Web Site Accessibility: Implementation Challenges

1
Web Site AccessibilityImplementation Challenges

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, BA2 7AY

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
2
Contents
E

• Auditing
• Legal Issues
• Work Flow
• Costs
• Usability
• Issues For You
• Conclusions

3
Cultivate Interactive

• Cultivate Interactive
• Is an e-journal funded by the EU.
• Is published 3 times per year.
• Seven issues published so far
• Aims to comply with accessibility guidelines but
• Three editors over lifetime
• Errors creep in

4
Bobby Analysis

• Following analysis by Bobby application
• 287 URLs analysed
• Six P1 errors (two pages)
• Many P2 and P3 errors
• What should we do?

5
Dealing With Errors

• Missing ALT Tag
• An ALT tag was missing from one image. This was
  fixed.
• The error occurred when a new editor was
  appointed, who was not familiar with all checking
  processes.

Online Game An online game which is inherently
inaccessible and requires a browser which
supports DHTML. The game is not a fundamental
part of the Web site. Left, but limitations
documented.
6
Link Anchors

• This Web page fails WAI guidelines with a P2 error

Fixing this error will mean artificially changing
the content Is this desirable?
7
Your Possible Concerns

• You may have concerns
• Is universal design possible?
• Do we treat WAI guidelines as mandatory or
  inspirational?
• How much resources should we provide?
• Is the problem solvable in a distributed
  authoring environment and no centralised CMS?
• Links with the real world?

8
Universal Design

• Universal Design
• Implies that if we make use of appropriate design
  principles resources will then be universally
  accessible and reusable
• We may feel that if we have difficulties
  implementing this we are doing something wrong
• But
• Web browsers have bugs
• We have little control over the output of Web
  authoring tools
• Web specs themselves have bugs, ambiguities, etc.

9
WAI / Browser Issues

• The WAI guidelines talk about stylesheets and
  when user agents
• This is too fuzzy
• What should I do with Netscape 4?
• The WAI guidelines talk about HTML technologies
  such as LONGDESC
• This is not implemented in mainstream browsers
• There is little implementation experience or
  usage guidelines
• There has been talk around replacing its
  functionality with other approaches

10
Case Study

• Kenny Hermansen, Web Development Officer, London
  School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine
• I too have recently been struggling with just
  how rigorously the WAI guidelines should be
  implemented. I certainly aspire to comply as
  fully as I can with the WAI guidelines but
• Some guidelines are too theoretical
• Will have a pragmatic approach
• Use tables for positioning
• Will not associate form controls for search boxes
• Not necessarily nest headers correctly

11
What To Do About WAI

• Should you
• Regard WAI guidelines as a must do
• Regard WAI guidelines as best practices to aspire
  to, but dont get too concerned about legacy
  pages
• Regard WAI as a successful lobby organisation,
  but ignore many of its guidelines as
• Fixing esoteric errors on a large Web site is a
  waste of money (which could be used to fit
  wheelchair ramps)
• WAI only addresses W3C standards and fails to
  recognise that proprietary format (such as Flash,
  PDF, etc.) are being made accessible

12
Costs

• Have you estimated the costs for dealing with
  accessibility on large Web sites
• The costs of running automated tests
• The costs of manual tests
• The costs of fixing problems
• The costs of updating workflow procedures,
  purchasing new tools, retraining, etc.
• The costs of providing support for buggy browsers
  such as Netscape 4

How much should you be prepared to pay? If you
are willing to sign a blank cheque, will this
prevent a wheelchair ramp from being built?
13
Can You React To Specialist Needs?

• Rather than fixing obscure problems, is it
  permissible to react to know problems
• If a student or member of staff with disabilities
  reports a problem, that specific problem is
  addressed
• Real World Solutions
• If a problem is reported which is inherently
  inaccessible (e.g. a flight simulator, a 3D
  visualisation of a molecule) rather than trying
  to fix the Web site, a real world alternative is
  provided

14
Is Legislation Appropriate?

• It is desirable
• To make Web resources accessible
• To ensure that there are no spelling mistakes or
  grammatical errors in Web pages
• To provide networked resources everywhere
• To ensure students and staff have adequate grants
  and salaries
• To send flowers to your mother on Mothers day
• Arent all of these statements
• True
• Motherhood apple pie inspirational statements
• Why should the first statement get the high
  profile, legislation,.

15
Discussion