AccessibleWeb@U Meeting - May 15, 2008

What is Happening

• UW is looking at improving campus maps using newer technologies.
• Western Washington is working on an interactive campus map which includes planning routes for people with disabilities
  • New WWU VP of Equal Opportunity is concerned about obsolete accessibility map
  • Lot of GIS activity at WWU; a class has taken improving the campus map on as a project
  • Research project in UK surveyed wheelchair users to find out what best route characteristics are
• Terry added procurement language to the sig project procurement page
  • points to 508 and VPATs
  • Which standard should it point to, 508, WCAG2
  • Some of what we will be evaluating will be external products
• Check out the Access Technologists Higher Education Network (ATHEN) blog: Lots of good postings and links to other blogs and resources.
• Our technical situation is awkward. This group has an email list, a site on the ITSIG mediawiki site, and a Web site, yet we still do not have a good place to have online discussions and blogs. Plus the ITSIG site is only available to people with UW NetIDs. How can our online stuff be simpler, more available, and more interactive?
  • Mediawiki seems to have a rather weak discussion function; comments are simply added onto the discussion statement without identity information. Is there a widget available that could give us a more blog-like functionality? Terry will look into the question.
  • Rick will investigate whether the ITSIG site can be world readable.
  • How important is it that our discussions and blogs be world readable?
  • Could we give non-UW people in our community UW NetIDs that would give access to the ITSIG site? Currently temporary UW NetIDs can be given out, soon such guest UW NetIDs will be permanent
  • Should we try an external blog service for our discussions?
  • Could we put discussions on the Catalyst tools?

Evaluating Accessibility

Some sites and tools offered to kick off discussion:

• Accessibility in User Centered Design - A nice integration of usability and accessibility testing.
• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Overview - Getting a bit out of date
• Cynthia Says Portal - Makes list of criteria with problems bolded
• Accessibility Vet - Nice page evaluator with lots of options, including showing the structure of the page
• Colorblind Web Page Filter - Quickly shows what pages look like to colorblind readers
• Fujitsu Accessibility Tools - Nice family of tools
  • Web Accessibility Inspector
  • Color Selector
  • Color Doctor

Accessibility Evaluation Procedure Discussion

• Current procedure is nice, short, sweet
  • Accessibility Evaluation Procedure uses a 14 item rubric Terry Thompson developed a while back in work with DO-IT and ADA & IT Centers
    • Rubric was designed for systematic evaluation of Web sites and focused on the most common, severe problems sites were like to have
    • A preliminary survey of sites had identified the most widely observed problems
    • The rubric was intended to be easy to use by a novice. It does not require code reading
    • For PDF opted to require alternative presentation of the content, such as in HTML
    • Did not access or assess Flash on sites
    • Rubric is showing its age, such as Requiring alternatives to PDF in HTML. The rubric's scope is limited; you could pass the checklist items but still have an inaccessible site
    • Now we would want to talk about accessibility of Flash and PDF, which would require trying to read it with a screen reader
    • The checklist is easier to walk through than trying to explain tools output
  • We should have a project to compare the procedure to WCAG2, particularly W3C's new How to Meet WCAG 2.0 quick reference
  • The current procedure and its rubric checklist skips over some topics. Maybe they are not relevant for an initial evaluation.
• Is it worth putting one together our own evaluation procedure?
  • There is a lot of effort out there to create methods and tools
    • As much as we can, we should piggy-backing on that effort
    • We want to keep track of tools and technologies as things change and are updated
    • It is more valuable to identify the best and most appropriate tools than to just provide a big list of tools
  • We agreed that it is worthwhile to maintain a basic accessibility evaluation procedure as a starting point for anyone getting into accessible design at the UW and to keep the procedure up-to-date
    • Terry will review the rubric
    • Rick will review the basic procedure
    • We will have a draft improved procedure by June meeting
• What should the deliverables be for an accessibility evaluation
  • Often talking about a consultation or meeting that you only get one shot at.
  • You have several goals:
    • You want to clearly, succinctly state the strengths and problems of a site or page with handouts, a presentation, or an online report.
    • You want to point the customer to highly relevant resources (not just a big list of links and books).
    • A list of explicit things to fix seems to be most likely to evoke action by the customer than conceptual explanations.
    • Evaluation tools should produce displays or printable pages that help explain accessible design. Cynthia Says produces a full list of 508 criteria with problem areas bolded. The Site Accessibility Valet gives a source listing showing structure with message icons in a way that should be meaningful to coders and developers.
    • Some tools have their own ideas of important criteria. The Functional Accessibility Evaluator from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign complains if there is more than one H1 on a page - coding chauvinism or rigorous semantics?
  • Many organizations use "continuous improvement" management models that require regular service design review. Ideally the contact with the customer can set the stage for growing awareness of accessibility methods and goals among the managers and developers. Have a message aware of the technologies and methodologies of the customer would help toward that end.