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Any web developer who has created a reasonably complex form is probably aware of the concept of multiple select elements that are connected – choosing something from one select box either makes a new select box appear or changes the options of one that is already visible. There are usually two problems with this approach. One is that most implementations are completely dependent on JavaScript being available. Often there either is no submit button at all, or there is a submit button but without JavaScript there is no way to access the options that appear only as a result of changing the first select box. The other problem is that in some browsers, using the cursor keys to change the selected option triggers the onchange event immediately, so you can never get past the first option unless you know how to use your keyboard to display all options. I normally work around these problems by requiring users to submit the form to get the next set of options from the server. Obviously that isn’t an ideal solution either. So what other options do we have? One option that looks promising is described by Christian Heilmann in Unobtrusive connected select boxes - yet another solution approach. It involves using optgroup elements to create a two-level select box, which is then split into two separate select boxes if JavaScript is available. Neat. The solution Chris describes solves (or at least mitigates) the keyboard access problem since it doesn’t reload the page when the onchange event is triggered. And if JavaScript is unavailable, there is a single select box with option groups. The catch is that nested optgroup elements are not allowed in current versions of HTML, so this will not work when more than two connected select boxes are needed. Nested optgroup elements are allowed in the current Web Forms 2.0 Working Draft, so I guess there is a reasonable chance of that change making it into HTML 5.

One major new piece of work undertaken by WAI is the EC-funded WAI-AGE Project (http://www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/), a look at the implications of an ageing population for web access, given the older people are more likely to have disabilities and may also be less familiar with new technologies. “Demographics worldwide are dramatically changing at the moment,” says Andrew Arch, who works with Abou-Zahra on WAI-AGE. “The proportions of older to younger people are changing as well as the numbers. We’re living longer, and we haven’t got the support behind us. “Lots of things have got to change in governments and organisations - with an ageing workforce, you have to keep learning to stay accessible.”

The WAI-AGE project is partly aimed at finding out whether there are any significant new pieces of work needed to ensure web accessibility for an older population, Arch says. “We’ve looked at what research and user observation has gone on over the decade. There is a pretty big overlap between older people and others with disabilities - sight starts to decline, motor dexterity - and individually these overlap. But with older people there is often a lack of recognition that there is a disability there. For example some people might just say they can’t remember so well, rather than that they have a cognitive impairment. Or people won’t see failing eye-sight as a disability, it’s just ‘part of growing old’. But they are disabilities, and often multiple disabilities.”

Having gained a grasp of current research the project returned to guidelines such as WCAG 2.0 to see if any changes might be needed. “A large proportion of the needs of older people are met by the new guidelines, but other things might need to feed into the guidance we will issue on implementing the guidelines, for example guidance on how people prepare content for older people.,” said Arch. “Many older people have not grown up with computers, and may not realise their capabilities, for example that you can magnify text in your browser.”

AJAX is

a smorgasbord of web technologies put together to allow dynamic client-server interactions to occur in web applications without requiring pages to reload or refresh.

AJAX uses the following:

United Nations Global Audit of Web Accessibility, conducted by accessibility agency Nomensa on behalf of the United Nations, shows that 97 percent of websites fail to meet the most basic accessibility requirements.

A story on the BBC News website, ‘Most websites’ failing disabled, notes that 93 percent did not provide alternative text for all images, 73 percent relied on JavaScript for important functionality, and 98 percent of the sites did not use valid markup.

New Dutch accessibility law.

A few highlights of what is required: separate structure from presentation do not use deprecated markup when creating a new website, use a Strict doctype use progressive enhancement create semantic class and id values use the W3C DOM when scripting script-only links must be generated by JavaScript do not use the alt attribute to create tooltips