Group items tagged

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.”

We considered a few approaches, but decided to grow our new widget out of Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. This is firstly because these tools met our requirements to work cross-platform and deliver the desktop experience we wanted, and also because they linked up with in-house skills in the team which manages them, making them simpler to manage.

BBC Future Media & Technology's pilot widget application BBC LiveUpdate uses the Adobe AIR runtime, which is dependent on users downloading and installing a plugin to their desktop, but which unfortunately does not currently support screenreaders (or other software which relies on the Microsoft Active Accessibility layer for assistive technologies). We're working with Adobe to make tools built with AIR more accessible than current products wherever possible and are committed to delivering accessible services. As this is a beta product, there are also other limitations in how much we have been able to establish accessibility support in the following areas:Colour contrast cannot be alteredText size cannot be alteredLacks consistent alt textLacks Title attributesIs not entirely tabbable.

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.

“Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.”

Scoptic Sensitivity Syndrome

can make high contrast text difficult to read because the words seem to constantly move on the page.

WysiHat is a WYSIWYG JavaScript framework that provides an extensible foundation to design your own rich text editor. WysiHat stays out of your way and leaves the UI design to you. Although WysiHat lets you get up and running with a few lines of code, the focus is on letting you customize it. We are giving developers early access to the project while we continue to work out the remaining issues. Note: It’s extremely early. Contributors are welcome so please check out the project on GitHub and send us your feedback.