Mainframe accessibility

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Mainframe Applications for Everyone Mainframe
Accessibility
Chris DurandCTO, Bridge360chris_durand_at_bridge360
.com PESO Working GroupApril 9, 2008
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Agenda

• Who is Bridge360?
• Accessibility Overview
• Legacy Modernization Overview
• Case Study
• The Future
• Resources
• Questions

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Who is Bridge360?

• Software consulting company headquartered in
  Austin, Texas
• Founded October 2001
• 30 employees
• Strengths in international software, testing, and
  legacy modernization
• Texas HUB

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Selected Customers
Otero County, NM
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Accessibility Overview

• What is Accessibility?
• Enabling people with disabilities to have
  comparable use of and access to information and
  data as people without disabilities Section 508
  Legislation (paraphrased) - http//www.usdoj.gov/c
  rt/508/508law.html
• Why do it?
• Improved service to constituents, customers, and
  employees
• Requirements (Federal, State, Corporate)
• Its not as hard as you think

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Accessibility Overview

• How Do You Do It?
• Good design of web sites and applications
• Clear and logical presentation of information
• Development
• Using accessible architecture and tools
• Running your site/app with a screen reader
• Skip to content, useful link names, etc.
• Running site/app without a mouse
• Providing equivalent alternatives (descriptions
  of images, data tables for graphs, etc.)
• Etc.
• Testing

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Accessibility Example
http//www.window.state.tx.us/lga/opeb/
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Accessibility Example (contd)
http//www.window.state.tx.us/lga/opeb/
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Accessibility Overview

• Tools and Technology
• Screen readers (e.g. JAWS)
• Operating system support (Windows, OSX)
• Web standards (e.g. HTML 4.0)
• Programming language and library support (e.g.
  Java)

What is missing from this list?
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Legacy Modernization Overview
And now for somethingcompletely different
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Legacy Modernization Overview

• What is Legacy Modernization?
• Methods for enabling mainframe and other legacy
  technologies to more easily interact with new
  technologies (web, Java, .NET, etc.)
• Why do it?
• Make legacy applications/data more readily
  available
• Improved user interface / experience (re-facing)

(Today were concerned with the user interface.)
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Legacy Modernization Overview

• Various approaches to re-facing
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Direct-to-Web (usually via screen scraping)
• Many tools available in this space

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Legacy Modernization Overview
Sohow to make mainframe applications accessible?
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Legacy Modernization Overview
Leverage the accessibility advances in web
applications.
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Case Study

• Challenge Client wanted to update an existing
  re-faced application
• CICS application
• Old tool - CA Opal (no longer supported)
• New tool - Jacada Interface Server (JIS)
• Direct-to-web re-facing tool
• Client wanted consistent look feel
• New requirement New application must support
  JAWS screen reader

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Case Study

• Accessibility challenges
• Client had older version of tool that generates
  applet-based UI, not HTML UI
• No support for accessibility in generated applet
• Generated applet based on Java AWT controls which
  are not fully accessible
• Most applications these days use Swing, not AWT
• Limited documentation available on applet
  accessibility

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Case Study

• Approach
• Created accessible version of controls used by
  applet
• Replaced standard controls with accessible
  controls at runtime
• Stored extra accessibility information in XML
  file (e.g. full control names for JAWS)
• JIS development environment did not support these
  extra fields
• Maintainability was always a concern.

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Case Study

• Result
• Successful roll-out of application
• Sufficient JAWS support
• Reasonable maintainability
• And most importantlya happy client

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The Future
Where do we go from here?
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The Future

• Challenges
• Lack of knowledge by technical staff Improving,
  but slow
• People just dont know how to do it
• Poor documentation Improving!
• Evolving standards and tools Improving!
• Browser standards, screen readers, etc.

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The Future

• Evolving standards- browser usage

2001 (!)
Source http//www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers
_stats.asp(these statistics are probably
underestimating IE usage)
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Resources

• Maximum Accessibility
• John M. Slatin, Sharron Rush Addison Wesley
  Professional, 2002
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
• http//www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
• Various corporate accessibility sites
• IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, etc.
• IBM Java accessibility resources
• http//www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines/java/accessj
  ava.html
• DIR Web Accessibility Usability site
• http//www.dir.state.tx.us/standards/srrpub11-acce
  ssibility.htm
• JAWS Screen reader
• http//www.freedomscientific.com/

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Questions
Thanks! Any questions?