Interregional Seminar and Regional Demonstration Workshop on Accessible Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Persons with Disabilities
Bayview Park Hotel, Manila, Philippines, March 3-7, 2003

Accessible ICT
Making Internet and Communications Technologies Accessible
Focus on Web Accessibility

Leo Valdes
Vision Office

Topics

• Accessibility Issues
• Email Accessibility
• Assistive Technologies
• Web Accessibility
• Making Web Pages Accessible

Accessibility Issues

Accessibility and Internet Accessibility
Why do we need accessibility?
Issues and Causes

What is Accessibility?

Providing flexibility to accommodate the user's needs and preferences
Accessibility

• Alternatives
• Flexibility
• Accommodation
• Reasonable
• Needs / Preferences

Why Accessibility?

A larger participating audience
Also benefits the mainstream
It's the law
It's the right thing to do

Internet Accessibility - Issues and Causes

Three issues identified...
Electronic Mail
Assistive Technologies
Web Accessibility

Electronic Mail

E-mail Issues
Inadequate bandwidth
Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE)
Hoaxes / Chain Letters
Large file attachments
Worms / Viruses

Electronic Mail - Solutions

Infrastructure solutions
Laws or policies against UCE & junk mail?
E-mail etiquette
Keep it short and to the point
Compress attachments

Asistive Technologies

Modifications or upgrades for alternative methods of input and output
Hardware / Software
Availability
Compatibility
Price

Web Accessibility

Problems
Complex layouts
Graphics
Tables, Forms
Video - no captioning or description
etc…

Web Accessibility - Solutions Overview

Browsers / add-ins
Standards
Web site Planning
Writing Accessible HTML
Accessibility Validators

Browsers

Text-based.
Screen Reader-ready
Lean browser (e.g. Opera)
Web by phone

Standards

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Section 508

Web Site Planning

Who is the audience?
What are the messages?
Web site organization
Layout
Navigation
Each page has the essentials

Web Page Essentials

What is this page all about
Who made this page (copyright)
How recent is this page
Whom to contact
How to get around

Good Web Site Design

Consistent layout
Clear, consistent navigation
Keyboard accessible
Tested with several browsers

Writing Accessible HTML

Text
Hyperlinks
Images
Buttons and Image Maps
Applets and Scripts

Constructing Accessible Web Pages - Text

Visual formatting ignored by screen readers
Use ALT for "spacers"
Don't use BLINK and MARQUEE
Use Cascading Style Sheets

Constructing Accessible Web Pages - Hyperlinks

Meaningless hyperlinks, e.g. "Click Here"
Use the sentence's meaningful words or phrases

Constructing Accessible Web Pages - Images

Images can't be read
Use ALT Tags
Use short labels before images
Use a D-tag if the description is long
How about "Text Only"?

But is it Accessible?

Frames  - NO
Animated GIFs  - NO
Portable Document Format (PDF)  - NO
Flash Animation - NO

Accessibility Validators

Bobby
WAI Validator
AccVerify (HiSoftware)
A-Prompt
Lift (UsableNet)
Checklist validators

Resources

Available at the seminar web sites:
www.worldenable.net
www.icdri.org
Seminar's site:
www.worldenable.net/manila2003

Copyright (c) 2003 AIMS/VisionOffice.
Last updated 03/06/03. Contact: info@visionoffice.com