From the category archives:

Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility Interview with Shawn Henry, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

by Fred on June 9, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters, WOW, and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web Accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from an international perspective, I?’m on the phone with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative, WAI, World Wide Web Consortium and a Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.

Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of JUST ASK: INTEGRATING ACCESSIBILITY THROUGHOUT DESIGN. She?’s also presented for WOW in the past and is a great addition to this podcast.

Good Afternoon Shawn and thanks for agreeing to this interview and, of course, for your comments by email. Shawn, you commented on the WOW Technology Minute Web Accessibility Podcast with Brent Norris. Can you summarize your comments and can you provide us with the resources and the links that you mentioned in your email?

SHAWN HENRY: Yeah, first of all it?’s great to hear about your project to evaluate and improve the accessibility of the WOW Technology Minute website. I noticed the mention of Section 508, which is for US government procurement, and so I wanted to share some information about the international accessibility of web content accessibility guidelines. So it?’s an international accessibility standard, and that acronym is WCAG. WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and it applies to websites and web applications. It?’s from the World Wide Web Consortium, or the W3C, and that?’s the group that defines standards such as html, css, etc. Within W3C there?’s a group called the Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI, and that?’s the group that developed the accessibility guidelines. So WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, just as with other W3C web standards, are cooperatively developed with people around the world.

It?’s a little different from US Section 508. In fact, Section 508 was based largely on WCAG 1.0, but it?’s only a subset. So WCAG covers many more accessibility issues. It?’s much broader. Now WCAG 2.0 is close to being published. As of the 30th of April we now recommend that people start using the draft of WCAG 2.0, as we don?’t expect it to change very much before it?’s finalized, hopefully later this year.

There?’s several benefits to using WCAG 2.0. It applies to more advanced technologies, both current technologies, future technologies and non-W3C technologies like flash and PDF and other things. It has extensive supporting materials that gives you practical how-to examples as what you need to do as developers to implement WCAG and how to, technical implementation details as well as understanding the functionality that users need.

So that?’s just a little bit about WCAG 2.0, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and if you want to get some more information I?’d encourage you to go look at the overview document and that is at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20. And that will give you an overview of the documents. There?’s a link to a FAQ, there?’s a really useful resource called “How to meet WCAG 2.0” and it?’s a customizable, quick reference of all the requirements and the information you need. So that?’s a bit about WCAG 2.0.

BILL: Excellent Shawn, thank you so much for that international perspective, as well as those resources available. I?’m curious to know, you mentioned earlier in your email to me regarding valuation tools and business cases. Can you address that?

SHAWN: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to let you know that we have several, we have a wide variety of resources from the W3C WAI. And Brent?’s comment about evaluation tools and yours about business cases has brought up two of them that I wanted to share. One is, for evaluation tools, we have a database, and that lists over 100 tools, multiple types of tools, languages, etc. And that?’s all searchable. So that?’s a good resource for finding different types of evaluation tools.

Then we also have a document called “Developing a Business Case for your Organization.” And it goes into detail about the social factors, technical factors, financial factors, and legal and policy factors, involved in the business case.

BILL: And this is from an international perspective?

SHAWN: Absolutely. It?’s a very broad resource. It covers whether you?’re in education, whether you?’re in government, whether you?’re in the private sector, a big company, a small company, it covers all these different issues. And it?’s designed so that you as an individual can pick the aspects that are relevant to your situation.

BILL: Excellent.

SHAWN: The business case is a little different for everybody.

BILL: Yeah, fair enough. Sounds like a terrific resource, we thank you for that.

SHAWN: Yeah. So if you want to find that, or any of the other resources, those are at http://www.w3.org/wai/resources.

BILL: Thank you so much for that. Anything else to share?

SHAWN: Another thing I wanted to mention is an interesting aspect about making developers?’ jobs easier and getting more accessibility for less effort. And that is the role of authoring tools. So authoring tools include your html editor, content management system, anything you?’re using to create content on the web. And when those support accessibility, that makes developers?’ jobs easier. So we also have authoring tool accessibility guidelines. And we are encouraging vendors to meet those, to make developers?’ jobs easier. That?’s another thing that developers can do, is to ask their authoring tool vendor if they?’re doing everything they can to meet accessibility guidelines as well. So that we can all get more accessibility integrated into our work with less effort.

For those who are particularly interested in providing equal access to people with disabilities, another aspect of the authoring tools accessibility guidelines, is the fact that things like blogging software, and wikis and photo-sharing sites and things like that, are also authoring tools. So it?’s important that they are accessible, so that people with disabilities themselves can contribute to the web as well.

BILL: Yeah. Good point, thank you for bringing that up Shawn.

SHAWN: Great.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation, where Adobe is debuting Adobe TV. That?’s right, if you haven?’t already checked out Adobe TV, check it out today at http://tv.adobe.com. And also check out their e-seminar series for web professionals for the month of July and August at http://www.adobe.com/go/webeseminars.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation.

Adobe Debuts Adobe TV
If you haven?’t already, check out Adobe? TV at Adobe TV. It?’s a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products. Adobe TV features four channels, each targeting a specific audience: Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Each channel features programming from Adobe evangelists, leading trainers, subject matter experts, and luminaries who pull in the crowds at industry events around the world. More than 200 videos are currently available on Adobe TV, including Adobe?’s popular presentations at NAB. And new content is added regularly.

July and August eSeminars for Web Professionals.
Join Adobe software experts to learn how to use the tightly integrated tools available in Adobe? Creative Suite? 3 Web Premium. Web eSeminars are designed for web designers, web developers and anyone interested in enhancing their workflows, and learning new tips and tricks. Learn more and register at www.adobe.com/go/webeseminars.
Introduction to Dreamweaver CS3

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Come learn how Dreamweaver helps you create standards-based websites, that will look great across different browsers. We will create a new design from scratch, based on a Photoshop composite, using CSS-based layout. We will also show some of Dreamweavers robust site management functionality, and see how Dreamweaver can help you learn various Web technologies.
From Pixels to Playback: Adobe Photoshop to Adobe Flash
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Deliver professional grade SWF and FLV content that?’s as easy for users to view as it is for you to create, edit, and deploy.

Prototyping with Fireworks CS3
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Fireworks CS3 delivers robust new tools for rapidly prototyping websites and user interfaces. Learn how to use Fireworks? prototyping features to create a working, click-through prototype; create multiple pages and share common layers across pages; import native Photoshop and Illustrator files, complete with hierarchical layer structures, layer blend modes, and layer effects; add rich symbols from Fireworks? Common Library, and customize symbol attributes in the Symbol Properties panel; and intelligently scale bitmap and vector symbols to avoid distortion.

It?’s ALIIIIIIIIIVE!: A Print and Web Designer Guide to Interactivity with Adobe Flash
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Free the rich, interactive content inside your Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator images with Adobe Flash. Learn how these programs give you a leg up when creating interactive and animated content for mobile devices and the web.

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility-WOW Tech Minute Project Overview

by Fred on June 5, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web accessibility. If you?’ve been following a long with the series of podcast that you?’re aware that I?’ve enlisted the support of several industry professionals including that of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii to assist me with better understanding today?’s Web accessibility best practices and to align this podcast to those standards.

If you?’re listening to this series for the first time, I?’d like to suggest that you visit previous coverage of this series of podcast to better understand the rational, the business case and the Web accessibility tools that are available today.

For today?’s podcast, Brent recaps some of his findings and some of the recommended items for the WOW Technology Minute website. For the complete four minute audio interview check out today’s podcast at the WOW Technology Minute..

Stay tuned for future interviews with additional interviews with Brent and others from the international community.

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web accessibility. If you?’ve been following along with this series of podcasts than you?’re already aware that I?’ve enlisted the support from several industry professionals including Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii, to assist me with better understanding today?’s best practices and to align this podcast to those standards. If you?’re listening to this series for the first time, I?’d like to suggest that you visit previous coverage of this series of podcasts to better understand the rationale, the business case, and the Web accessibility tools and resources and links that are available today. For today?’s podcast I?’m on the phone with Brent Norris to ask him for an update of his analysis and his recommendations for the WOW Technology Minute website. Good evening Brent and thanks for agreeing to this call. And of course, for your continued support.

BRENT NORRIS: For sure. So we ran the tests and we found some errors. There were two major errors, form label errors. We also found doctype wasn?’t declared and we found a language attribute that wasn?’t declared and the XML RPC file, which isn?’t necessarily a viewable file or a file that folks are going to look at on the site, so that was pretty good. So we had a couple of goals to remove errors and reduce the number of warnings. So we did that. And the down and dirty method was to remove the search box and to change the pull-down menu for the categories, and this is within the context of WordPress, to a list instead of a pull-down menu.

BILL: Excellent, that?’s a great summary. So sounds like that?’s relatively straightforward. So does that mean we?’re complete with the process?

BRENT: Well, we don?’t have any more errors. You know, it?’s an interesting point. There?’s errors, there?’s warnings, there?’s exclamation points, there?’s lots of different levels of accessibility. Then we?’ve got Section 508 compliance. One of the things that we can still do, of course, to meet that Section 508 compliance is to provide what?’s called a synchronized caption or synchronized transcript that runs along with the video or audio that we provide.

BILL: That certainly seems to make a lot of sense. The Adobe visual communicator product that we?’re currently using has the functionality of adding the transcription service to its functionality in flash that incorporates audio, video, images and the transcription all in one neat product. So certainly that?’s something we could do pretty straightforwardly. And then I suppose if I?’m understanding this correctly, it certainly seems to make a lot of sense, to have a separate, independent, downloadable audio component as well.

BRENT: Good question. Yes, there?’s actually, like you said, with visual communicator there?’s an opportunity to provide transcript, in context, synchronized with the audio. That?’s great. Adobe partnered up with HiSoftware, which is one of the resources that our listeners can find on the site for Section 508 voluntary, it?’s not the voluntary product accessibility template, it?’s an extension for flash that lets you include synchronized captioning. So it?’s like a five-hundred dollar piece of add-on software that folks creating video and flash can use to become Section 508 compliant.

BILL: Well that?’s great Brent. Sounds like another terrific resource. Thank you for that and of course thank you for all of your support. I think we?’re starting to get to the heart of this issue and that is that we?’ve determined the rationale, we?’ve determined the business reasons for this. We did an analysis of the WOW Technology Minute site. We?’ve looked at the tools available. We found the reports. All of these resources are readily available for the average working Web professional. It?’s not to say that it?’s not complex and it doesn?’t need a little bit of investment and time, but it seems to me that we?’ve gone down the path of better understanding this topic. We?’ve gone down the process of incorporating it into our daily life. And it seems like we?’ve actually found some solutions for some big issues that need to be addressed. So Brent I?’m very grateful for that. In future minutes I?’d like to explore other in-depth interviews about how you felt about this process and how you feel about incorporating this kind of activity into your daily Web professional life. In addition, I?’d also to like to point out that for the listeners of this podcast that are outside of the United States, 508 is a particular section that applies to the United States. We will be interviewing other Web professionals from a more international perspective, so we can find out what issues exist internationally and we can also find out what solutions exist. And I know there are many. So with that, thank you for listening and thank you for watching. And of course Brent, thank you again for your time today.

BRENT: Much aloha Bill, and aloha to everyone out there.

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility-Interview and Update on the WOW WA Project with Brent Norris

by Fred on June 4, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a practicing Web 2 developer s point of view, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii.

If you?’ve been following along with this series of podcast than you re aware that Brent?’s taken project of researching the current status of Web accessibility and the tools that are available today for the Web professional.

For today?’s podcast Brent recaps some of his findings and the specific tools he?’s used, including some SEO tools that lend itself to accessibility by evaluating the readability of your website. For the complete 3 minute interview complete with the tools and resources check out today s podcast at WOW Technology Minute.

Stay tuned for future interviews with Brent as he will be reporting on his findings and am in depth analysis on the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal of aligning it with best practices. Brent will cover the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interviews of the process.

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility-WOW Website Project and Interview with Brent Norris, Web 2 Developer

by Fred on June 2, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a Web 2 developers point of view, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii. Brent has been a long time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

I ve asked Brent to take on the project of researching the current status of Web accessibility and the tools that are available today for the Web professional. Brent s uncovered some interesting information and resources. He also has a unique perspective on the topic as well. For the complete 7 minute interview and the tools and resources check out today s podcast at WOW Technology Minute.

In future interviews, Brent will be reporting on his findings regarding my request to conduct and analysis on the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal of aligning it with best practices. Brent will cover the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interviews of the process.

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a Web 2.0 developer perspective, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer and a long-time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute, from the great state of Hawaii. I?’ve asked Brent to explore the topic of Web accessibility from the perspective of his daily activities. In addition to that, to help support the WOW with it?’s Web 2.0 application and ensuring that we are providing the best practices relevant to Web professionals. Good evening and thanks for agreeing to this interview and for your continued support to the WOW organization.

BRENT NORRIS: Aloha Bill, thanks for having me back.

BILL: Thank you Brent. I?’m curious to know Brent, with that said and that introduction, can you give us an update?

BRENT: Sure. Well, I?’ve been looking at tools and testing methodologies. In fact one of the things I wasn?’t aware of is that as of February 1st the Watchfire WebXact and Bobby online products, were no longer available. Those were purchased by IBM. I think that was a couple of years ago now. And so anyway, we kind of looked for new tools. And there happens to be some really great tools out there. The FAE, the Functional Accessibility Evaluator from the University of Illinois, is an example of a great tool. There?’s a few others and lots of resources out there. Although maybe not as many resources as there used to be. Microsoft, Apple, they still have their Section 508 and accessibility resources. The Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility has their resources. And then section508.gov and virtual508.com, I believe, they all have their tools as well. So then there?’s the tools that we?’ve outlined, there?’s the resources that we?’ve outlined to go and use. We?’re also going to include additional resources on the website. And using those tools we?’ll be able to assess the current situation and come back with some recommendations.

BILL: Yeah, thanks Brent, I appreciate that. And so I?’m curious to know, for those listeners that are not familiar and that haven?’t been practicing for the length of time that you have, give us a high level of the mechanics, if you will, the functionality of both LIFT and Bobby.

BRENT: Well, Bobby is an online tool, you enter a URL into the Bobby interface and it would come back with warnings and issues that pass Web accessibility guidelines. So it would give you a pretty accurate assessment of how well your website did when it came to Web accessibility. And it touches on 508 compliance as well. So that was an online tool. LIFT was an extension for Dream Weaver that gave you some additional help, as you were coding a page there were some pop-ups windows that would help you in Dream Weaver to add accessibility features. Things like tab indexes, navigational aides and it would indicate to you when you needed to give different forms of content. So if you included a table it would make sure that you put the proper table headers in and it would make sure that if you provided a piece of multimedia content that you would provide it in an alternate form as well. So those were two really popular tools, back in the day. And now IBM has those tools also in their Rational Testing Tool, so Section 508 is still very much in the realm of professionals and the tools and the case, they?’re there for professional use.

BILL: So that begs the question then, Brent, you know this is what I?’m trying to get at with this podcast, in particular. In previous podcasts we?’ve explored the rationale and the business reasons for Web accessibility. For example, we?’ve interviewed most recently T.V. Raman from Google, who made a very solid case for designing, developing, with Web accessibility. There are quite a few people with disabilities, both visually and hearing, and otherwise. So with that said, I?’m trying to hone in on that large percentage of the audience that?’s not that familiar with Web accessibility. In other words, we know practicing professionals that receive government funding, higher education for example or government, for the most part they?’re somewhat familiar, if not very familiar, with Web accessibility. But to those that are out there in the field that are not necessarily practicing Web accessibility everyday, I?’m just curious to know from your point of view, how practical is it to use the tools that are available today to make sound and Web accessible websites. I guess I?’m trying to cut to the chase and peel back a layer of that level of the onion. How practical is it that these individuals can go out and use these tools today?

BRENT: Well, you know, you raise some really interesting points and I think the search engine optimization point is probably the most popular for most folks. One of the things that we know from reading Google?’s webmaster guidelines is that Web accessibility also helps drive traffic to your website. So I think there?’s a strong business case to bring your sites into compliance or to bring them at least to that 80-90% level for accessibility. One of the things I learned from the IBM Rational Policy Testing homepage, is that there?’s actually over 10% of the online population has a disability. That?’s 750 million people worldwide, 55 million Americans. And there?’s also a large number of people with learning disorders and disabilities that also need help when we?’re putting our pages together. So things like trunking the information, while they?’re good for search engines, they?’re also good for folks that, they?’re good for everyone to be able to help read and skim through the data on the website. So the tools actually from the search engine optimization state, mimic some of the needs of accessibility folks too.

BILL: Fair enough. So I?’m a Web developer and I?’m out there managing small business websites and I?’m strapped for time, these tools are resourceful for me as well?

BRENT: I think so. And there?’s plenty of tools available. SEOmoz has a good search engine optimization tool. Website Grader is a good search optimization tool. But what I really think we need to do is use something like the Functional Accessibility Evaluator from the University of Illinois site and combine the features of that tool and maybe one to five data point in some of these website graders that consider search engine optimization. So in other words, make accessibility part of that, part of that thing.

BILL: Yeah, fair enough. Okay, well that?’s an interesting point. Well listen, let?’s make it a point to make all of these links and these resources available on today?’s WOW Technology Minute and then reaching out into the future Brent, can you give us an in-depth analysis of the current WOW Technology Minute website with the, an analysis that we can easily read and understand and walk the listeners and the viewers of this podcast through the process of what we did when designing our sites for Web accessibility?

BRENT: Absolutely. We?’re going to do a full pass and identify those tools. We?’ll make sure all the resources are available and we?’re going to also identify the best practices. So we?’re going to outline not only the top ten things that folks should be doing on their websites, but also where to get more help.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much Brent, I appreciate it. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters, the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Brent Norris from the great state of Hawaii. Thanks again Brent.

BRENT: Oh, thanks Bill and have a good evening. Aloha.

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibilty WOW Tech Minute Project with Brent Norris, Web Developer

by Fred on May 28, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist the me with this topic, I am reaching out to Brent Norris, Web Developer from the great state of Hawaii.

Brent Norris has been a long time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute. Additionally Brent?’s a veteran Web professional specializing in Web 2.0 websites and I am reaching out today to a request to share his thoughts on the topic. More specifically, I?’ve asked Brent to walk us through the specific steps that he takes when considering Web accessibility for his clients. I also asked him to take on the project of assessing the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal of aligning it with best practices and covering the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interviews of the process.

Good afternoon Brent and thanks for the continued support. To hear Brent?’s response complete with his plans for the WOW Tech Minute Web accessibility project check out today s podcast at WOW Technology Minute

Stay tuned this week for more coverage on Web Accessibility and other great resources. Thanks for listening and watching today s WOW Technology Minute.

Today s Technology Minute is sponsored by the Adobe Corporation and its Creative License eSeminar Series for Web Professionals.

Join Adobe software experts to learn how to use the tightly integrated tools available in Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Web Premium. Web eSeminars are designed for web designers, web developers and anyone interested in enhancing their workflows, and learning new tips and tricks and take place April 23, 2008 – May 21, 2008

Adobe Seminars Check it out!

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web accessibility. To assist the me with this topic, I am reaching out to Brent Norris, Web Developer from the great state of Hawaii. Brent has been a long-time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute. Additionally Brent is a veteran Web professional specializing in many Web 2.0 applications and websites. And I?’m reaching out to Brent today to request him share his thoughts on the topic. More specifically, I?’ve asked Brent to walk us through the specific steps that he takes when considering Web accessibility for a client. I?’ve also asked him to take on the project of assessing the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal in mind of aligning it to best practices, and covering the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interview of the process. Good afternoon Brent and thanks for agreeing to this interview.

BRENT NORRIS: Aloha Bill, thanks for having me on.

BILL: Brent, can you share with the listeners of this podcast what you have in mind for the Web accessibility project of bringing the WOW Technology Minute site up to best practices?

BRENT: Sure Bill. Well as you know, we?’ve checked in with this topic time and time again from Web accessibility, Section 508 compliance and html standards, and our research has kind of been mixed. But we?’ll embark on it again and what we?’ll do is we?’ll do this within the context of what?’s important to a webmaster, generalist, so that they might be able to get a little closer to that Holy Grail of Section 508 compliance. And along the way what we?’ll do first is we?’ll analyze the wowtechminute.com site, evaluate it, where it stands now with tools that we?’ve already talked about in some of your other podcasts, as well as some of the tools and resources at section508.gov. And then we?’ll make some corrections if we can, to try and make the site more accessible for persons with disabilities. And make recommendations. So those recommendations will be for the other webmasters and generalists out there that are interested, trying to make their sites more accessible.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Adobe Corporation and its creative license eSeminar series for Web professionals. Join Adobe software experts to learn how to use tightly integrated tools available in Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium. The Web eSeminars are designed for Web designers, developers and anyone interested in enhancing their workflows and learning new tips and tricks. And all of this will take place from April 23 – May 21, 2008. Check out all the great links on the WOW Technology Minute website

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility-Interview with Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. University of Illinois

by Fred on May 20, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist us in better understanding this issue from a higher education point of view, I am on the phone with Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. Coordinator Information Technology Accessibility Disability Resources and Educational Services at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Gunderson provides training, developmental tools and is working on publishing a guide on Web accessibility best practices. I asked Dr. Gunderson to share with the listeners of this podcast what Web professionals need to know about Web accessibility and what they can implement today.

To listen to the six minute podcast visit today?’s WOW Technology Minute

Thank you for listening and watching today?’s WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Pro Training

Transcript:

DR. JON GUNDERSON: Thank you, glad to be here.

BILL: Dr. Gunderson, you provide training, developmental tools and you?’re working on publishing best practices regarding accessibility. Can you share with the listeners of this podcast what Web professionals need to know about Web accessibility and what can we do today to provide best practices?

DR. GUNDERSON: Well our approach here with accessibility, when I first got involved with accessibility on campus ten years ago, kind of a standard approach people would take to accessibility would be to find some online tools, I think this is still a model with a lot of developers. They find some tool that will evaluate their website, for accessibility, give them this report, and then they would look at the report and try to fix the problems that were identified in the report. We found that very problematic from a number of different perspectives. One is that it doesn?’t address the inherent mark-up that people use for accessibility. Most of the automated tools out there check for only a very few accessibility requirements. Most of them have lists of what I call manual checks, like there?’s alt texts for images, maybe labels for form controls, but if you don?’t use headers on a page, or not properly, these tools consider that a manual check. So if you don?’t have any headers, hey, your page may be okay. So when we looked at that, we didn?’t think that model would lead to really more accessible websites. People might fix them up a little bit but their time and effort is probably going to be wasted because the overall website still won?’t be very accessible.

So our approach here was what we call accessibility by design, and piggyback that on top of Web standards. So kind of the mantra was, okay, your current website isn?’t very accessible, but when you?’re ready to redesign it, come to us or take one of our training classes that we offer and learn about accessible design, the things you should put in your page, and we piggybacked those techniques on top of Web standards so kind of the overall idea is everybody wins. The Web developers win because they?’re using Web standards. They can more efficiently create and maintain their websites. People with disabilities win because a lot of the accessibility features are just built in to how the website is created. And also administrators win because the cost of putting in accessibility at this time is fairly minimal. In fact I say to people, it probably saves them money.

We have an example on this campus, Dr. Brigett works for our office of publications, public affairs, and when he got involved, when we got involved with him on accessibility and making the campus home page accessible, his idea of creating a web page was drawing a picture in Photoshop or Illustrator and using the save to Web feature, which basically just broke up the image to little, bitty pieces so it could be sufficiently downloaded as a picture. Well, it?’s very difficult, if not impossible, to make that process accessible. So we tried to talk to him about Web standards and using css and the structural mark-up of html. It took a little time to learn those skills, but his next version of the home page was, you know, 100 times more accessible than the previous picture version. It was also faster to download, easier to maintain. But it was after he did that, what he said, I think that really made an impact on me, he said, “I learned these skills because of accessibility, but I use them because they?’re better Web design.”

BILL: Interesting, great story. I appreciate that. And in effect that long-term saves time, saves money.

DR. GUNDERSON: Right. That?’s the big issue now. When the Web was a wild, wild west everybody was just dumping money into it, but now that it?’s become more of a commodity and a production, people are more concerned about cost.

BILL: Fair enough, and good point. And well said Dr. Gunderson. I appreciate that. What specifically, can you give us one tip, you know, if the listeners of this podcast wanted to know, “What can I do today to start this process and make my sites more accessible?”

DR. GUNDERSON: Well, I think one of the first things that we ask Web developers to do is to look at heading structure on their webpage and use headings in a hierarchical manner. So we reserve the H1 tag to uniquely title a page, so that people as they move between webpages can navigate to the H1, especially if I?’m a speech user, and know how this page is different than another page. And that if you have navigation bars, that you use header marks, header level 2s, either right before the list of links. And there are techniques in css to hide the header if you don?’t want the visual rendering to have it. But that allows people using speech especially, to be able to find where the navigation bars are. And then if you can use header levels 2s and 3s structurally within the page people can, especially speech users, can now go find the main topics easily. And keyboard-only users can also use those headers to navigate, so to, more efficiently to links on a page. So for example if I?’m using the Opera browser, it has a built-in header navigation function, the W and S keys. I?’m a keyboard-only user, I?’m not a screen-reader user, but I can?’t use the mouse for some reason. If I have headers on my page, I can use the S and W keys to navigate close to the link I want and then use link navigation to get to the specific link under that topic. So you can go from having to type 40 to 50 or 60 keystrokes, tabbing through a page, to maybe 5 or 6 using header navigation and the tab.

BILL: Very interesting and I appreciate your perspective on that Dr. Gunderson. Great information, great resources. We appreciate your time today. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) on the telephone with Dr. Jon Gunderson, Coordinator Information Technology, Accessibility and Disability Resources and Educational Services at the University of Illinois. Thank you so much for your time today Dr. Gunderson.

DR. GUNDERSON: Thank you.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at webprotraining.org.

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility -"tips that you can use today" with Professor Mark DuBois

by Fred on May 16, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist us in understanding this issue from a “what can we do today” perspective, I am on the phone with Professor Mark DuBois, from Illinois Central College.

Mark, good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to the interview. Mark, as you know thousands of Web professionals are tasked to manage a number of complex technical, designs and Web business topics everyday. In short, they are not always going to be Web accessibility specialist. As a result, can share with the listeners of podcast a couple of specific examples that Web professionals need incorporate when considering Web accessibility for their clients?

Mark. you also serve as the Director of Education for the WOW organization and we are collaborating yon the development of a short course on the topic of Web accessibility the listeners what that course might entail and how much will it cost?

To listen to the four minute response check out the WOW Technology Minute at: http://www.webprominute.org

Today?’s WOW Technology minute is sponsored by the “Voices That Matter” series of Conferences. This years Voices That Matter Web Design conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders, the leading publisher of Web design books and resources—and home to the most popular Web design authors, trainers, and speakers. This year?’s Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Voices That Matter Conference

Check it out today! http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2008/

{ 0 comments }

Web Accessibility – Interview with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC

by Fred on May 12, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility and I?’m on the phone with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC a Web accessibility consulting firm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Good afternoon Kel and thanks for agreeing this interview. Kel, you contacted WOW in regards to the interview on the topic of Web accessibility with T.V. Raman at Google. Can you expand on the comments made by T.V. Raman and can you share with the listeners of this podcast what Web accessibility means to you?

Kel is a knowledgeable professional with some great things to share about Web accessibility, usability and universal design. To listen to the three minute interview complete with some great links to Kel?’s consultant and blog website Anikto.com check out today?’s WOW Technology Minute at: http://www.webprominute.org WOW Technology Minute

Today?’s WOW Technology minute is sponsored by the “Voices That Matter” series of Conferences. This years Voices That Matter Web Design conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders, the leading publisher of Web design books and resources—and home to the most popular Web design authors, trainers, and speakers. This year’s Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Voices That Matter Conference

Check it out today! http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2008/

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of web accessibility and I?’m on the phone with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC a Web accessibility consulting firm. Good afternoon Kel and thanks for agreeing this interview.

KEL SMITH: Thank you, thank you for having me.

BILL: Kel, you contacted the WOW in regards to the interview on the topic of Web accessibility and T.V. Raman at Google. Can you expand on the comments made by T.V. Raman and can you share with the listeners of this podcast what Web accessibility means to you?

KEL: Certainly. I was most struck by one of T.V.’s comments having to do with ensuring that websites, or really any projects designed, can be made without regard to assumptions on who the user will be that winds up benefiting from it. For example, he had said, “When you make a website don’t necessarily assume that a person is going to have a certain-sized monitor, or a certain-size screen or that they’ll be abe to be totally able in terms of vision, color blind.” And I started thinking about that in terms of Universal Design principals. For those who don’t know, Universal Design is a broad-spectrum approach which is intended to benefit everyone, including but not limited to people who have disabilities. And the second principal of that is secondary use, meaning that the design should accommodate a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. Universal Design is largely derived from an architectural term, a good example is a building called [?], I believe in New York, they do things architecturally. For example they have carpet that gets darker as you approach a door, I think they have small changes in the carpet so that as you approach a corner you can sort of feel that the corner is going to be there so you can make a turn, safely. They also have small shelves to the right of doors so that someone in a wheelchair who wants to fish out their keys can put their bags down and be able to access that easily.

BILL: Yeah, it seems to me that Web accessibility has additional benefits outside the scope of just web-users. Universal design is a science that’s been around for a number of years that has a broad range of benefits to a variety of individuals including all users.

KEL: Absolutely. It’s also important to keep in mind the usability accessibility. We include websites that comply with various criteria of Section 508 but we also want to be sure we test them with real users and ensure those variances from user to user and even within the same disability, are covered. The idea behind Universal Design is to make sure that the design is useable across multiple situations and scenarios and multiple people. For example we want to ensure that usability is improved such that it?’s common practice to put a skip navigation link, at the top of a page, so that a screen reader, which reads back a page in sort of a robotic voice, doesn’t read the navigation on every single page when a user clicks on a respective link. The problem with that is users with disabilities may not, and blind users in particular, may not understand the concept of navigation because they’ve never actually seen a map. So the idea of skip navigation is to read not just the context of an accessible website. It may comply with criteria, but it may not get the context. So it?’s better to put in items such as skip command content. It’s important to use an adjective name as the modifier for the word content, so that the screen reader doesn’t read the word “content” as “content” as in happy. So it?’s not just making sure that the page technically complies, it?’s also making sure that it meets a certain usability standard, which you’re going to find out if you’re testing with real people.

BILL: Yeah, I understand that. I appreciate that perspective Kel. You’ve obviously been consulting on this topic for a while. For the listeners of this podcast that might have an interest in consulting services provided by your organization, where might they go to get more information?

KEL: The best place would be go to the website first, it?’s www.anikto.com. It’s the Greek word for “open.” I just started this consulting firm, just this year actually. And there’s a link to contact me directly and there’s also a link to go to the Anikto blog which is where I write about what is going on in the accessibility world and basically helping people get along better with this tricky landscape.

BILL: Excellent. I appreciate that, and your time today, and your perspective. Very valuable and very insightful. We certainly appreciate it. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Kel Smith, Principal from Anikto LLC. Thank you for your time today Kel.

KEL: Thank you. I’m very honored. Thanks very much.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Voices That Matter series of conferences. The Voices That Matter Web Design Conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders the leading publishers of web design books and resources and home to the most popular web design authors, trainers and speakers. This year’s Voices That Matter Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee.

{ 1 comment }

Web Accessibility Interview with T.V. Raman, Research Scientist at Google

by Fred on May 8, 2008

Web Accessibility Interview with T.V. Raman, Research Scientist at Google Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Web Accessibility Interview with T.V. Raman, Research Scientist at Google Download

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere!
Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you’ve been following along with this months podcast, than you?’re aware that we’ve been covering the goings on at the seventeenth annual WWW2008 Conference in Beijing. In addition to delivering WOW education and training and covering the keynotes, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing a handful of the delegates attending the conference.

For today’s podcast, I have the distinct pleasure of covering the topic of Web accessibility with T.V. Raman, Research Scientist at Google.

T.V. is legally blind and in addition to being a truly nice guy T.V. has a real handle on the topic of the need for Web accessibility and its business benefits as well. In fact, as a result of this interview, I?’ve decided to dedicate the remainder of this month?’s podcast to the topic and will be interviewing a wide variety of Web professionals for the remainder of the month of May.

Here are the questions that I asked T.V. Raman:

•Are we progressing as an industry with respect to Web accessibility?
•Why is this issue important and significant?
•How can we explain the benefits to Web accessibility to our customers and can you explain the benefits to business?

Make it point to turn up your speaker volume and hone in on this must listen to interview with T.V. Raman from Google. Check out additional resources from T.V. Raman at the Google Webmaster Blog located at: Google Webmaster Blog

Thank you for listening and watching today?’s WOW Technology Minute.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProTraining.org check it out at: WebProTraining.org

Transcript:

Transcript of WOW Technology Minute – Interview with T.V. Raman
Located at – http://webprominute.org/429/Web-Web-accessibility-interview-with-tv-raman-research-scientist-at-google/
Aired – 5/8/2008
Length – 10:02

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. If you’ve been following along with this month?’s podcast, then you?’re aware that we?’ve been covering the goings on at the seventeenth annual WWW2008 Conference in Beijing. In addition to delivering WOW education and training, and covering the keynotes, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing a handful of the delegates attending the conference. For today?’s podcast, I have the distinct pleasure of covering the topic of Web accessibility with T.V. Raman, Research Scientist at Google.

T.V. is legally blind and in addition to being truly a nice guy, T.V. has a real handle on the topic of the need for Web accessibility and its business benefits as well. In fact, as a result of this interview, I?’ve decided to dedicate the remainder of this month’s podcast to the topic and as a result I will be interviewing a wide variety of Web professionals for the remainder of the month of May. Make it a point to turn up your speaker volume and hone in on this must-listen interview with T.V. Raman from Google.
Good afternoon T.V. and thank you for agreeing to this interview.

T.V. RAMAN: Thank you for inviting me to this.

BILL: You bet. My question to you, T.V., you specialize in accessibility issues and that’s an area of strong interest to you, I’m curious to know, have we progressed as a profession, as an industry, on the topic of accessibility? Are we making any specific headway?

T.V.: I believe we’ve made a lot of progress. The fact that someone from your field, who is mostly focused on the webmaster field, actually does an interview on accessibility, tells us how far we’ve come. Because ten years ago if you had said accessibility we would?’ve probably said, you know, is the website accessible from some corner of the world versus another. So I believe it’s come a long way. And the way I look at it you can always ask, is the cup half full or half empty? But we as an industry should all congratulate ourselves on the fact that, first of all, the cup is a lot bigger. So if the cup is a lot bigger, if it’s half empty, there’s a lot more to fill. And if it’s half full than there’s a lot we‘ve already filled. So, I tend to be an optimist about such things and so I think we’ve come a long way. We also created challenges as the Web evolved, but that’s part of, that’s part of me working in this field fun. There are more things to solve.

BILL: Yeah, I appreciate that. Excellent perspective. I’m really pleased to hear that we’re making progress. WOW is a Web professional organization that has a focus on education and it’s been our goal to educate individuals, teachers, those that create design, make websites today, the importance of that. And that leads to the next question. I represent a lot of practicing professionals that are certainly already aware or understand, but I also represent the thousands of individuals that consider this a brand new field. And those that teach them, that are not necessarily aware of the significance and the importance of accessibility for that audience. Could you address accessibility from your point of view and why is it significant to consider in the first place?

T.V.: So, I used to say this before I went to Google, the world’s most influential that I knew is actually the Google search bot. And accessibility today is made extremely complicated by people who do that field for a living, with lots of guidelines and “you must do this and you mustn’t do that.” And so at first flash it might appear to be an extremely intimidating prospect, to answer the question “Is my large website accessible?” Or “What should I be doing?” But if you’re going to boil it down, it actually, accessibility of the Web goes back to taking the Web to its basics. The Web as a [indecipherable] term and professed by a lot of us, was all about when you put out your information, you shouldn’t be making any assumptions about the user who is going to come look at it. You shouldn’t be assuming that he has a color display, you shouldn’t be assuming that he has a large monitor, you shouldn’t be assuming that he has broadband, whatever. What has happened, and because the Web has created a lot of accessibility challenges, is in our rush to sort of deploy to the Web and get what we think of as the immediate goals that we want to achieve, sometimes we lose sight of that larger perspective, which is where a lot of accessibility challenges come from. So my advice to people in this field who are interested in looking into accessibility, yes the field is complex when you sort of investigate it and ask, for the deaf user, for the blind user, for the [indecipherable]-impaired user, for the reading disabled user, what should I do? It can get rather intimidating. But if you go back to basics, the Web as designed, is intrinsically designed to be viewed by everyone, used by everyone, accessed from everywhere. And as long as we stick to that popular goal, when doing the next level detail of what you need to do, it actually becomes a lot easier.

I like to point people in your field on some of the articles I’ve been running on the Google webmaster blog about accessibility and crawl-ability and sort of kill two birds with one stone. What can you do to both ensure that your site is useable, viewable by a widest possible audience and at the same time also make it easy to search. Because one of the reasons I started doing this was I realized that people were spending a lot of money on search engine optimization. And as someone who has special needs and has a vested interest in accessibility, I looked at it and said, “Can we actually start explaining to people, not accessibility in terms of laws and guidelines, which are important, but also accessibility in terms of the bottom line?” So if people really cared about optimizing their sites for search engines, they’ll go out, and I’m not making this up, a lot of those optimizations also positively impact what I call the long tail of users. So, you know what the long tail of content is as a webmaster, it‘s those 80 percent of pages that are accessed by 20% of users. The long tail of users I think of as users with special needs because each one of us is different. And so if you start optimizing your site for that long tail, you make it more crawl-able, more useful and ultimately a better site.

BILL: Excellent, very well said. And thank you for expanding on that because I represent, that was one of the questions I had, I represent a lot of Web professionals that have customers that they need to educate as to the value proposition of accessibility and I think you’ve done a very good job of explaining that. The other side of that coin is there are certainly, just to summarize if I may, there are certain business reasons why small business people that have an interest in developing sites, or medium or large enterprise websites for that matter, is that it provides with better search capabilities hence providing them with a better indexing of, a more marketable website. Would that be a fair way of summarizing that?

T.V.: Yes, absolutely. The site becomes more discoverable. So if you sort of again, come down to brass tacks as a webmaster, when you put out content, why are you putting it out? You’re putting it out so that it gets viewed. How are people going to view it? They’re going to come with whatever user-agent they use, whatever technology they use. And so the fewer assumptions you’ve made, you are better off. The next level, let’s say you create your wonderful masterpiece, but then you hide it behind a flashy front page, say done in Macromedia flash or something. And so people come to the front page of yours, know about your site, click on that, see this nice animation and then see your content. But, today most people search on the Web and if it’s hidden behind a piece of flash content it’s probably not gotten crawled and so the person typing a bunch of keywords into any search engine is probably not going to find your site, which means you sort of lost something. And so, the example I give people is as webmasters we sometimes think of our sites as this fancy building that we are putting together and we create this really nice front lobby with this beautiful set of stairs going up with marble pillars everywhere. But most people on the Web are likely to jump in through the 15th floor window. So I’m not saying don’t provide that beautiful façade for your site, do put on a good front, but be aware that most of the visitors to your site will not come in through the front door. They will parachute through the ceiling, that is they?’ll come in through the 15th floor window, make sure that you’re providing them as well an equally good experience and overall make sure that they can actually parachute into your site, through some search engines.

BILL: Excellent. Makes a very good business case and I appreciate the perspective on that. In addition to being the right thing to do, for accessibility, for those that are hearing or visually impaired. So I certainly appreciate your perspective on that. T.V. thank you. This is Bill Cullifer with the World Organization of Webmasters WOW here at the 17th annual WWW Conference in Beijing, China. Thank you so much T.V. Raman from Google.

T.V.: Thank you.

{ 0 comments }

Next Entries →