Slides for a talk on "Web accessibility is not primarily about conformance with standards" given by Brian Kelly, Innovation Advocate at Cetis, University of Bolton at the IDRAC 2014 conference held in Second Life on 3-4 October 2014. See http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/web-accessibility-is-not-primarily-about-conformance-with-web-accessibility-standards/

1. Web Accessibility is Not (Primarily) About
Conformance with Web Accessibility Standards
Brian Kelly
Innovation Advocate
Cetis
University of Bolton
Bolton, UK
Contact Details
Email: ukwebfocus@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankelly
Cetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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A presentation for the IDRAC (International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference) 2014
conference to be held in Second Life on 3-4 October 2014
Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/web-accessibility-is-not-primarily-about-
conformance-with-web-accessibility-standards/

2. Contents
• About Me
• Early Involvement with Web Accessibility
• About WAI and WCAG
• Realisation of the Limitations
• “Blended Accessibility for Blended Learning”
• Beyond Accessibility for Learning
• Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes
(and Politics)
• A Standard – BS 8878
• Conclusions
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3. About Me
Brian Kelly
• Early adopter of Web technologies (Jan 1993)
• UK Web Focus at UKOLN: a national post,
advising UK universities on best practices for use
of the Web from 1996-2013
• Now Innovation Advocate at Cetis, encouraging
take-up of innovation technologies and practices
by UK universities
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4. Involvement with Web Accessibility
Long-standing involvement with Web accessibility:
• Attended W3C WAI launch, Santa Clara, April 1997
• Many peer-reviewed papers published since 2004,
co-authored with accessibility researchers &
practitioners from UK and Australia
• Awards:
 “Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning
Accessibility”: Best research paper at ALT-C 2005
 “Developing countries; developing experiences:
approaches to accessibility for the Real World”:
John M Slatin Award for best communications
paper at W4A 2010
• Co-organiser of Accessibility Summit in 2004 and
Accessibility Summit II in 2006
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5. WAI Recap
W3C WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative):
• Developed framework for providing “universal
accessibility”
• Has had global impact
• Based on 3 components for:
 Content (WCAG)
 Authoring (ATAG)
 Browsers/User Agents (UAAG)
WCAG 1.0:
• Specific to HTML; had flaws
WCAG 2.0
• Format independent
• POUR principle: requires accessible content to be
Perceivable; Operable; Understandable and Robust
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6. Realisation of the Limitations
From 1997 - 2002:
• Encouraged universities to use
WCAG guidelines to provide
“universal accessibility”
From 2002-2004:
• Realisation of the limitations,
especially in e-learning context:
 “How do I make this
3D molecule in Java accessible?”
 “If I provide Alt-text to the images in the
quiz I’m giving the answer away”
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Conclusions: It’s wrong to think that universal accessibility can
be achieved by simply conforming to a checklist. However
WCAG guidelines do have value, but we need a better solution.

7. “Blended Accessibility for Blended Learning”
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In 2004 we realised:
• Differences between informational and
learning web services1
• Importance of accessibility of learning
objectives / learning experience rather
than the learning resource2
• Importance of other IT and non-IT
learning environments beyond the Web
Note 1
• We want immediate & simple access
to information
• Understanding & learning is different.
The “understanding” arises through
pedagogical processes discussions,
misunderstandings, “light bulb”, ….
Note 2
Example: a field trip involves trip up a
mountain. This is not accessible. Do we:
• Install wheelchair ramp up mountain?
• Cancel trip as it’s not universally
accessible?
• Seek to make the various experiences
accessible (e.g. team working)?

8. Beyond Accessibility for Learning
Different accessibility challenges for
• Information • Learning • Culture
• Communications • Games • …
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We identified the importance of context and the
intended purpose of the service for accessibility

9. Relevance of Second Life
Is Second Life Accessible?
Blog post published in Jan 2008:
This video clip shows a user with
cerebral palsy, Judith, using
Second Life with a headwand.
As Judith explains:
‘I’ve got a wheelchair in Second
Life also. You can choose
whether you want to be in a
chair or not. You can have
crutches, you can have whatever
disability you have in real life in
Second Life’
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Not universally accessible, but
accessible (and valuable) to a
user with disabilities.
This example illustrates need to
have a user-focussed approach to
accessibility standards

10. Revisiting Limitations of WAI
In June 2008 UK
government announced
that all government web
sites must conform to
WCAG AA
Implications:
• What if WCAG is
flawed?
• What about the
costs?
• What about the loss
of services of use to
some/many?
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There is a need for a standard, but it must be
realistic and address a wide range of use cases.
A new approach much avoid:
• Unnecessary barriers to innovation
• Temptations to delete services which are
accessible to many but not all (cf Judith & SL)

11. People, Policies
and Processes
In 2007 we argued:
• We need a new approach
to accessibility
• We called this approach
“accessibility 2.0”
• Move on focus from digital
resource to:
 People (the users and
other stakeholders)
 The policies covering
use of web services
 The processes which
would ensure that
policies were being
implemented
Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes, Kelly et al, W4A 200711

12. • xx
And Politics!
See blog post at
http://slewth.co.uk/blog/2014/
09/17/
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13. A Standard – BS 8878
In parallel BS 8878 was
developed:
• A British Standard
Code of Practice
• A framework that
allows definition of
the process
undertaken by
organisations to
build or procure an
optimally accessible
web site
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People Policies
Processes

14. BS 878 In 88 Seconds
Summary by
Jonathan Hassell:
see blog post and
transcript
BS 8878
See also blog posts by
Jonathan Hassell, editor of
BS 8878:
http://www.hassellinclusion.
com/bs8878/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ4MRCyMTRQ 14

15. Conclusions
“Web accessibility is not an intrinsic characteristic of a
digital resource but is determined by complex political,
social and other contextual factors, as well as technical
aspects which are the focus of WAI standardisation
activities. It can therefore be inappropriate to develop
legislation or focus on metrics only associated with
properties of the resource”
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A Challenge to Web Accessibility Metrics and Guidelines: Putting People and
Processes First, Cooper et al, W4A 2012
A question for the audience:
Could BS 8878 approach be used in a Second Life
context?

16. Questions?
Any questions, comments, …?
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17. Licence and Additional Resources
This presentation, “Web accessibility is not (primarily) about
conformance with web accessibility standards”, by Brian Kelly, Cetis is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence
Note the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Quotations
may have other licence conditions.
Images may have other licence conditions. Where possible links are
provided to the source of images so that licence conditions can be found.
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Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/web-accessibility-is-not-primarily-about-
conformance-with-web-accessibility-standards/