is certainly no longer that clear cut today. Macromedia and Adobe have made some excellent progress in the last five years. And now there is a community springing up that's embracing accessibility.When two Flash Experts spend time with the RNIB, testing, learning, understanding how disabled people use the web, and how Flash can enhance their experiences - it's a Straussian epoc. When the SHAW TRUST is actively engaged in testing the accessibility of Flash, and give it a thumbs up - its another Also Sprach Zarathustra moment. Put those together, and the facade some accessibility 'experts' (still cowering from monolith) desperately want you to believe collapses.

The web accessibility community needs to be actively engaged with the Flash accessibility community. There's a surprising amount of cross-over and idea-swapping opportunities to be explored. The coolest example is Lawrence Carvalho's and Christian Heilmann's Text rezise detection recently published on A List Apart.

Now, They got their Solution which Flash has an advantage over HTML and CSS in that it is far better placed in dealing with learning based or reading based disabilities. Its foundation as a vector based graphics engine trumps HTML's and CSS' mediocre feature set when tackling disability barriers best met with interactivity and graphics. Its time to admit, Flash is part of the web accessibility toolbox.

For more information, you can log in:http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/AccessibilityInTrouble1Flash

Source:http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/AccessibilityInTrouble1Flash

The future of Web Accessibility

Link to us : http://snipr.com/u91o2

Hello reader!

7 years ago, there was a first version of web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 1.0) has been release by W3C. Since then, accessibility has slow down but it surely turned up on the radar of web managers in the most large organizations in the world.

As the previous post stated, the benefits of web accessibility really bring everyone no matter people with disability or people with ability more and more profit for the website offered as the year goes by. There is still a long way to go but the progress over the past few years were highly visible and indeed positive.

Many websites using Web 2.0 technologies started to spring up all over the internet, and are most likely to exponentially increase in the number over the next few years. Although the term itself, web 2.0, has become a bit of a buzzword, there is no doubt that web 2.0 is here and its becoming more and more commonplace.

The characteristic of web 2.0 include AJAX and user generated content, many website begin to embrace these two concepts causing never-before seen accessibility issues.

AJAX, Asynchronous Java Scripts and XML are not actually a technology itself, because it is a technique for using a number of existing technologies to create interactive web application on it. The main accessibility concern is not the use of Java Scripts, is the way in which Java Scripts is used to cause on-the-page changes.

For example, showcases of a great example of using AJAX to create an interactive and useful interface. It uses the click-and-drag sliders to allow to narrow a wide range of filtering criteria. The page then automatically updates to show how many result conform to the users' selected criteria. So, it would be convenience for people to check on the result they wanted to.

Will the future of web accessibility would be more advanced compare to now? Maybe the next generation can see how web accessibility grow rapidly year by year. The expert will come out with more idea on how dealing with web accessibility and we can't wait to see how great it is! :)

For more information, you can log in to this website : http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/future.shtml

Source : http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/future.shtml, Retrieved on 2nd of February.

Web Accessibilty Tools

Link to Us: http://snipr.com/u79iv

As we known from the previous post, The disability people today's can enjoy and having the same lifestyle as other peoples. For example, those disability teenagers can play online games as others.But how it's works?

Through the Web accessibility's Tools, It really helpful to those disability people such as:

taken from (http://www.fujitsu.com/global/accessibility/assistance/wi/)

Web accessibility Inspector examines the accessibility of a website and points out those important problems that affect mainly to the elder and visually disable people. This software will be serve in many countries around the world which with the addition of the chinese and korean version.

taken from (http://www.fujitsu.com/global/accessibility/assistance/wi/)

Beside Web accessibility Inspector, there are another Tools that provides a collection of the free tools to assist both developers and designers in the development and testing of accessible web content. The consortium is a collaboration of some of the world's leading accessibility practitioners, founded by Accessible Information Solutions (Australia), Infoaxia (Japan), The Paciello Group (USA), Wrong HTML (Japan), and Juicy Studio (UK)

Web Accessibility Tools Consortium, to develop new tools, improve current tools and expand the range of browsers, operating systems and languages in which our tools are available.

For Example:

Web Accessibility Toolbar for opera (WAT for Opera) 1.1

For More information of WAT-C , you can log in to this website :http://www.wat-c.org/tools/index.html#under

Benefits of Web Accessibility That You Should Know

Link to us : http://snipurl.com/u6go8

As we all know web accessibility had the benefits for everyone, but do you know how web accessibility actually benefit them??

1) Increased reach to disable and special needs users for example :

• 8.6 million people are registered disabled - 14% of the population (source: DRC )
• 2 million people have a sight problem - 4% of the population (source: RNIB)
• 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women suffer from some form of colour blindness - 9% of the population (source: Institute of Electrical Engineers)
• 12 million people are aged 60 or over - 21% of the population (source: UK Government)
• 2 million people with learning difficulties - 4% of the population (source: Foundation for People with Learning Difficulties)
• 9 million people have impaired hearing from partial hearing to profound deafness - 15% of the population (source: The Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People)

2) Disabled and Special need users have the spending power

Most people run a business to make money and their website is an important tool for their business activities.

Disabled people in the UK have a disposable income of £50 billion per year (source: Employers Forum on Disability). People aged over 60 years old have incredible spending power. In fact, they own a significant amount of the disposable income in the UK. ( That's sound fair for them isn't it?)

By making your website accessible to disabled and older people, you will more than likely benefit through increased business.

3) Meet Web Accessibility legal Requirement

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) states a website must be accessible to disabled people. This law has been in place since 1999. If one site is not accessible you could be sued by them . By taking steps to acquire an accessible site this will not happen. You will need to bring your site up to at least WCAG level 1 compliance, although with all the benefits of web accessibility, it would seem sensible to bring your site up to WCAG level 2 or even level 3.

There are many more benefits from web accessibility as the Web becomes increasingly important in our every day lives, accessible Web sites can help people with disabilities participate and contribute more actively in society, both online and offline. It is essential that Web sites are accessible in order to provide equal access and opportunities to people with disabilities. People with disabilities can do the same thing as what we did.

Stay tune with us! We will post more and more details, news about web accessibility.

Source: http://www.design-ecommerce.com/Web-Accessibility-Benefits.html

What is the opportunities has offered by web accessibility?

Link to us : http://snipr.com/u6ntx

As we know, the internet is a great tool that is used by millions of people everyday. To accessing websites is very easy and straightforward process if you have great vision, good listening and all of your limbs. But still, at least more than 90 percent of the websites are inaccessible to a large portion of the population. Why? Because of the Internet, one of the best things seems that ever happened to people with disabilities.

Obtained from www.calstatela.edu/accessibility/




Obtained from www.uiaccess.com/understanding.html

Did you know for example that someone who is blind can actually use the Internet? Yes. They can use some special software, known as a screen reader. It actually reads what's on screen to them. People with other types of disabilities use technologies to help them use the Internet as well. Example,before the internet, how did blind people read the newspaper? Most of them didn't, If they want to know, they could ask their friends or family member to read for them and if comparing with today's, blind people can actually know the news from internet.

Most of the online news which publish already in a format which can read by "screen readers" which used by the blind. These software programs can read out the text loud.So,blind people can access any text content through the computers. Similarly, if the people with disabilities who cannot pick up the book and turn it to another page, through the technologies that adapt the computer interface to their own disabilities. Sometimes the adaptations are simple, such as having the person place a stick in the mouth and use it to type keyboard commands. In other cases, the adaptations are more sophisticated, as in the use of special keyboards or eye-tracking software that allows people to use a computer with nothing more than eye movements.

From web accessibilities we know that they really offers unprecedented opportunities and increase more public awareness to everyone.

What is Web Accessibility?

Link to us : http://snipr.com/u6nuw

Welcome all dear readers! :)

All of us want to use the Internet with speed and ease right? And for most of us, there usually is no problem in going from one web page to another. After a minute or even a few seconds of searching, we normally would find the online information we need. But for people with certain types of disabilities, this may not always be the case. Fortunately, a number of principles and concepts known as web accessibility has been developed to address the concerns of these groups.

So What is Web accessibility??? Basically, web accessibility refers to the practice of creating and developing websites that can easily be accessed and used by persons with special needs. Generally, a website is deemed accessible if anyone who visits it can easily navigate within its pages and quickly find the desired information in the site. This practice is primarily focused on Internet users with disabilities. People of all abilities can also uses the web accessibility.

For example, when text and images are large or enlargeable, it is easier for users with poor sight to read and understand the content without wearing a spectacle.

Moving on, web accessibility is easy to achieve. There are numerous companies that provide accessibility consulting to those who want to make their sites accessible. Also, there are organizations willing to give accessibility trainings to web developers in order to increase awareness regarding major accessibility issues. Being disable people doesn't mean their life is end, with the web accessibility, everything is possible! Don't you all agree?? Definitely YES!

Following post we will includes more and more articles, news and others about web accessibility! So, stay tune with us! :)

source : http://www.evengrounds.com/articles/web-accessibility