Chapter 6. AccessibilityContents:
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Responsible web design includes making pages accessible even to users with disabilities, such as hearing, sight, cognitive, or motor skills impairments. Millions of people have disabilities that affect their access to information on the Web. Many disabled users take advantage of assistive technologies for web browsing, both for input and output. For instance, some people have disabilities that make it impossible to input information using a standard keyboard or mouse. Instead, they may use a speech input device or a simple pointer attached to a headset. Others have disabilities that hinder the way they get information from a page. Vision impaired users may use a text browser (such as Lynx) in conjunction with software that reads the contents of the screen aloud. Some use devices that translate the text into Braille for tactile reading. For most sites, accessibility is proper web design etiquette; for government web sites, it is the law. Section 508 (effective June 25, 2001) mandates that all Federal agencies' electronic and information technology be accessible to people with disabilities. For more information, see http://www.section508.gov. By promoting accessibility for those with disabilities, content becomes more available to all users, regardless of the device they use to access the Web. This includes any alternative to the standard desktop graphical browser, such as palmtop computers or automobile dashboard browsing systems. Even users who have graphics turned off in their browsers to speed up download times will benefit from basic accessibility measures. 6.1. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has launched its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which aims to make the Web universally accessible. The WAI ensures that web technologies such as HTML and CSS support accessibility and promotes education and research to see that the standards are understood and followed. In addition to overseeing the development of web technologies, the WAI has created recommendation documents that address three key audiences. First, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommendation provides rules and techniques for web designers and authors on how to create content that is as accessible as possible. This chapter focuses primarily on these efforts. The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines speaks to software developers making web authoring tools. Tools should make it easy to create standards-compliant content, as well as being accessible themselves. And third, the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines are for developers of browsing devices, from standard desktop graphical browsers to specialized assistive technologies. These documents, as well as useful news, tools, and resources, are available at the WAI site (http://www.w3.org/WAI/). 6.1.1. Web Content Accessibility GuidelinesIn general, to make web content accessible to everyone, there is a greater reliance on text and document structure. That is not to say that sites need to be text-only and media-free in order to be accessible to everyone. The goal is to create sites that (as the WAI puts it) "transform gracefully" when accessed via alternative methods. Some simple examples include providing alternative text for images that can be read if the image can't be viewed, or providing a text transcript of an audio track if it can't be heard. It also requires the proper use of HTML markup for document structure and Cascading Style Sheets for presentation. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 document is a recommendation by the WAI for web designers and web content developers. It outlines the general principles of accessible design in the form of 14 guidelines. Each guideline is supported by a number of "checkpoints" that describe how the guideline applies. In addition, each point is given a priority rating: Priority 1 means the guideline must be followed in all cases, Priority 2 items should be addressed in order to make the material more accessible, and Priority 3 means that the point may be addressed for the most thorough compliance with standards. 6.1.2. The GuidelinesWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 is a thorough and highly detailed document. What follows here is a summary of the guidelines to point you in the right direction. For the details, read the original document online at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.
6.1.3. The TechniquesWAI has also compiled a list of very practical applications of each of these principles in a document called Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. It provides specific techniques that address each of the checkpoints outlined in the general guidelines document. It also acts as a gateway to a number of other resources that describe the specifics on how HTML, CSS, and other core technologies address accessibility. The WAI Techniques document is too vast to summarize here, but the following list presents a few simple measures you can take to make your pages more accessible:
If you would like to check how accessible your web page is, try running it through a validator, such as Bobby (http://www.cast.org/bobby/), that will scan your page and point out accessibility issues. Copyright © 2002 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. |
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