UW Accessibility Conference

On Wednesday I attended the “Power of Ideas” a conference here at UW. The conference was about web accessibility in an educational environment. Presentations covered a range of issues including accessibility testing, designing accessible spaces, various learning activities and technologies including podcasting, and assistive technologies.

I was quite excited about this conference when I first heard about it because Joe Clark was to be the keynote speaker. Unfortunately Joe wasn’t able to make it but luckily Derek Featherstone was there to
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Quick overview and key insights

One of Derek’s main messages was to think about accessibility in terms of people – not technologies or legislation. So instead of thinking about how a screen reader would handle your page, you could think about how a blind human being would browser your sites. Every disabled person is different and has unique needs. Many of us tend to think of accessibility only in terms of blind users, but what about people who just have low vision and need larger fonts? What about people who can’t use a mouse?

I also learned about some of the other assistive technologies that people use. As in the previous example, most of us tend to think that the only type of assistive technology we need to accommodate is screen readers. There are also screen magnifiers for people with low vision, a variety of alternate input devices, and voice recognition software which allows people with limited or no use of their hands and arms to use a computer. Voice Recognition software allows a user to read out the title of a link they want to click on, for example, and the software directs the web browser to follow that link. Problems can arise here if the alt attribute on a graphic link doesn’t match the text it displays.

Come to think of it, I imagine they couldn’t handle links on non-text graphics at all. Take, for example, the common use of a logo as a link back to the home page. Normally this has become so ubiquitous that people don’t include a separate link back to the home page. But, how does anyone know what that alt text says so they can speak it into their voice recognition software? They don’t, so alternate links are needed in every case.

Session: Podcasting

This session was given by two profs who have experimented with podcasting in the classroom. They recorded their lectures and put them up online. You can record directly to iPod with the iTalk plug-in and a clip-on mic. One of the things they pointed out here is that audio recordings are really helpful for people with learning disabilities. So if someone has problems concentrating in the classroom they can listen to the audio again later. I’ve also read that people with learning disabilities often find an audio alternative for text content to be helpful.

Now, obviously, anyone who is deaf or severely hearing impaired would need to have a text alternative if it was necessary.

Session: Web Accessibility Testing Techniques & Strategies

This was given by Derek Featherstone again. He emphasized that you need to know what you are testing and who you are testing with. There are three types of testing: expert opinion, technical test with assistive technologies, and an actual user test. Ideally you’d be able to do continuous and iterative testing with actual users but this is rarely done.

Instead, he suggested a team testing approach with a facilitator, user, and a developer. The facilitator would guide the test, the user attempts to perform the requested actions, and the developer checks the code while the test is going on to find out what is causing the problems.

There are a lot of tools available for testing accessibility. I was thrilled to see Derek demonstrate some of the accessibility features available in Opera. One of the things he showed was the superior keyboard functionality in Opera. People who can’t use a mouse (either because they can’t see the pointer or because they can’t physically move it very well) can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through key elements on a page. In Opera you can use the a key to navigate between links only. Or you can press “h” to navigate between headers. Yet another reason to structure your page properly!

There is also an accessibility toolbar available for Opera. I haven’t had a chance to check this out yet. It will not be possible to run this in addition to the web developer toolbar for Opera since both are using the view menu. I think it might be possible to run parts of both of them by using custom buttons. I’ll post again about this if I get a chance to try it.

A Screen Reader in Action

This was during a session on the CMS we’re using here at the University, presented by Andrea Chapell – one of the system admins, and Kate Hano – an actual blind user. She was a grad student who had a lot of problems using the instructor tools in the CMS.

Anyway, the best part of the presentation was when she actually showed us what the screen reader sounds like. I had heard one before, briefly, but this time it was even more enlightening In this case she was using JAWS. A few key points:

• It reads everything, including punctuation. The CMS was using | often to separate links, which JAWS would read as “vertical bar”. So, stop using those.
• It starts a page by stating the number of links and headings – another reason to structure your page properly.
• It will preface a links and by reading “link – some other website”. The same happens with headings (“heading level 2 – This is the title of a section”)
• If you have a bare URL, it will attempt to read out the letters so you will hear h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot … etc! At least it doesn’t try to read it as a word! But that’s a good reason not to post bare URL’s. They don’t have much meaning for less knowledgeable sighted users either.
• Screen readers generally go very fast – much faster than you would normally speak. I have heard others go faster than JAWS did in this demonstration. There are settings for users to adjust how fast the speech is.

I highly recommend trying a screen reader if you get a chance. It provides a lot more information about how blind users hear the web than what you could read on a website or in a book.

Adopting New Technologies with Accessibility in Mind

This was a general overview presentation by Jesse Rodgers and Antonia Palmer, both of UW. They talked mainly about multimedia technologies and how to make them accessible. This is pretty basic accessibility – if people can’t see it, provide a text alternative, if people can’t hear it, provide a transcript. The added benefits of text alternatives is that it makes the content searchable. And when it’s searchable it’s more useful to sighted/hearing people and to search engines.

One thing that was mentioned on the topic of mobile and handheld devices is the problems they case for people with motor difficulties and low/no vision. That reminds me of my dad who has one of those little tiny cell phones. His problem is that his fingers are really big and he has trouble pushing one button at a time (goddammit!)

Summary

I am now inspired to look over my sites and try to make improvements for accessibility. Today I’ve been frantically going through the site I maintain at work to get rid of all the vertical bars. I’ve also read up on improving alt attributes and found lots of other great accessibility information. More reading to do!

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