THE ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL
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Sheraton Waikiki Hotel Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 7-11 May 2002 |
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http://www2002.org |
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***I must thank Kelly Cahill, Product Development Marketing Manager, Texas Instruments Incorporated for her contibution to this report.
Participants will introduce themselves and their interests in the subject of this workshop.
All over the world, people are working on web content development. Many are working on specifications that hopefully will make web content more accessible. Others have laws, or practices that are aimed at improving the accessibility of web content. Some different approaches will be presented and their effectiveness discussed.
Judy Brewer and W3C Guidelines (20 mins)
Liddy Nevile and the IMS Guidelines (10 mins)
Helle Bjarnø - 'one strategy for gently (or otherwise) persuading people to follow the guidelines' (10 mins)
Discussion
------------------------------------Morning Break
Until there are tools that support authors to develop accessible content, and possibly exceed their own capacity to do this, little can be expected to change in terms of the accessibility of the web. Authoring tool developers are, however, working towards this end, at least where they are likely to suffer loss of sales if their products directly contravene legislation or produce content that does. Most remarkable is the situation in the US where the requirement for accessible tools and content under US s. 508 and s. 504 has many developers working feverishly to adapt their products or include others' products that will make their products more acceptable. Fortunately, there are also some excellent tools available for free.
The Assistive Technology Resource Center at the University of Toronto have produced a tool that helps content authors check and repair their content before publication, or in remedial mode. A-Prompt (http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/) is widely recognised as a valuable tool. It is available for free and will be demonstarted by Jan Richards from ATRC.
Macromedia have taken a different approach. UseableNet have an evaluation product that can be integrated into Macromedia's Dreamweaver; they are working on their Flash application, and so on. Macromedia's strategy and the Useability extension to Dreamweaver will be demonstrated by Andrew Kirkpatrick from the National Center for Accessible Media (http://www.ncam.org/) and the issues associated with this approach will be considered.
BlackBoard (http://www.blackboard.com/), have developed an educational management system that is in wide use, and re-worked their product so that it causes minimal interference to content that is included in it, and the content it produces is maximally accessible. Their strategy will be presented by Liddy Nevile on behalf of Reidy Brown of BlackBoard.
Participants are encouraged to contribute other demonstrations, information, experiences and concerns.
Discussion
---------------------------------------------Lunch
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is probably the most widely used metadata set for the description of resources available via the web. The Dublin Core DC-Accessibility Interest Group has been formed to work on the development of a recommendation with respect to metadata about the accessibility of resources for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
Stuart Weibel, the Executive Director of the DCMI (http://dublincore.org), will describe how DCMI and the DCMES are developed and the likely adoption of resource accessibility metadata - 15 mins
Questions and discussion
The issues:
Questions and discussion
---------------------------------------------Afternoon Break
Presentation and Demonstrations
EARL and how it works - Charles McCathieNevile
Questions and discussion
Open discussion
See list of participants with affiliations and contact details.
Judy Brewer (W3C WAI Guidelines)
W3C- industry focused
Web Accessibility initiative- look at accessibility problems and try and find solutions
1. Behind scenes- is there an accessibility issue with this? (Consult with working group)
2. Guidelines development- publicly known for this. How to make a website accessible. Authoring tool for website helps automate this.
3. Browsers and multimedia solutions- user agent guidelines. Interoperations of other tools that "plug into computer"
4. xml Accessibility guidelines
a. Evaluation and repair tools- documents that help how to evaluate websites. Accessibility is hard to evaluate because the process is not automated.. more of an "art form"
b. Education and outreach-W3C is a little out of the loop in this but working to grow. They have developed tools for this you can find these online.
5. Coordinating with research to develop systems to insure guidelines
Harmonization of Guidelines- Development of Web accessibility 1.0- stable reference document (you can find a working draft of 2.0 on the W3C technical support page www.w3.org.WAI http://www.w3.org/WAI) This web page breaks things down to certain types of disabilities. This is a really good site to get basics.
Liddy Nevile (IMS White Paper)
See http://www.imsproject.org/
Helle Bjarnø (Danish 'gentle persuasion' for accessible sites - table of evaluation criteria)
Denmark focus on e-government
Denmark raised accessibility awareness.
http://www.bedstpaanettet.dk/english"From my presentation there is the English version of the evaluation questions from the 2001
evaluations, there have been some alterations in this years evaluation questions but they are only available in Danish. You can see the English description of the project on www.bedstpaanettet.dk click on the link:
English."
Jan Richards (A-Prompt demo slides)
Jan Richards was author of A-Prompt Web Accessibility Verifier
A-Prompt provides the most complete implementation of AERT that we know of. As WCAG continues to develop, so will A-Prompt too
A-Prompt will find your errors - (Bobby will not do this)- similar to spell check on word it is even automated at times.
Types of errors that are detected by A-Prompt: Color contrast, description of pictures (maybe the description is too brief), Flicker, Title, Source, image map conversion, sound file missing transcript, ASCII art missing description, Tables (data vs. layout): header, markup, caption, summary and several other checks.
A-Prompt has an 'approved' Icon that can be put on your site.
A-Prompt Freeware at: http://www.aprompt.ca>http://www.aprompt.ca
Andrew Kirkpatrick (Useability demo slides)
LIFT presented by Andrew Kirkpatrick
Liddy Nevile (Blackboard slides)
See especially, http://buildingblocks.blackboard.com
Question/Summary time:
Stuart Weibel (Dublin Core Metadata slides)
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative-OCLC Office of Research
What does it get you?
Metadata is a representational tool to assist in the structured aggregation of data into information, and information into knowledge: (why do we need it?)
· Facilitated discovery
· Organization
· Filtering
· Management
· Exchange
· Syndication (content push)
Network Value: the more a standard is used, the more valuable is the data, both to users of the information and organizations that manage it.
What is the Dublin Core?
· A simple metadata element set
o 15 elements
o Additional qualifiers
· An architecture for the expression of reusable semantics
· A global consensus building community
o Participants from 35+ countries
Workshops and events across the globe - 30 languages and cross domain (museums, libraries, government agencies, supra-national agencies, commercial activities, e-publishing, archives etc.)
<<http://dublincore.org>http://dublincore.org>
Liddy Nevile (IMS' Learner Information Profile)
IMS is generally operating in a closed environment, such as an educational institution, and for this reason the approach being taken is to develop a user profile, known as a Learner Information Profile. This profile is designed to be used by the learner as they travel through systems, enrolling, unenrolling, participating in couses and undergoing assessments. This information is to be dynamically updated as users work on the system, and to maintain the authoritative rcords about the user. When a student with a disability, according to the local educational or training system, is registered as having a particular need, they will be accommodated as might happen in the case of their doing online tests, for example. IMS recommends this approach but is still in the process of determining just how the LIP will characterise accessibility needs and how they wil be related to, and matched with, accessibility metadata profiles for resources and services.
Judy Brewer (metadata issues)
Metadata should not only to inform user if the website is accessible but also should be informative enough that user can find information they desire. Websites shouldn't shut out a disabled person just because it is not completely accessible (example: wheelchair and restaurant). Judy pointed to the misuse of PICS (the Platform for Internet selection) and how it had become a censorship tool. She commented that people with disabilities do not want to be told to what they can or cannot have access. They like to be able to decide whether or not to make the effort, depending upon personal choice. Liddy pointed out that PICS itself was not a censorship tool but an interesting application that made it possible for users to activate preferences from their own devices. Stu Weibel added that PICS was useful for people who wanted to make personal choices at the client end. Charles said it was important to realise that it was the use of PICS on proxies that amounted to externally imposed censorship, and that was what users did not like.
Liddy Nevile (process of developing metadata profile slides)
Charles McCathieNevile (Evaluation and Report Language)
Charles McCathieNevile- Using EARL (charles@w3.org)
EARL (http://www.w3.org2001/03/earl/)
(manual testing and creation of EARL using Nadia Heninger's protptype testing tool) (http://www.barbwired.com) this produces rdf (or code)
(automated testing and creation of EARL using the HiSoftware product) http://valet.htmlhelp.com this produces rdf
EARL is used for evaluating accessibility of a website.
Why would you use EARL?
Integrating tools (using Bobby and other approved evaluation tools together)