Step to Making a Web Site Accessible

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Everyone wondering why do we need to make our web site accessible? Making our web site accessible would highly benefits people with disabilities and this would make them feel alive again.

So here are the few step of making a web site accessible :

Before you begin, accessible design always starts on the blackboard itself. Think about accessibility implementation during the design process, before you are writing a line of code on it. You need to find out if you web site has to comply with any legislations, standards or regulations. For example, when you design a web base product for the U.S Federal Government, you need to comply with the Section 508 standards according to the country you used.

Firstly, you need to select a suitable accessibility standards or guidelines. Currently, most developers favor Section 508 or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If you want to design a web site for the U.S. government at a minimum you have to comply with the Section 508 as i mention earlier. In many other instances, you might have to use the web content accessibility guidelines as second option. Currently, the WCAG is the most thorough set of guidelines, and it is recommended using it regardless of the requirements. Also, WCAG provides numerous explanations and examples to make your work easier, and resources are continuously added.

Secondly, you need to select a third part components which can speed up your work by using the components written by third party. The most common ones are the use of content management systems, widgets, database, interfaces and etc. It is your responsibility to make sure that these components are accessible before you integrate them into your site. It is much harder to make components accessible after the fact, which you must do before accessibility is a requirement. Some providers will post an accessibility notice together with their products which you can use as a starting point for you web site. The other option to select a third party component is to write your own code. It takes longer, but does just what you want it to do, and is as accessible as you make it.

Thirdly, you need to learn about accessibility to create an accessible web site where you must find plenty of free information on the web. Two of the best resources are the official Section 508 site and the Web Accessibility Initiative site. Also, several training programs are available as well. This would enhance your knowledge about accessibility and there will be a big improvement in designing your web site.

Fourthly, let the world know that your web site is accessible. Not for bragging purposes, but to allow people with disabilities know that they will be able to use it. It is especially useful when you have competitors, some people might just make a decision based on how accessible is information to them. It is a common practice to post an accessibility notice on your web page, so others can see it accessible in your web site.

As a conclusion, with this four steps, I believe your web site will be accessible and its benefit people with disabilities in the same time. So, what are you waiting for? Start making your web site accessible now! :)

Source : http://www.evengrounds.com/articles/steps-to-making-a-web-site-accessible

Week 6 poll result

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Here come the week 6 poll result. The question for week 6 poll was : Will making site accessible mean making it bland and boring? As the poll result which has shown that there are mostly 62.5% readers were disagree with making site accessible mean making it bland and boring , and there were 12.5% for don't know, yes and depends.

Making site accessible is to provide convenient for all the people who can get their sources and use this applications as fast as they can and it will not be boring and bland if compare with some site which you have to take long time to process it , it might make your patient become worst and also, you will feel boring on it.

Lastly, making site accessible doesn't mean making the site bland and boring, it's because making fair to everyone included people with disability to surf the website.

The problem with automated accessibility tools

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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

Accessibility tips

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Do you all know what are the best tips for making the web accessible? Most of you will think by making the text larger will be accessible for people with disability. But there are more tips for making a web site accessible. The tips as below :

1) Web Accessibility is designed to promote access by individuals with limited environments.

Following are things that keep in mind about potential users from W3C web content accessibility guideline :

• They may not be able to see, hear, move or understand easily
• They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
• They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or a mouse.
• They may not have an early version of a browser.
• They may have a slow connection, a small screen, a text-only screen.
• They may not speak or understand fluently the language in the document written.

2) Use the markup and style sheets properly

Avoid from using the structural markup for the visual result given by popular browsers. Documents that contain orderly and appropriate structural markup can be transfer to almost any type of user agent or display device and stand still on their own easily.

3) Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes

Not everyone can read information at the same pace. If you have scrolling or changing information, be sure there is a mechanism available for the user to pause or stop the flow of data so that it can be more easy for the user to get what the information within their time.

4) Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces

If an embedded object such as ActiveX control is used, the interface for that object must also be accessible so that other user with different browser can also see the object that posted by the writer.

5) Design for device independence

Not everyone has a mouse, and not everyone has a keyboard at home. Keyboard shortcuts, tabbing order, and event handlers all contribute to the accessibility of forms and elements. Keep in mind that people with a variety of input devices may interact with your documents.

6) Use the W3C technologies and guidelines

Adhere to W3C recommendations for markup and content development guidelines ; this provides greater security that the writer documents degrade gracefully to software that may not fully implement the most recent technologies.

7) Provide a clear navigation mechanisms

The most frequently used feature of any web site is the navigation system. No matter on a site a user may be, there should be a way to return to the home page with only one or two steps. This will create conveniences for various of users.

This are the 7 tips of making a web site accessible for various of users and I believe that, there are more tips on making a web site accessible as the technology now is getting more and more modern which would soon becoming the generation Z!

Source : http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/tips.htm

Policy Relating to Web Accessibility

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The web's emergence as a pivotal form of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) raises interesting questions about application of existing laws and policies to the new medium, and the importance of all members in the society, including people with disabilities.

There is a growing body of national laws and policies which address accessibility of ICT which include the internet and the web as well. There is also a great variety of approaches among these laws and policies : some take the approach of establishing a human right to ICT ; others to approach that any ICT purchased by government must be accessible ; others that any ICT sold in a given market must be accessible and there are still other to be approach.

A separate document, addresses issues which frequently arise when establishing policies on web accessibility. There include, for instance, simple and comprehensive sample policy statements ; conformance levels for web sites as well as web related software ; defining the scope, milestones, and monitoring processes for web accessibility.

Source : http://www.w3.org/

ColorBlindExt – Better Web Accessibility for Colorblind Users

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Have you ever wondered, if you can’t see certain things on a website because of your color blindness? This time is over now—at least for colorblind Firefox users.

The Firefox add-on called ColorBlindExt was released just recently and is a great support to discover things which you couldn’t see up to now. The developers describe it as follows:

His extension helps color blinds while browsing the web, by processing images and text on the page according to the type of user’s color blindness. Color Blindness detection test is included for creating awareness among people.

After installation (see further down) as a first step you should take the color blindness test available through the newly added menu called ColorBlindExt. The test is based on Ishihara plates and will tell you, which type of color blindness you are suffering from. It detects protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia and even monochromacy, which means you are completely colorblind.

After taking the test the filter will be set according to your results. This can be changed at any time. Also the filter can be completely enabled or disabled however you like.

Image obtained from : http://www.colblindor.com/2007/06/20/colorblindext-better-web-accessibility-for-colorblind-users/

Personally I like the image filtering on demand. Through this option, which is also available on the context menu when clicking on an image, pictures and diagrams can be enhanced according to my type of color deficient vision.

The developers took the image filtering even one step further. Through the settings you even can adjust the level of deficiency and a choose from a noise reduction and sharpening option. This lets you play around and find the settings which fit the best to your personal color vision.

The tool also has some limitations, which don’t really restrict the usage to me when I look at them.

Page contents like flash objects, applets, media players can’t be filtered, it is out of scope.
Only elements accessed by DOM are processed.

Unfortunately the installation isn’t a single click and run. I tried to summarize all requirements including the links to get the latest software if you are missing some of them. I hope this helps you to get your colorblind webpage filter up and running without a hassle. Be aware that you need administration privileges if you have to install new software like the Java run time environment.

Hopefully this tool will help you to access some websites more easily than before or to read some colorful and up to now undistinguishable chart lines. And I also hope this tool isn’t used as an excuse for web designers to disregard accessibility, especially concerning color blindness.

Source : http://www.colblindor.com/2007/06/20/colorblindext-better-web-accessibility-for-colorblind-users/

Week 5 poll result

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This is the result for week 5 poll. The question was " If we don't have any employee who are disabled,do we still have to make our intranet accessible? As you all can see, most of the readers agreed to make the intranet accessible which was 83.3% and 16.7% readers disagreed on the statement provided.

Why do most of the reader agreed? Because many disabilities are not visible and you therefore may not always know whether a person has a disability or not. In addition, the workplace infrastructure, including its technology infrastructure, should be accessible in preparation for future employees with disabilities so that they are able to be productive from the moment they begin their employment.

Accessible is important for everyone no matter people with disability or ability because its make thing goes smoothly without any error. Sometime there will be some error, with the technology nowadays, solution always there.