Advanced Web Accessibility

1. Advanced Web Accessibility Nick Ogrizovich, Universal Design Technology Lab

2. Roadmap for today Accessibility in a nutshell Lawsuits and Legal Oh My! WAOPD? (Formal Policies at other edus? Accessibility Evaluation Methods Conformance TestingEvaluation User Types/Audience Barrier Method Evaluations Captcha agony “advanced” accessibility 508 Procurement Conclusion

3. What Does It Mean to Be Accessible? Digital  Accessible

4. To Be Accessible The documents must be accessible The software used to play the documents must be accessible The hardware on which the software and documents are loaded must be accessible ALL three!

5. Example • A document uploaded into a blackboard accessed by a user with a laptop • Document, LMS, laptop all must be accessible! • Even the technical aspect of connecting to the network • How hard is it to initially connect to UVM wireless? • Student network 10.0.x.xx • Requires reboot, limited networking (hope the redirect works in all their browsers)

6. Please Note Most “e-books” are not accessible! Most online books are not accessible! Most CDs included with textbooks are not accessible! Most computer support/study programs are not accessible!

7. Legal Aspects & Lawsuits

8. Putting the Law in Context: Section 504 vs. Section 508 Access vs. Accommodation

9. Section 504 vs. Section 508 • Section 504 addresses individual disability needs. • Section 508 addresses the infrastructure that allows access.

10. Rehabilitation Act of 1973 • Section 504 is about accommodation. • Disability service offices were created to deal with 504. • Section 508 is about access. • At its heart Section 508 is procurement law • Campuswide responsibility

11. A Campus Analogy • Section 504 • Deaf student requests that videos for her class be captioned • Section 508 • New videos must be captioned before being shown in the classroom for the first time

12. National Federation of the Blind (NFB) June 2009 – Sued Arizona State University (and filed OCR and DOJ complaints against 5 others) over use of Amazon Kindle (settled in Jan 2010) November 2010 – Filed OCR complaint against Penn State University March 2011 – Filed DOJ complaint against Northwestern and NYU over use of Google Apps

13. NFB vs Penn State Inaccessible library website Inaccessible departmental websites Inaccessible LMS (Angel) Classroom technologies that are inaccessible to blind faculty members Inaccessible financial services via contract with PNC Bank

14. Mr. Goldstein Dan Goldstein at EDUCAUSE, October 20, 2011 “The disparity between the quality of education offered non-disabled students and disabled students is, as a general matter, increasing, simply because the amount of inaccessible technology on the campus is proliferating… It sounds like a bad problem for the students. But it’s actually a worse one for the colleges and universities, because this is going to have to change.”

15. Quote #2 Dan Goldstein at EDUCAUSE, October 20, 2011 “Each year that a school delays identifying where its accessibility issues are and developing a plan of action, and each year that a university doesn’t change its procurement policy and continues to acquire new inaccessible technology means that when you do finally decide to do something, it will cost you a great deal more… My goal frankly is to get it to the top of your to-do list, or as near to the top as I can get it.”

16. Quote #3 Dan Goldstein at EDUCAUSE, October 20, 2011 “In terms of what to do…ending denial is the first step and saying ‘You know, we’re inaccessible’; and then taking stock of where you are inaccessible; and then coming up with an action plan.…It’s important that the plan be public, with deadlines. The one thing you can go back and tell the general counsel is: Dan Goldstein said he’s not going to file any suit if a school has a comprehensive action plan up that says how they’re going to become accessible.”

17. Formal Policies

18. Some Edu’s with formal policies Oregon State University University of Colorado at Boulder University of Hawaii University of Iowa University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Texas at Austin University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio University of Toronto The University of Washington The University of Wisconsin The University of Wisconsin-Madison Washington State University Worcester Polytechnic Institute

19. OSU Policy: grrrr….wheresthe…alt…text Part I: Introduction Part II: Policy Statement Part III: Responsible Parties for Implementation of this Policy Part IV: Compliance Part V: Definitions Part VI: Additional Contacts

20. Audiences

21. Designing for end users/devices • Blind • Low Vision • Color Blindness • Motor Impaired • Motor Difficulties • Deaf • Cognitive Disabilities • Mobile Users • Temporary Disabled • Unusual Circumstance users • Using a website during a lecture • Seniors, VETS, novice-internet users • Search Engines!

22. Mobile users=disabled desktop users • “situationally-induced impairment” • i.e. Giving a lecture and using website at same time • Mobile devices present usability impairments • Limitations in keyboard and screen size lead to: • Inability to read color based info on screen in bright light (similar experience for desktop users who have color blindness) • Recognize the limitations that are experienced by both! • Saves time in development and testing

23. One study using BW: • 58% of the true barrier types were identified as common between mobile and disabled users • if the evaluation results for blind, low vision and motor impaired users are aggregated then this can be used to approximate results for mobile web users • YelizYesilada, Giorgio Brajnik, Simon Harper, Barriers common to mobile and disabled web users, Interacting with Computers, Volume 23, Issue 5, September 2011, Pages 525-542, ISSN 0953-5438, 10.1016/j.intcom.2011.05.005.

24. Integrated Accessibility Guidelines • WCAG for web content • ATAG for authoring tools, HTML editors, content management systems (CMS), blogs, wikis, etc. • UAAG for web browsers, media players, and other ‘user agents’ • WAI-ARIA for accessible rich Internet applications developed with Ajax and such

25. Evaluation Methods Conformance Testing

26. How do we evaluate? • Conformance Testing • Potential Barrier Analysis (Barrier Walkthrough Method) • (Giorgio Brajnik)

27. Conformance Testing Wai-act WCAG 508 Wai-aria • Easy- just paste URL into evaluators… • http://www.w3.org/WAI/RC/tools/complete • Probably 300 apps/sitesthere • Someare useful • Exactlywhere error is (linenumber, too) • Sometimesofferreplacementfixedcode • Easiest ways to catch all the major accessibility issues

28. Evaluation Methods Barrier Walkthrough

29. Accessibility Level vs. conformance the BW can be used as a basis for measuring the accessibility level of a website rather than measuring the conformance level • http://sole.dimi.uniud.it/~giorgio.brajnik/projects/bw/Giorgio Brajnik

30. A barrier is a condition that restricts a user's ability to carry out a goal the category of user and the type of disability the type of assistive technology being used the failure mode, that is the activity/task that is hindered and how it is hindered, and which features in the page raise the barrier. • http://sole.dimi.uniud.it/~giorgio.brajnik/projects/bw/Giorgio Brajnik

31. Barrier Walk Through Method Conformance testing is difficult to apply correctly as it is based on general and abstract principles that are often difficult to specialize in order to make them relevant and operational. Better to start from known types of problems rather than using general design guidelines. (This is the same approach you would follow when assessing security of a web site: you'll start from known vulnerabilities.) • http://sole.dimi.uniud.it/~giorgio.brajnik/projects/bw/Giorgio Brajnik

32. BW method requires: to define the relevant user categories to define the relevant goals, and hence the relevant pages to be tested and the relevant scenarios to be considered to cross check relevant barriers with the selected pages, and to determine the severity of each barrier. • http://sole.dimi.uniud.it/~giorgio.brajnik/projects/bw/Giorgio Brajnik

33. Minor problem: the barrier is detected by the user, but there are simple ways to overcome it or to avoid it; it is easy to remember it, to learn how to avoid or get around it. This barrier affects marginally productivity or satisfaction, but not effectiveness nor safety. significant problem: the barrier is detected and it heavily affects the task execution. To overcome the barrier the user has to back-up, follow a trial-and-error strategy, guess the proper action, repeat an action several times; the user may incur in errors. In many cases it is not possible to avoid the barrier, which reduces effectiveness and/or security; even if it can be avoided, this requires a substantial knowledge and/or memory (to recall that there is the barrier and on how to avoid it). The barrier affects effectiveness, productivity, satisfaction and also safety. critical problem: the barrier is so big that very often users give up, and they do not reach their goals. This can happen after users have spent considerable time and effort to try to overcome the barrier, perhaps with many errors. There are no alternative ways (known to the users) that can be followed to achieve the goals. The barrier has a strong negative impact on effectiveness, and consequently also on productivity, satisfaction and safety. 3 levels of impedance : :.

34. Barriers CAPTCHA Agony

35. Trying to submit CAPTCHAs

36. Even a rage meme sprung up (inglip)

37. CAPTCHAs ?!! • Just about completely inaccessible to screen readers • Even an “accessible” one by CMU that was bought by google • Still inaccessible, despite:

38. Lots of work to make it accessible

39. JAVA, API’s & IDE’s

40. Accessibility API’s Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) (Microsoft) IAccessible2 (Linux Foundation) User Interface Automation (UIA) (Microsoft) Linux Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) and Assistive Technology - Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI) (gnome.org) Mac OS X Accessibility Protocol (Apple)

41. Make JavaScript Accessible Ensure that JavaScript event handlers are device independent (e.g., they do not require the use of a mouse) Make sure that your page does not rely on JavaScript to function. Javascript can actually increaseaccessibility- for example, tables

42. Exercise “Progressive Enhancement” Before: “graceful degradation” Build for “most users,” then implement hacks and workarounds to provide accessibility. Progressive enhancement is different Build a site with code structured around content. Add bells and whistles using Flash and Javascript afterwards. Basic access to content is not restricted.

43. ACCESS keys • Don’t use, depreciated • Likewise with longdesc attribute

44. ARIA Accessible Rich Internet Application A means of exposing Roles, States and Properties Robust support in current AT tools Integrated into major UI JavaScript libraries (Dojo, YUI3, jQuery UI) ARIA - http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ ARIA Authoring Practices - Useful for authors.

45. ARIA/HTML5

46. iOS and usability “Great iOS Apps Embrace the Platform and HI Design Principles” - From App Store Developer Site at apple.com • People deride apple • Conformity, lack of flexibility, etc • Why would Apple do this? • Conformity can be good • If all apps behave in similar ways and use conventionally adopted expectations, a user would have little to no barriers to successfully using the app on the first try

47. Captioned Video Content

48. Caption videos * Captioned video is accessible to people who can’t hear it Captions make video full-text searchable (YouTube) Captions can be automaticallytranslated to other languagesduring playback (YouTube) Captions can be used togenerate an interactivetranscript (YouTube)

49. Provide a transcript Benefits individuals who are deaf-blind (easier to read than captions with a Braille device) Benefits individuals with low Internet bandwidth (who can’t play the media) Benefits all users by allowing them to access content quickly Benefits Google, who indexes the content and ranks them in results

50. UDTL provides captioning service Anyone Within The University using Audio/Visual material for University purposes. How does one make a Captioning request? Follow the link ‘Captioning Request Form’ at http://www.uvm.edu/caption/ Simply click on the link below the ‘faculty’ section, provide the information required, submit the form and await our reply! For more information, contact Steven Airoldi (caption@uvm.edu)