Home » blog » Mary Connor's blog

Program notes: Accessibility

Posted March 2nd, 2007 by Mary Connor

The STC Austin program on March 1, 2007 hosted Kay Robart and Cynthia Cammack of the Texas Education Agency; they are technical writers sharing their research and experiences with accessibility compliance. Section 508 requires private sites to comply only if they receive federal funds or contract with a federal agency; however, current best practices include this and voluntary guidelines (WCAG), tested against accessibility checkers ("Bobby", AccVerify). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, covering how to make content accessible for disabled users (ex: JAWS) and user devices, such as cell phones.

Tips:

  • Austin-based classroom training available through Knowbility.
  • Check your development tools for "Accessibility Options" to enable; these typically expose additional fields (such as for alt and longdesc fields) and add Section 508 features, such as the method to let screen readers skip a repeated table of contents.

Quick-n-dirty review: Section 508 Standards for web apps (1194.22)

  • Add text equivalents for non-text elements ("alt", "longdesc")
  • Add synchronized captions for multimedia
  • Add formatting so that meaning is conveyed by more than color
  • Ensure page can be read without its CSS (and don't embed styles)
  • Retire server-side image maps (provide text links, or do client-side)
  • Add headers to data tables (row/column headers, plus markup to clarify 2+ levels)
  • Use semantic frame titles (help to identify and navigate)
  • Retire flickering animations (2-55 Hz)
  • Provide current, text-only equivalent when can't comply
  • Add machine-readable text to scripted content
  • Link to all required plug-ins/applet/readers
  • Make forms accessible (can follow directions, complete, submit/checkout)
  • Allow users to skip repeated navigation links (Contents pane)
  • For timed response, alert and allow user to request more time
Mary Connor's blog | login or register to post comments | printer friendly version

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Having Used Visual Aid Tools in the Past...my two cents

On March 3rd, 2007 Sarah Hoddinott says:

Great outline Mary,

I've used JAWS in the past as well as Zoomtext a common tool for the visually impaired. My JAWS users were very clear on their expectations for how iMIS would work. It boiled down to:

For JAWS

  1. They should be able to open any window using a key command instead of having to find a button to click
  2. Once a window is open, they need to be able to tab and shift-tab backward and forward
  3. Every field and button needs to be clearly labeled for reading by the application Where possible - standard MS key commands need to be replicated so that the user doesn't need to either learn a new series of commands that are application centric or have to perform custom JAWS scripting before they can use the application. The use of iMIS requires custom JAWS scripting to take place. It would be interesting to investigate whether we could provide a standard scripting set as we already have a few customers with Blind / Visually impaired users.

For ZoomText 

  1. High Contrast, e.g. buttons and print - I once had a user who was on the cusp between ZoomText and JAWS and had iMIS zoomed so large that you could only see the "C" on the Cancel button - you can imagine how pixilated that was - when I asked why, he said the Grey on Grey made it too difficult to view smaller. (v. 4.29). So, striving to make our buttons and print as black and white or white on black as possible makes ZoomText more effective. Alternatively, we need to offer the ability for an organization to manage the graphic of something like a button so that we can present it with any branding that we want but instruct an organization how to manage the contact graphic.
  2. Again on the subject of graphic flexibility - not all users have the same needs so being able to control the graphical context / standard font sizes of the application on a per user basis would be ideal

It was an awesome experience to put myself in the shoes of the blind / visually impaired and try and learn iMIS.  It was what I needed to do before I could teach them how to use iMIS.  I used to spend hours with a headset and a blindfold on trying to add / edit contact records, open batches, close batches, enter gifts etc.

login or register to post comments