Accessibility of Information Systems

 Last school semester I was working for a course on Information Systems at the University of Toronto. I delivered a guest lecture, Accessibility and Information Systems, that highlights the various issues, benefits, and resources for practitioners to consider to make their info system (whether it is a website, mobile app, self-serve kiosk, etc) more accessible to people of various abilities.

As one who lives and works in the province of Ontario, I'm very proud of the work my government has done to encourage and regulate accessibility through Ontario’s Integrated Accessibility Standards. What we are doing in Ontario can really provide a role model for other jurisdictions.

You can access my speaker notes via the "Options" button on the bottom of the Google Slides' player. I"ll highlight my key points below, however. 




Introducing Accessibility
 My background and interests are in designing and understanding digital user experiences. I believe that for everyone to be able to enjoy and benefit from digital media, it should be accessible to them. Accessibility, put simply, means that people can access – that is find and use – information or resources. Accessibility, in the context of this discussion, refers to the availability of resources  and services to people regardless of their abilities. People can be blocked by barriers based on: vision, hearing, mobility, motor control, cognitive or learning ability, mental health, and other factors.

The problematic issue of accessibility, particularly in regards to info systems, has created a gulf known as the “disability divide”. The disability divide draws upon the concept of the digital divide, wherein the world is increasingly divided between those who have access to Internet and those who do not. As the ability to use the Internet is required for more aspects of life, this inaccessibility further prevents disabled people from greater societal participation.

Approximately 1 in 7 Ontarians identified as disabled = 1.85 million people. That figure is expected to rise to 1 in 5 people by the year 2036 as our population agesDisabilities may not be readily apparent. The number of people affected by accessibility is much greater when one considers that it pertains to those with permanent conditions, temporarily disabled (e.g., broken arms), situationally disabled (e.g. loud environments preventing hearing audio), and those with diminishing capacity (e.g., elderly).

Social Considerations
Studies reveal the tremendous impact Internet access can have on disabled people. Researchers have also studied homebound elderly and disabled people before and after getting Internet access, and they found using the Internet decreased feelings of isolation and depression. Also, online shopping was found to reduce mobility disability.

Legal Requirements
Ontario has a recent law regarding accessibility, but even before this law inaccessibility was considered prohibited discrimination across Canada due to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act or AODA was passed in 2005 with the goal of making Ontario accessible for people with disabilities by 2025. The regulations apply to people who live, work, or do business in Ontario. Where the rules will be most enforced will be in regards to businesses, government, and education. If you are working for a company now with over 20 employees your company must have submitted last year to the Ontario government a report on how the company is working towards accessibility.

There are other reports and actions due in the coming years. The Ontario government has a Accessibility Compliance Wizard that walks one through compliance issues with a calendar of key dates.

 If you aren’t living or working in Ontario, you may still encounter AODA or rules like it as Ontario is being observed by other provinces and countries as an exemplar. More jurisdictions are moving forward or considering similar legislation.

Business Reasons:
Implementing accessibility may help you increase your company's reach or access new markets. For example, Good Grips kitchen utensils were designed for arthritis but are widely popular for their ease and comfort of use.  Other examples include screen readers developed for blind people but great for motorists. Accessible info systems may also improve interoperability and performance, optimizing for search engines, and demonstrate corporate responsibility.

 As you are studying and working in various information fields, you will encounter accessibility in various different products and services. Implementing accessibility can seem like a lot to do and may seem like it is difficult to know where to start. The first step should be knowing your audience or customers. Know what their needs are and then work to achieve this goal first. You can learn about your audience through informal data (e.g. customer service reports) or formal research via surveys or focus groups.

Guidelines
In 1997, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the formation of its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The WAI was a collaborative effort from industry, advocacy organizations, disability specialists, and academia. Their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was released in 1999 and updated into a second version 2008. It is the second version known as WCAG 2 that is in use today. Despite criticism, WCAG is the leading international standard and the basis of international policy and law, including US’ Section 508, AODA, and an ISO standard. 

If you will be developing hardware or software, IBM guidelines are among the most recognized. For those working with a specific disability group, such as autism or epilepsy, there are disability specific guidelines that go beyond the others.

Accessibility Experts
 Due to AODA accessibility experts and consultants are proliferating now, but be careful. Hiring outside consultants who specialize in web accessibility can be a solution.  Yet, with any field where a client is not able to judge the quality of an expert’s work, it is possible for experts to abuse their position. So check a consultant’s past work and references first.

As people increasingly integrate online activities into their lives, a digital, disability divide exists between those who can and cannot access online content. Alterations to design and code can remove barriers that otherwise lock disabled people out of participation. As information professionals it is up to us to do our best to remove the disability divide.

Mobile Devices Are Changing Our Lives

I recently signed out magazines from my nearby public library for recreational reading on a flight. I still like reading print, but don't like spending the $6 or more magazine now costs. Granted they were a bit old, but applicable to my research interests.

Toronto Life Magazine had an excellent article on the problems with RIM, "Lazaridis and Balsillie Meet Their Waterloo" (unfortunately, not available online).

Time magazine had a "Wireless Issues" this past August that discussed "10 Ways Your Phone Is Changing the World". These ways and their respective articles are:

1. Democracy - elections will never be the same
2. Giving - doing good by texting
3. Spending - bye-bye, wallets
4. Secrets (and surveillance) - the phone knows all
5. Attitudes (socializing & communicating) - your life is fully mobile
6. Talking (rural telecommunications) - the grid is winning
7. Seeing (photography) - a camera goes anywhere
8. Play - toys get unplugged
9. Learning - gadgets go to class
10. Health - disease can't hide

I'm planning a class (hopefully to teach sometime soon) on how mobile devices have affected our society and identified these areas as the major ways mobiles are changing our lives. But I wondered what other areas are changing as a result of the increasingly global, ubiquitous access to mobiles?

I was thinking this blog post would be a good place to iteratively document mobiles impact from the major to the minor. So I would love for readers to add their thoughts or experiences with this. Here are my observations:

• Socializing and Lifestreaming - our ever-present mobile devices enables us to share the magnificent and minute details of our lives
• Identity and Memory - not only do mobile devices allow us to record and reflect on the events and images of our lives, but they provide a way to craft and project our identity and serve as memory aids and diaries
• Personal efficiency - from digital to-do lists, calling the spouse at the grocery store, or proximal reminders - mobile devices help us manage our lives for efficiently (and also prevent us from ever escaping it)
• Information and m-Libraries - through either e-books, online news, reviews or facts, or mobile friendly info databases, we have more ready access to information than ever possible
• Maps - do we need them any more with GPS and maps on our phone or in our car (but we do need to learn to not drive into the ocean or onto logging roads because or device told us too)
• Accessibility - there are strong barriers to use of mobile devices based on ability literacy, and finances - but mobile devices are providing new forms of information and communication access to groups that have not otherwise had it such as in the developing world or for the deaf and their use of instant messaging as a readily available mass communication method.

That's all I can think of now, but I'm sure there are many other ways mobile devices are changing our lives - so please share your thoughts here.

Practitioner barriers to diffusion and implementation of web accessibility

My research on the adoption challenges of web accessibility that I conducted during my master's research has been published this month in an academic journal.  The article Practitioner barriers to diffusion and implementation of web accessibility is published in the journal "Technology and Disability" (Volume 23, Number 4).

The paper looked at how as people are increasingly integrating online activities into their daily lives, disabled people are often impeded from accessing websites due to code and design barriers. Despite guidelines on how to improve web accessibility that have been around since the early days of the Web, accessibility adoption remains low. The responsibility to implement web accessibility tends to fall on web practitioners, yet prior scholarship has failed to adequately consult this group on their barriers to adoption.

I conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with web practitioners from  various sectors, locations, and job duties. I found that current social and individual values, inadequate guidelines and support, and monetary demands are halting the diffusion of web accessibility. These factors perpetuate an artificial construct of online disability and impede developments towards an inclusive Web medium.

The paper offered a model and recommendations to remediate this environment and thus improve accessibility rates. I have previously posted my recommendations on this blog, but my model has been updated and I will include it here.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this research either as participants or as reviewers!

User Experience - More Than Just Usability

Lately, I’ve refined my research focus from online usability to user experience (UE). Yesterday, I told a colleague that I was studying user experience, to which she replied “You mean usability”. Her statement seems indicative of the prevailing thought on how we plan and evaluate online design.

Well, that’s not entirely true - as it still seems rather rare for many companies to adequately implement usability or to consider it at all. Hell, it seems many companies don’t even adequately consider their business goals for their websites or online applications.

Usability does seem to be considered more often nowadays. To begin with, however, there really isn’t a great, commonly-accepted definition of the term usability. I tend to use the International Standards Organization definition of usability as it appears to capture most of the agreed-upon elements and is frequently cited as a leading definition. ISO defines usability as “the extent to which the product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (ISO 9241-11:1998.).

This definition is certainly not without contention. Olsen criticizes usability experts, such as guru Jakob Nielsen, who tend to focus on these factors while ignoring the larger human experience:

The problem is that it ignores the emotional subjective side of human beings, which as marketers and brand strategists have long known, is foolish to ignore. Why do we enjoy a good meal when nutritionally it's no different than hospital food? Unfortunately, Nielsen's pronouncements have all too often been like a restaurant critic insisting we should all eat only a McDonald's, since after all it's the most efficient restaurant around. (http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article603.asp).

I believe it is fine to distinguish between usability’s focus on efficiency and the larger concept of user experience with its more holistic focus. Within user experience there are various factors that can apply at a macro level, for example an entire website or online application, or at the micro level, e.g. a specific online feature, piece of content, or tool. I will use the word product to encompass all such instances.

Various user experience factors include:

• Affective – the emotions a product provokes, such as fun, anger, and frustration
  
• Context – the physical and temporal aspects of the environment surrounding a given usage of a product
• Hedonic – the ways in which a product results in pleasure
• Social – how a product fits into a users social context, enables sharing and contributions from others
• Value/usefulness – based on the costs (monetary, time, and other) of product usage, does it result in a sense of justifying the costs and does it achieve or surpass expectations

Accessibility – I often treat accessibility (ie. the ability for a product to address the needs of disabled users) as a usability issue. All users will at some time encounter difficulties using websites, however, so it does become important to distinguish between when a difficulty using an online product is at the individual or disability level. Shawn Henry describes this distinction: “When a person with a disability is at a disadvantage relative to a person without a disability, it is an accessibility issue” (http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/).

This is a rudimentary list and there is (growing) research that examines these issues in much more depth. However, this list is useful to begin considerations of a larger range of product issues beyond just usability. As without a sense of the various components of user experience, it is impossible to build applications that fully meet users needs or to even understand where an online application is delighting or failing its users.

Conference Presentation on Web Accessibility Challenges

I recently presented for my first time at an academic conference. The conference, Information Access: Commons, Control & Controversy, was held at my home faculty, iSchool at University of Toronto.

I presented on my research findings from my masters thesis. I thought it distilled my findings in a manageable way, so I thought I'd share it here.

Barriers to Adoption and Implementation of Web Accessibility
I'm Glen Farrelly, a first-year PhD student here at iSchool. My background and interests are in designing and understanding online user experience. My utopian dreams of the democratizing potential of the Internet have not been completely quelled by the realities of the ongoing digital divide. From this perspective, I'm concerned with how to create online experiences that strives to enable everyone to participate.

Web accessibility refers to users being able to perceive and operate publically available websites regardless of their abilities. Users can be blocked by design or code barriers based on: vision, hearing, cognitive ability, and mobility or motor control.

In line with the social model of disability, I believe that it is artificial barriers that create disability that may not otherwise exist. These barriers can apply not only to permanently disabled people but for those temporarily or situationally disabled as well.

Internet enables and disables
Many people use the Internet and find it helpful for various facets of their life from work to entertainment. The Internet has the potential to aid disabled people to overcome some barriers. For example, online shopping for people with mobility impairments helped reduced their self-reported rates of disability (Spillman, 2004). Also deaf people have been avid adopters of text and instant messaging as a preferred method of communication. It is for reasons such as these that lead to 54% of respondents to a UK survey (2002) listing Internet access as essential, compared to only 6% of the general population.

Despite this potential, accessibility rates in Canada and globally remain very low. The UN commissioned a review of popular websites in 2006 of 20 countries and only 7% passed the most basic accessibility measures. Inaccessibility of online content was attributed to result in less than half as many disabled people using the Internet compared to the nondisabled, in an US Study (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006). This issue also affects more Canadians than most people realize, as 14 per cent of, or 4.4 million, identified themselves as disabled (Statistics Canada, 2007).

Web inaccessibility
Here’s an example U.of T. students and faculty may have encountered. The low contrast of the text on the navigational menus is hard to read probably for most users, but for those users with vision impairment this can be a complete block. Another problem with this webpage is the fan out menu at times requires very precise mouse movement or it closes. This is a block for those with motor impairments, such as those with Parkinson's disease. Personally, I can attest it's extremely difficult to use on a laptop.

Considering the diversity of human ability, it is unlikely that anyone can build a website that everyone can use. The goal then is to make content as accessible as possible.

The solution?
There are three approaches to making online content more accessible:

1. Adaptive technology can allow for multimodal outputs or alternative inputs. For example, screen reader software can read the contents of a webpage to a blind person. But even though tech continues to get more sophisticated there are still problems, for example screen readers cannot compensate for images that don't have alternative text to describe it.
2. Automated conversion can be done various ways. This month YouTube opened up its free software to automatically caption user videos. Solutions like this may address the challenge of making the extreme long tail of online content more accessible but they still present barriers. For example, I'm dubious that autocaptioning software will be able to compensate for poor audio levels, overlapping speech, slang, etc.
3. Human development is probably the best way to make the content more accessible. That is, the content creators build the content in ways that extend its functionality and flexibility. For example, describing the meaning of an image is best done by its creator.

Guidelines
To aid practitioners in the nebulous goal of making their content accessible, the W3C, in collaboration with academic, industrial, and disability organizations worldwide published the Web Content Authoring Guidelines (WCAG) in 1999. WCAG is the world’s predominant guidelines and informs other guidelines such as Canada’s CLF and the US’ Section 508. There are 3 degrees of voluntary compliance. The W3C has focused their efforts on further refining the guidelines, I'd say more so than on education and outreach.

In Canada, at least, no organization or government office is leading the charge to deliver educational resources, training, or awareness campaigns. As accessibility is not expressly required in any jurisdiction I am aware of and as disability issues can be ignored by corporate power, web accessibility has tended to fall on individual practitioners.

The way to make more accessible websites is there, but practitioners have to find out about it themselves, figure out how to do it themselves, implement it themselves, and often make a convincing business case to do so. Numerous studies have shown however that most websites in a variety of sectors are not even following the most basic guidelines. To help make the web more accessible, I felt it is important to understand what are the stumbling blocks to adoption. To do this, one needs to understand those our society has charged with implementing this issue: web practitioners.

Web accessibility adoption challenges have largely been ignored both in academic and trade literature. In addition, research actually consulting web practitioners is even more rare as it appears that there are only three such studies.

My research
I conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with a variety of web practitioners across Canada. I asked practitioners not only how they encountered the issue of accessibility and disability, but also how they implemented in on their day-to-day job. They offered both their obstacles and solutions.

Web Accessibility Diffusion & Implementation Model
Out of the interviews various diffusion and implementation factors were identified, which lead me to develop this model.

Diffusion refers to how a practitioner hears about an issue, learns the specifics, and formulates attitudes. The diffusion of accessibility is also affected by knowledge and perceptions about disability in general. Implementation refers to the factors that impact a practitioner's ability to produce accessible online content.

Web practitioners
The first challenge in this issue is that practitioners are not a homogenous group, but represent various responsibilities, backgrounds, and skills.Web practitioners include:

• programmers
• designers
• developers
• webmasters
• producers
• writers and editors
• animators
• assistants
• managers
• bloggers
• podcasters

These roles can be performed by professionals, volunteers, hobbyists, and those with multiple non-web responsibilities. With web 2.0, now almost anyone can author web content. There are challenges with web accessibility with professionals, let alone the additional challenges with amateurs due to the differing levels of skill and commitment. My study focused on professionals and avid amateurs, but the larger scope is clearly a considerable obstacle.

Diffusion
Innovations are less apt to diffuse if they are difficult to understand or use, require significant resources, or are incompatible with existing norms and values. Web accessibility meets all these criteria.

The guidelines are highly technical and yet like much of disability issues, education and media were found to not adequately cover the topic. Most participants recalled that they had not encountered this issue suitably - or at all - in their career training, in the media or trade events.

While many accessibility measures can be implemented with no additional costs, some measures do require more effort and scale and competitive environment can be a factor. One participant who managed a large site with thousands of technical reports had to remove the bulk of them as it was taking days to convert a single report. There appears to be no specific tax breaks or financial incentives to help mitigate this cost.

As far as I'm aware, there are no laws expressly requiring websites to be accessible – although there are prohibitions on discrimination. Federal and provincial governments have passed policies requiring their own websites to be accessible. But Ontario is the only jurisdiction in Canada pursuing requiring web accessibility for all business and organizations that operate in the province. Even legally requiring accessibility is not guaranteed to increase compliance as a Brazilian study found. It also introduces a new problem of policing.

Implementation
In interviewing practitioners who had tried to or did implement accessibility, they were frustrated with the inadequate support. Most criticism was directed at W3C and WCAG. Two participants described using it: "If I can’t navigate it, who the hell can?" and "It just gets into tech-babble. It must be completely overwhelming for those less experienced." The guidelines are not particularly accessible – they are a quagmire and are written at a level that even veteran professionals found too difficult to interpret. There are reasons for this, but W3C has not done a sufficient job at making their guidelines usable, offering help, code libraries, and tools. Instructional material is out there but not in a prominent, central location. It can be hard to find, dated, time-consuming, and dubious.

Popular commercial authoring tools such as Dreamweaver are improving their support for accessibility. With content management systems and web-based software becoming increasingly popular, however, there is a continuous need to improve functionality and transparency of features.

Similarly, testing software to automatically check for accessibility is insufficient and often unknown by participants. Although testing software is improving, certain items must be tested with disabled users. In general there is a lack of any user testing, so the need for human testing is problematic.

Considering how difficult this is some practitioners have turned to hiring experts. As there are no organizations in Canada offering free guidance – even CNIB charges for accessibility services - web accessibility is being commercialized. Alarmingly, three participants hired so-called accessibility experts that amounted to charlatans and failed to deliver on some basic accessibility measures.

Conclusion
No matter the societal changes, software sophistication, or increased support, the onus will still fall on practitioners to make the line by line and graphic by graphic changes on a daily basis to make web accessibility a reality. To do this, practitioners needs to be aware of their important role in the disability divide. As one participant put it:

Web developers can be proactive, so they need to let companies know it’s an issue and that including it is just part of our standard services. No companies would say no to this. Or you can just do it.

Finally, research is needed to study how web practitioners work, how they use the guidelines, support tools, and software. This research can then be used to make the implementation tools and resources more usable and transparent.

Recommendations to Improve Web Accessibility

In July, I completed my MA thesis researching diffusion issues for web accessibility. I'm hoping to get the full thesis published, so any journal suggestions would be appreciated. In the meantime, below are the recommendations that developed out of consultations with 21 web practitioners (designers, managers, producers, consultants, & developers).

Recommendation #1: Make WCAG More Accessible
The W3C should consult web practitioners to uncover their specific difficulties using and understanding the guidelines. The guidelines and support material should then be rewritten to address deficiencies. Possible improvements include using better organization schemes, clearer language, alternate access points, and simplified checklists.

Recommendation #2: Support Material Is Needed
Adequate support material is difficult to find and often insufficient. Therefore, a prominent free website should be set up to provide detailed, clear instruction. This may include a code library and design tips. As the W3C is already a central resource and education is already in their mandate, it follows that they should consider assuming this role in a more effective manner that reflected by their current offerings.

Recommendation #3: Education Should Address Accessibility
Both academic and training organizations must start or continue to cover disability and accessibility. Not only is training in the specific techniques required, but also an appreciation of the needs of disabled people. As some small businesses and non-profits have minimal training budgets, ideally education costs should be affordable or free. This may be a suitable role for local advocacy or industry associations to assume.

Recommendation #4: A Canadian Web Accessibility Champion is Needed
No disability organization in Canada is currently effectively leading the charge for web accessibility, leading to inattention and missed opportunities. A Canadian government or advocacy organization is required to take the lead to initiate and maintain momentum on this issue. Duties may include instigating awareness campaigns, appearing at events, promoting education, and acting as an informational resource.

Recommendation #5: Media and Industry Should Cover This Topic
For web practitioners to gain awareness of web accessibility, learn specifics, and appreciate its social importance, media and industry must not ignore this issue. Industry should make a point of addressing this topic in events and newsletters and ensure the topic is raised at conferences. Media, particularly trade reporting, should cover the topic through individual articles on the topic and raising it within the context of other topics as applicable.

Recommendation #6: Authoring and Testing Tools Should Better Facilitate Accessibility
While some authoring tools are increasing accessibility support, continued work is required both to make producing accessible content easier and to render accessibility features transparent.

Recommendation #7: Financial Incentives Should Be Offered
Cost was raised as an issue by all participants, yet the Canadian government offers no specific financial incentives to mitigate the cost of web accessibility work. Although full funding for all organizations to implement accessibility would likely be unattainable, Canadian government should, at the least, allow special tax deductions for accessibility initiatives.

Recommendation #8: Web Practitioners Need to Feel Individually Responsible
Some web practitioners felt unable to implement accessibility without supervisory permission. These practitioners should be encouraged to understand both that their actions can improve the quality of life of disabled people and that not complying contributes to disabled people’s exclusion from full participation in society.

Help Getting Started with Web Accessibility

I'm working on my thesis on web accessibility, I'm supposed to be writing it up now but I can't seem to end my literature review as there are so many resources on this topic. I think the lack of one central source of necessary information and the unorganized, dated, and at times dubious information out there is part of the problem (but that discussion is for another day & likely the thesis of my thesis).

During my endless literature review (going on 4 plus months), I have weeded through a ton of web resources on the topic. I've compiled the best sources for those beginning in this topic. These sources cover the various crucial facets of the issue.

I've tried to only include information below that is current or that holds up to the test of time. The W3C (the internationally-recognized leader for web standards) recently released a new version of their web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2) upon which many, if not most, others base their work upon. Plus technology and coding practices change rather quickly. Therefore, a lot of information is dated and at times to the point of being inaccurate, so be careful of this when researching the topic.

Introductory Help
A good place to start is WebAIM's broad and brief Introduction to Web Accessibility.

Then it's best to head over to the W3C site, since they are the official source of the guidelines. Their Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites is a good high-level summary of the most important techniques.

What To Do
Then there is the complete Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it's a lot to wade through but it's the best source of what specifically to do.

Webcredible's 10 Common Errors When Implementing Accessibility will also help steer you in the right direction.

To get a sense of the human, inclusive side, there's an excellent free e-Book by Shawn Lawton Henry, Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design.

Why To Do It
The Internet has the power to improve people's lives (as well as disable via inaccessibility). Liz Ball's article The Internet Was Made for Deafblind People outlines how the Net has profoundly improved her life.

Software Support
If you use any Adobe products to build your website (eg. Dreamweaver, PDFs, Flash, ColdFusion) then head to Adobe's site for their Adobe Accessibility Resource Center.

In my opinion there is no good free accessibility testing software - they are too complicated, dated, or present too much and ambiguous information. Not to mention that there are elements software can't test (e.g. the alt text for an image that says "graph" may pass, but it's hardly helpful). WebAIM's Wave tester is probably the best. It should not be used by beginners as it can cause more harm (too confusing and thus intimidating) than good. But for those more familiar with accessibility, it can point out some things you may have missed.

Making a Case for Accessibility
Web developers, designers, producers, managers, this is directed at you - the article Why Accessibility? Because It’s Our Job! is a call to embrace accessibility as part of being a professional.

There are many benefits to making a site accessible, such as improved usability for all and enhanced search engine optimization. Trenton Moss' article How To Sell Accessibility is a good overview of the various benefits and how to frame them as a business case.

Caveats
If you do go ahead with accessibility and are looking to hire help then Beware the Charlatans. Accessibility expert Geof Collis describes the problems (which I have also encountered) with firms who claim to know accessibility, Collis advises on what to look out for.

Many sites that work towards accessibility will have a page on their site with details. Despite that many of these statements overemphasize the degree of accessibility, there are pros and cons as Leona Tomlinson outlines in Are Accessibility Statements Useful?.

The question over whether accessibility is legally required in Canada depends on who you talk to. There are no express laws or policy in this regards beyond the federal government requiring all their sites to be accessible via their Common Look and Feel rules. The Ontario government is moving ahead to making web accessibility required in the near future for Ontario government sites and much later for all Ontario businesses via the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. As far as I know this is the only Canadian jurisdiction pursuing web accessibility as law. Tt does seem like this is the way the tide is turning in Canada and elsewhere, so complying with WCAG now might save time & effort later on.

Further Reading
Overall the best sources of information, news, and tools are:

• Accessify
  
• SitePoint
  
• WebAIM
  

Plus my web accessibility bookmarks on Delicious.

And the definitive source is W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative site.

If I missed an important component or if you know of a better source, please let me know.

Share your Experience with Web Accessibility

I've started my research for my master's thesis and would really appreciate your help. I'm researching why aren't more Canadian websites accessible for disabled people.

I'm talking to web professionals in Canada about their experiences and thoughts on this issue so that hopefully recommendations can be made to encourage adoption of this issue in a manner that is realistically achievable.

Please share your experiences on this issue here.
Questions about web accessibility

• What are the challenges of making a website accessible?
• What support would you need?
  
• Have you heard of W3C's guidelines (WCAG)? Thoughts?
• Is your site accessible? Why? Why not?
• What's your experience - pro or con?

Any thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, or experiences you have on this issue, I'd love to know.

Please note that comments included below may be used in my research and published. Please read more about my research and the provision of your consent to participate. Replying below indicates you agree to participate.

Practical Considerations for Online Accessibility Raised at IGF Hyderabad

The Internet Governance Forum session in Hyderabad India on Internet accessibility, “Including Accessibility and Human Factors in the Universalization of the Internet - How to reach persons with disabilities, the 10% of the next billion”, raised practical consideration for the issues of Internet accessibility.

To begin with there was a bit of a debacle in that the lack of an Internet connection at the conference centre that stays up for longer than five minutes meant that the captioner online in Canada could not get the webcasts of the sessions in order to caption it for those attending with hearing impairments. It also meant that I have been unable to live blog or microblog the sessions as originally planned.

This session opened up with background information on various organizations’ work in establishing accessibility standards, their importance, and their gradual global spread.

What I did find particularly interesting is that Shadi Abou-Zahra from the W3C addressed a critique I have heard a few times about how they determined their accessibility goals. The W3C has a formal process that strives to seek user participation throughout the process from working group development, public working drafts, and implementation testing. They firmly believe in including users in standardization. Not only are their recommendations available for public review and comment, but they also push out their drafts to applicable disability organizations for their input.

Shadi also outlined the three guidelines to website accessibility and how they work together. There is WCAG, website content accessibility guidelines, which includes recommendations for online text, imaged, audio, multimedia, and video. UAAG is the user agent accessibility guidelines for browsers, media player, and assistive technology. UAAG is crucial as they must provide the functionality to enable accessible content, for example captioning if they don’t support it, there’s no point for content producer to do captioning of their content. Finally, there is authoring tool accessibility for website editing software, CMS, wikis, etc. to not only facilitate online content being made accessible, but these software in themselves must be accessible so that people with disabilities are able to be active contributors to the Web not just be passive recipients

Jorge Plano, from the Argentina chapter of ISOC, pointed out some of the implementation challenges of accessibility, particularly in developing nations where the issue is “invisible”. Jorge pointed out that more support for this issue globally is needed from governments IT agencies, ISP associations, and telcos. A good starting point in many countries is for government and related organizations, such as such as public administration, private public utilities, NGOs funded by gov, companies/NGOs funded by gov, companies offering services to general public (banks, health insurance, hospitals, etc. – in Europe this is mandatory for these types of company), and government providers/suppliers.

A dimension of the accessibility issue that I had not heard before was raised by speaker, Fernando Botelho. Fernando pointed out that what is needed is an accessibility solution that will scale up sufficiently for large scale deployments, both in developed and developing nations. The need for a scalable solution is seen by looking at blind children worldwide, 90% of whom receive no access to education. Even those who receive education, Fernando added, may not necessarily receive quality education. A further problem is that some disabled individuals are trained on commercial assistive technology that is expensive. This creates a path dependency to this technology that becomes difficult when they no longer get access to this technology from the training organization. They may not be able to afford it themselves or prospective employers are often unwilling to pay for it. Thus the importance for finding open source solutions that work with commonly-accepted standards, such as the W3C accessibility standards, is crucial.

Discussing Online Accessibility on International Day of the Disabled Person

Today is the international Day of the Disabled Person, so it’s fitting that the United Nations and Internet professionals and experts worldwide have gathered at the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad to address the issue of improving website accessibility for the disabled.

The session, my first of the conference, was called “Information Accessibility: Equal Access & Equal Opportunity to People with Disabilities”. Overall, there was a lot of focus on the role of standards for website accessibility, but it was rather short on actual plans for its widespread adoption.

For those new to the field of website accessibility there was good background information provided on the issue’s history, scope, and its importance. While my personal research has focused on website accessibility for the visually impaired, the issue also covers various disabilities such as hearing, cognitive, and physical.
The presentations repeated the key messages that 1) the Internet is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life, e.g. education, government services, business, recreation so disabled people should not be shut out 2) All people should have equal access and equal opportunity to resources online or otherwise 3) Internet can be particularly able to help the disabled more actively participate in society. Representatives from China and India both stated their countries commitment to this issue and it was pointed out that 26 countries have enacted policy or law on the issue of Internet accessibility.

The first speaker opened with some sobering statistics: 600 million people around the world have a disability (I suspect that number would be much higher if you count people with low to diminished vision, which is particularly relevant for online readers). 186 million children with disabilities haven’t completed primary school. There are clearly opportunities for an accessible Internet to improve people lives, as the first speaker said “these are not just figures they are real people – and we simply cannot afford to say it’s your problem go fend for yourself”. All the speakers were in agreement that while there has been progress in devising what needs to be done, significant barriers still remain and accessibility is still not widespread.

An interesting point made by Cynthia Waddell that the notion of disability is evolving. We need to acknowledge that if there were not societal and physical barriers the concept of disability might not even exist. Bringing disabled people into the mainstream is a way to help end marginalization and in some cases poverty. As more and more of life moves online, the issue of website accessibility becomes important.

Both Cynthia and an accessibility expert from the W3C, Shadi Abou-Zahra, pointed out the issue has various spheres that must be addressed. These spheres would be web authoring software, web developers, browsing software, and assistive technology. Web design historically has not included accessible design for persons with disabilities. Web developers tend to not educated sufficiently on this issue. Even web authoring software didn’t help and often hindered. Assistive technology is making strides but it isn’t enough on its own. Browsers are getting more standard compliant, but this has only recently been the case.

I must admit that while I completely agree with the speakers that assert that accessibility is a human right for all and that more policy is needed, I don’t believe this issue will resonate or convince businesses and organizations around the world to make their website accessible. So I felt a crucial point was made by Shadi when he listed the auxiliary benefits of accessibility.

Shadi pointed out that accessible sites are more compatible with mobile technologies, addresses the needs of our ageing demographics, and can open up new markets. I have found that when I state to business people not only the social benefits of accessibility but also the business benefits this helps give the issue more priority than it would otherwise have. As Shadi pointed out accessibility features can improve experience for all users: “Think of it like an elevator. I need an elevator to access a building, but an elevator benefits everyone”.

Overall, the session was a good backgrounder on the issue, but I was disappointed that the focus on standards and policy leaves behind the web developers in the field whom may have heard of this issue but then must struggle with limited (or no) resources or budget to adopt this. So I raised this point to the speakers.

My question was (yes there was a long preamble) as one who has worked as a web developer and producer for the past ten years and is now researching Internet accessibility, that while I applaud the efforts at creating accessibility standards, they are not enough. The standards are complicated to follow, there are not specifics of how to do it, and the existing educational material is not much help. For example, it’s easy to say don’t use tables for layout but it is difficult to actually make that happen even when building a website from scratch, let alone retrofitting one. It’s also easy to say beware of colour blindness when designing web navigation, but there are many different types of colour blindness and the tools to help demonstrate the issue are insufficient. Among the web developer community I believe awareness is fairly common – most developers know about the issue and some of the remedies – but using alt text is not enough. As the speakers acknowledge, the authoring tools must do more to support this, but also educational material needs to be more comprehensive and simpler. Training needs to be more widespread – and I would add most crucially it needs to be free too.

I was excited to learn that the next generation of W3C material on website accessibility is going to be addressing the implementation challenges. Their website was my primary source for information on this issue, and while it provided a good framework, there needed to be more practical information and feasible plans.

The discussion after the session was also interesting. We discussed the need for a central, prominent repository of templates to use for this. I pointed out how I could not find any, let alone “proper” code for how to make an accessible table, when one genuinely needs to use a table, that is for presenting tabular data like statistics. I struggled through the standards and came up with a code snippet that I added to my web team’s code snippets in Dreamweaver and then posted on my blog - but we sure need more widespread and prominent sharing of this type of work.

No Shirking Responsibility for Website Accessibility

I JUST GOT A SSHRC GRANT FOR MY MASTER'S RESEARCH!!!

While the grant is a decent amount of money, the tuition at Royal Roads is extremely high (on par with MBA programs here). But it will help me devote myself fulltime to my studies and research. This means I'll be wrapping up my job as a web producer in a few months and instead focusing on my new career as an Internet researcher.

SSHRC, which stands for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, gives research grants to students and universities. I submitted my proposal to them to study website accessibility.

Here's is some background material on the issue of website accessibility and what I hope to research:

Website accessibility encompasses many groups in Canada, the visually impaired, including those with low to no vision, are particularly limited by existing barriers, due to website code that either prevents or causes problems using adaptive technology. The needs of the visually impaired can often be accommodated easily through adjustments to the website code, such as by providing options for different font sizes or alternative text for images.

Even though the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the governing body for web standards, published website accessibility standards as far back as 1999, many websites in Canada are still not accessible to the visually impaired. The standards set forth by the W3C form the basis of defining website accessibility, as they are the most widely accepted standards by both the Web and visually-impaired communities. The ramifications of website accessibility affect both the website owners, whether a business owner or shareholders, as well as the website users, in this case those with visual disabilities.

My study will focus on the people who have the authority and the access to enact and maintain the changes for accessibility; these individuals range from programmers and developers to business managers and leads. I have not found any research, however, focusing on why many Canadian website managers, that is those who have the authority over websites, have not made their websites accessible.

I have previously blogged about some of the difficulties in making a website accessible that I have encountered, not least of which are the confusing and at times impossible criteria set forth by the W3C and a lack of fully adequate educational material for website developers on this issue. This spurred me on to research the topic more and I have found this is an area in definite need of further investigation.

If you know of some good information on this topic or are a website producer/manager/developer or have any thoughts on the issue, please help me out.

Website Accessibility Full of Barriers

I’m trying to make the relaunched website I’m working on more accessible to people with disabilities.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) publishes standards for accessibility. The W3C have done a good job of organizing this information and I applaud this initiative. However, there are problems with their standards:

Some are no-brainers
Who’s using blinking text anymore? I haven’t seen it on any site – even cheesy ones – for 5 years or more. Although Facebook should take note of this for allowing those recent annoying flickering ads that were seizure-inducing to anyone. Does the blink tag even work any more?

Some can’t practically be done
For example, marking up quotations as such – while the {blockquote} tag is ideal for block quotes (we’re not using it for indenting anymore) and it is well supported by most browsers, but for in-line quotations the {q} tag should be used. That's fine except that Internet Explorer doesn’t support it and that represents most of our site’s traffic.

Some items are very time-consuming to do and of limited value
For example identifying the target of a link. Normally, this should be apparent from the context of the text, and if it isn’t then that’s bad writing. There are a few items that are of dubious value, and in checking out a Canadian website trumpeting website accessibility even they are not doing some of these items.

Some items require programming effort
There are some items I would like to do but require a programmer. For example,specifying tab order through forms and providing server redirects rather than meta redirects. The work that can be done simply, has the best chance of actually getting done.

It’s practically impossible to have a fully accessible site, but with some effort I think we can do some things that will help, specifically:

1. Using alt text in images. I was doing this already, though some others working on our site haven’t been. I’m going to get everyone to commit to doing a better job of alt text, particularly with graphs
2. We already used the header tags (eg. {h1}, {h2}) so we’ll continue doing that and we also use lists correctly too.
3. Not using tables for layout at all
4. Not using {blockquote} for indenting
   
5. Got rid of all that blinking text that we used to have so much of
6. Allowing users to increase the text size
   
7. Not using colours that are problematic for the colour blind
8. Recoding our tabular data into accessible tables.

Regarding the last point, I’m having a lot of trouble finding the best way to do an accessible table. Here’s what a colleague and I have come up with. Please help me out with any suggestions on how to do a table.

Accessible table???
{table class="xxx" summary="This table shows how the age of Mary and Betty makes a difference in their admission cost to movie tickets.}
{thead}
{tr}
{th} {/th}
{th}Mary {/th}
{th}Betty{/th}
{/tr}
{/thead}
{tbody}
{tr class="XX"}
{th}Age{/th}
{td}53{/td}
{td}64{/td}
{/tr}
{tr class="XX"}
{th}Admission cost{/th}
{td}$15{/td}
{td}$10{/td}
{/tr}
{/tbody}
{/table}

Please let me know if there’s anything we should be doing different.

Inaccessible websites

The United Nations released a study on Tuesday announcing that Most websites flunk basic standards for disability accessibility.

This really comes to no surprise to most Internet professionals. The site I work for is certainly problematic. But with an upcoming relaunch, I hope to fix some of the known issues.

In October, I attended a lecture by Toronto Interacts (a local usability professional association) on this topic. While I was encouraged at how some easy things can be done to greatly improve access for visually impaired, it did seem like achieving full accessibility is almost impossible.

There are disabilities that are harder to addresses, such as those with mobility issues (hence keyboard shortcuts and enabling tabbing) and cognitive issues (this group seems very hard to address).

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has made accessibility a priority and has published useful guidelines and checklist.

One of the speakers at Toronto Interacts was Joe Clark. His website offers and incredible amount of detail and instruction on accessibility.

This issue is heating as various official bodies (such as the U.N.) are commenting on this and there's been some legal cases too, such as the high-profile case against Target recently.

Regardless of whether or not websites will eventually be forced to be more accessible, it really is the right thing to do, considering how it is often just some simple, basic changes that can make a world of difference to some users.