Title: Beyond the Bells and Whistles:
1Beyond the Bells and Whistles Is Your
WebsiteUniversally Accessible?
Mark Aronica CAST Julie Duffield
WestED Beth E. Thrift SEIRTEC
2- Section 508 A Brief History
- Web Accessibility
- Why worry about accessibility
- Where to start in making your website accessible
- Resources, Tools, Online Courses
- Multimedia on the Internet
- Making multimedia accessible
- Principles in captioning
- Synchronous events
- Universal Design
- Accessibility Universal Design
- Customizing Delivery
- Advocacy
3Section 508 A Brief History
- Convergence of factors
- Disability Rights Movement
- Barrier-free Design to Universal Design
Movement - Advances in Rehabilitation Engineering
Assistive Technologies
4Section 508
- Increasing population of individuals with
special needs - Adults now live an average of 30 years longer
than did adults at the beginning of the 20th
century which means many are faced with
diminishing - Vision
- Hearing
- Mobility Agility
- Improved medical care means that more people
survive once fatal accidents and illnesses
5Section 508
Five Types of Disabilities to ConsiderWhen
Designing Websites
- Visual Impairment
- Hearing Impairment
- Mobility Impairment
- Cognitive Impairments
- Seizure Disorders
6Some Website Design Implications
- Text equivalent for non-text elements
- Equivalent alternatives for multimedia
presentations must be synchronized - All information conveyed with color will also be
available without color - Redundant links shall be provided for each
active region of a server-side image map - Provide method that permits user to skip
repetitive navigation links - Design pages to avoid causing the screen to
flicker with a frequency greater than 2Hz and
lower than 55 Hz
7Why should I be concerned whether my website is
accessible?
- Turn off images
- Turn off sound
- Unplug the mouse
8Where to start
http//www.w3c.org/WAI/
9Where to start
- Images provide ALT tags to provide descriptors
for all images - Image maps use client-side Map and text for
hotspots - Multi-media provide captioning and transcripts
of audio and descriptions of video - Hypertext links use text that makes sense when
read out of context. - Page organization use headings, lists, and
consistent organizing structure - Graphs charts summarize or use the longdesc
attribute - Scripts, applets, plug-ins provide alternate
content - Frames label frames
- Tables make line by line reading sensible
- Check your work validate HTML
10W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http//www.w3c.org/WAI/Resources/ch
11A few online tools for checking accessibility
- Bobby
- The Wave
- Aprompt Toolkit
12Bobby
http//bobby.cast.org/html/en/index.jsp
13The Wave
http//www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/
14Aprompt Toolkit
http//aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/seeit.htm
15Online Courses
- Equal Access to Software Information - EASI
- Generating Assistive Technology Systemically -
GENASYS - Web Accessibility in Mind - WebAIM
16EASI
http//www.rit.edu/easi/webkit.htm
17GENASYS
http//genasys.usm.maine.edu/courses/
18WebAIM
http//www.webaim.org/
19Additional Resources
- Just a few hardware software resources for
screen magnifiers readers, multilingual speech,
Braille displays, training tutorials,
shareware/freeware, and alternative input
devices. - Al Squared - http//www.aisquared.com/
- Alva Access Group - http//www.aagi.com
- Dolphin Computer Access - http//www.dolphinusa.c
om - Freedom Scientific (JAWS) - http//www.freedomsci
entific.com - GW-Micro (Window-Eyes) http//www.gwmicro.com
- Innovation Management Group, Inc. -
http//www.imgpresents.com - TVI ( Window Bridge) http//www.tvi-web.com/
20Overview
- Several types of multimedia exist today
- New forms being created, things change fast
- Key concepts
- Caption sounds and images into text for reader
software - Allow keyboard navigation
- Todays agenda from older and better
standardized to newer and less understood
21Multimedia Is Wonderful, but...
- Avoid eye candy if it excludes parts of your
audience - Remember bandwidth limits
- Dial-in users may find multimedia too big
- To be accessible, transcription will be needed
- Text can be utilized for reading, text-to-speech,
and Braille
22Principles of Captioning for Multimedia
- Synchronized - the text content should appear at
approximately the same time that audio would be
available - Equivalent - content provided in captions should
be equivalent to that of the spoken word - Accessible - caption content should be readily
accessible and available to those who need it
Standards 508(b) W3C Guidelines
23Audio/Video Captioning Options
- Text captions, synchronized with the images
- Text transcript file
- Best for text-only devices, Braille printers
- Audio description track for video
- Alternative language text/audio tracks
24Internet Video Captions
Words appear below the image, when enabled in the
viewer
25Audio/Video Examples
- Familiar logo in audio
- http//www.webaim.org/training2002/week4/captions/
audioDesc.mp3 - Manhole video with audio and text
- http//main.wgbh.org/wgbh/movies/manhole.mov
- Pure transcript also available
26Audio/Video Current Tools
- MAGpie -- A free tool from NCAM for creating
captions and audio descriptions. Creates captions
compatible with RealPlayer, QuickTime, and
Windows Media Player. - SMIL -- Synchronized Multimedia Integration
Language -- is a general method of marking up
content for many formats
27Key Resources and Services
- EASI Online unit on creating accessible
Internet multimedia - http//easi.cc/workshop.htm
- NCAM (especially for video captioning)
- http//ncam.org
- Wisconsin
- http//wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/ltde/access/ecurbcut
s - WebAIM
- http//www.webaim.org/
28Presentation Media
- PowerPoint
- Poor accessibility in PowerPoint itself
- Office 2K/XP generated HTML has outline, but
lacks tags for images, tables, text boxes - New tool helps guide you to fill the gaps
- http//www.rehab.uiuc.edu/ppt/index.html
- Acrobat PDF
- Future version will be accessible
- For now, produce an alternative in HTML and make
it accessible - http//www.webaim.org/articles/pdfandppt
29Animation/Simulation
- Java
- SMIL support added recently (Soja, Schmunzel)
- Few older applications are accessible
- Flash
- New versions are designed for accessibility
- Guidelines for design on Macromedia site
- http//www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility
/features/flash/
30Synchronous Events
- Text chats are easy, in principle
- Beware non-accessible java applets
- Voice presentations can be captioned in advance
- Voice chats require live transcription, the most
cost-intensive element - Example EASI Chatterbox
- http//easi.cc/cbox.htm
31Example Chatterbox
Voice chat, text chat, and presentation at the
same time
32Universal Design
- Many advantages when media has multiple
representations - Different learners use different aspects
- Quiet areas can be used
- Other languages can be added
- Navigating within a video is easier by searching
captions - General search tools like Google can find a
transcript, and lead users to the media
33Universal Design for Learning and Digital
Text Mark Aronica, CAST
34Universal Design for Learning Overview
35Universal Design for Learning Overview
36Universal Design for Learning Overview
37(No Transcript)
38Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
Universal Design for Learning
http//www.cast.org/tes
The companion Web site for Teaching Every Student
in the Digital Age includes complete text and
images from the print book with interactive Web
resources that
- enrich understanding of UDL
- apply UDL principles to the classroom
- build an active community of teachers and
learners
TES
39Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
Universal Design for Learning
40Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
Universal Design for Learning
41Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
Universal Design for Learning
42Printed Text
43Digital Text
44Flexible Display
45Flexible Display
Tale of Two Cities It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of
Tale of Two Cities It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of
46Structural Tags
47Structural Tags Semantic Tags
48To Meet the Need The Universal Learning Center
49Universal Learning Center
50Find a more comprehensive list of resources at
www.seirtec.org
www.wested.org
www.cast.org
51Questions
52- Mark Aronica CAST maronica_at_cast.org
- Julie Duffield WestED jduffie_at_wested.org
- Beth E.Thrift SEIRTEC bthrift_at_serve.org