The document discusses the importance of making web content accessible to all users regardless of ability, outlining guidelines for designing websites that are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. It provides tips for making content accessible to users with visual impairments, physical/motor disabilities, cognitive issues, hearing loss, and other access needs through techniques like descriptive text alternatives, proper heading structure, keyboard navigation, simple language and adjustible text size. Ensuring accessibility is important for legal compliance, an inclusive user experience, and reaching the broadest possible audience.
This is an opportunity to discuss any items from last week that the students had difficulty with. Ask students what they think accessibility is and why there are sessions dedicated to usability and accessibility. This is an opportunity to discuss the differences, that usability is about making tools and accessibility is about inclusion for everyone.
Ask the students why they think this is important. Particularly concerning the site they are planning for their coursework. What issues do they think they might come across. Accessibility is often about disability and taking away barriers to information.
Ask students to imagine being stuck at home, unable to get out and try and get them to imagine the freedom the Web can provide. Explain how when the web was first developed, it was a revolution for many disabled people. With the advent of flashy interfaces, the web has become less inclusive and more difficult for those with disabilities to use.
Visual – the easiest to conceive for students although mention colour blindness. Hearing – that funky soundtrack may not be appreciated by everyone and if you’re showing video, should you use close caption? Physical – this effects navigation Cognitive – explain that strobing pictures can cause some people to have seizures. There are also issues with dyslexia and cognitive issues. If someone has low cognitive skills, language should be geared toward them. This doesn’t mean “dumbing down” but if you’re including heavy academic texts into your pages separate them from the main body of work.
Point out that students should have become aware that many buildings, particularly public ones, have recently been altered to provide access to disabled people. The act makes it illegal to provide public services that are not accessible to disabled people. As the proportion of the population that is disabled increases with age, it is less likely that students will accept that a significant proportion of the population has a type of disability. Krug (2003) claims it is as high as 65% in the U.S. It’s the right thing to do – because of the internet, blind people are now able to read a daily newspaper on their own.
Discuss responsibility. Explain that if a client was to be litigated against over their lack of accessibility, they would come straight back to the developer to explain why they hadn’t mentioned it at the start. Ask students when they think accessibility registration might not apply – this is the opportunity to offer relief if they’re worried about personal sites as the law applies to organisations rather than individuals.
What this means practically to web designers is that if they choose not to underline links and change the colour instead, they run the risk of people being unable to use their site.
Talk about video and images with students. Subtitles are useful for deaf people but not blind people. One option is to offer text transcripts of content via a specialised link, this can be read by a screen reader. Alt tags on images describe the image displayed but they are generally not ovrtly useful.
At the time of producing this slide the link below was found to be very useful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ivQDrn0wk This is a very good video which can be found by searching “Blind Computing - How do we do it?” in Youtube Play the whole video as this gives a good break in continuity. If the video is unavailable try to find one that is suitable. When it is finished discuss the fast speed of the screen reader. Point out that blind people scan text with their ears in the same way as sighted people use their eyes. They will scan through until they find what they’re looking for.
The next slide is a screen shot demonstrating these techniques. Point out that following these guide lines makes pages more usable for sighted users.
This page demonstrates how headings and sub headings can be scanned through to reach relevant content. Screen readers can do this. The Page Title and links are very clear.
The picture shows the alternate text for the image in the bottom right hand corner. Again, all these techniques benefit every user.
Explain again that following the guidelines helps everyone and that they are guidelines. It is important to take these ideas on board but they are not rules. The main aspect to remember is that, if a site is being designed on behalf of a client, every effort must be made to include those with accessibility issue. The law is subjective and will usually fall on your side if you do the right thing.
W3C was founded and is still run by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTML and the world wide web. This organisation is committed to developing the Web to its full potential.
For motor impaired users, the biggest issue is size of links, the bigger they are, the easier they are to click. These users have also suffered from the new wave of exciting and highly visual Web sites.
Reading from computer screens is tiring for the eyes and roughly 25% slower than reading from paper. This means that short, concise language benefits everyone.
Open up google in a browser and demonstrate increasing and decreasing text size. (View>Text Size>Increase in Firefox)
Start a discussion, explain that full flash sites are currently not navigable by screen readers. Does this hamper creative design? Should we stop using Flash to create websites for accessibility reasons. Try and lead the discussion to using Flash for parts of sites rather than whole sites. There is also the issue that explaining issues with animation rather than text mat help cognitively impaired users. Use the link above to look at a highly regarded Flash site from carbon studio is it accessible? Does it matter?
It is now a good time to briefly explain what CSS is but it will be covered in greater depth in another session. Try and instill the advantages of content and design being separate entities.