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.
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.
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