IT Accessibility Committee August 2006 Newsletter

### Edited by Joel Obuchowski

********* THERE IS NO MEETING THIS MONTH. *********

COMMITTEE NEWS

NYS Standards-Specific Validation Tool - Progress Report

The Requirements Workgroup has developed a final list of recommended requirements for the NYS Validation Tool project. The group identified seven mandatory requirements, and ten other groups of optional requirements. The Workgroup will be meeting with the Forum's Executive Director mid-month to present their recommendations, and determine next steps.

NEXT MEETING

The next regular Committee Meeting will be on September 14, and we're tentatively scheduled to use the Forum offices, 411 State Street, Albany.

Note: When we are at this location, we have access to teleconferencing equipment. If you are outside the area and interested in dialing in, please contact dorton@goer.state.ny.us for details and instructions.

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UPCOMING EVENTS
NCDAE Webcast

Accessibility and Open Source Content Management Systems

The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) will host another in their series of webcasts with a focus for those in education. A discussion will be held on the accessibility of open source content management systems. Join them Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 for the live audio Webcast. The broadcast will begin at 1PM MDT (12:00PM Pacific; 2:00PM Central; 3:00PM Eastern).

The webcast is free of charge and will last approximately one hour. You will be able to tune in using your computer using either Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Archives (transcript and audio) will be available shortly after the conclusion of the broadcast. The broadcast will be captioned simultaneously for the deaf and hard of hearing.

NEWS
Google tests more accessible Web search for blind

By Eric Auchard Thu Jul 20, 3:33 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) has begun testing a new version of its search system that makes finding information on the Web easier for the blind or visually impaired, its creator said on Wednesday.

Accessible Search, available on Google's experimental software site at http://labs.google.com/accessible/ (External Link) uses Google's standard page-ranking system and goes further by evaluating the usability of each Web page it displays.

T.V. Raman, a research scientist at Mountain View, California-based Google, said his project sorts search results based on the simplicity of page layout, the quality of design and the organization and labeling of information on each page.

"I knew it was a hard problem," Raman, who is blind, said in a phone interview. "What did I discover by doing this project? It's an even harder problem than I anticipated."

Complex, graphical designs that pack a lot of information onto large Web pages fare poorly when a low vision user relies on screen magnifiers that must expand small sections of a computer screen and make them huge, the researcher said.

A blind or dyslexic user of a screen reader that converts text into spoken words using a synthesized voice would waste a lot of time skipping over extraneous page content, he noted.

"You get a lot of conflicting signals," said Raman, who formerly worked for IBM Research before joining Google.

Accessible Search rates how, on balance, each Web page handles such issues and gives priority to pages that do the best job of balancing relevant data and solid design.

An estimated eight million people in the United States have visual impairments. Nearly three million are color blind, according to a 2001 study of Web site accessibility.

The dirty little secret of Internet design is that many shortcuts Web page builders take to make it easier to view information online, render Web pages nearly impossible to use by the visually impaired with machine-reading technology.

Web design guru Jakob Nielsen, the co-author of a 150-page 2001 study called "Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use of Users with Disabilities" came up with 75 principles for accessible Web design after a study of 100 computer users.

Making Web pages more accessible offers potential benefit to all users, Nielsen argues.

His ground rules apply to anyone looking to scan the Web quickly for information, in low light or on complex sites: Avoid small buttons. Minimize scrolling. Design and label pages consistently. Create good contrast between text and pages.

Google Accessible Search is built using Google Co-op technology, which the company recently introduced to enable organizations with specialized search systems that target information on specific topics such as health or food.

Raman, who worked at IBM Research before joining Google, said that by developing better ways of measuring accessibility, Google eventually could offer consumers with specific disabilities ways to perform more customized searches.

"Perhaps senior citizens who want a less busy interface or for people who are color blind," he said.

In an ideal world, every Web page would be coded cleanly. It would take advantage of style sheets that separate the formatting of Web pages from the content contained on any page. Columns of data would be labeled. Photos would have captions.

But Raman says that the World Wide Web is too messy to draw simple lines and fence off accessible pages from inaccessible ones. "How accessible or how inaccessible a Web page, from a user's perspective, is a really relative question," he said.

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W3C Notes: XHTML

XHTML 2.0: Working Draft

2006-07-26: The HTML Working Group has released the eighth public Working Draft of XHTML* 2.0. A general purpose markup language without presentation elements, XHTML 2 is designed for representing documents for a wide range of purposes across the Web. See the introduction for the differences between XHTML versions 1 and 2. Much of XHTML 2 works in existing browsers. The draft includes an implementation in RELAX NG with DTD and XML Schema implementations to follow. Visit the HTML home page. (News archive)

XHTML Role Attribute Module: Working Draft

2006-07-25: The HTML Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the XHTML Role Attribute Module to provide the ability to integrate the role attribute into any markup language based on XHTML Modularization 1.1. Developed in conjunction with the accessibility community and other groups, the document is the first of a series of XHTML modules designed to help extend the scope of XHTML markup languages into new environments. Visit the HTML home page. (News archive)

RESOURCES
Accessibility Video

As part of the Successful Web Communications in NYS Government project, a short video clip was produced to introduce accessibility concepts to those who are not familiar with them, and to advocate a standards-based, inclusive design approach to web development.

A captioned QuickTime version is now available as streaming video.

To view the video, go to: http://homepage.mac.com/cerasunvideo/nysforum2/ (External Link).

For those of you who cannot use QuickTime, there is a downloadable Windows Media version of our accessibility video available at: http://homepage.mac.com/cerasunvideo/nysforum3/ (External Link).

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Guidelines for Creating Accessible Digital Materials Published by WGBH/NCAM - Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web

July 12, 2006

The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), a division of public broadcaster and access technology pioneer WGBH Boston, announces publication of Accessible Digital Media: Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web.

These guidelines, providing step-by-step solutions for making a variety of electronic media accessible to users with sensory disabilities, are now available free of charge. A free CD containing the guidelines is also available; e-mail access@wgbh.org to order single or multiple copies.

These guidelines are the culmination of the Beyond the Text project, conducted by (NCAM and funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) of the U.S. Department of Education (2003-2006; award #H133G020091). Project staff studied methods for integrating accessible multimedia into e-books and digital talking books (DTBs), and the results of this research have been incorporated into the guidelines. The document is a greatly expanded version of recommendations first published in 2000 and revised in 2003, under projects funded by the National Science Foundation (awards #HRD-PPD-9906159 and #HRD-PPD-9623958, respectively).

"Accessible Digital Media: Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web" presents solutions to accessibility obstacles in a format designed to educate and assist digital publishers as well as Web and content developers. As with tools previously created by NCAM, including MAGpie (free, do-it-yourself captioning and audio description software) and CaptionKeeper (a tool for migrating captions created for analog video to digital formats), NCAM anticipates that the ready availability of these guidelines will help accelerate the creation of e-books, DTBs, software and Web sites with accessible images, multimedia, interactivity, data tables, graphs, and mathematical and scientific expressions.

Geoff Freed, project manager for "Beyond the Text," comments, "While the guidelines focus largely on content creation for educational materials, the solutions and recommendations are not restricted to academic settings. Lifelong learning is expected of every individual in the 21st century and advancement in the workplace is often tied to learning new skills and concepts. Corporate trainers and knowledge-management experts in all fields utilize interactive and Web-based content for professional development, and learning materials of all types now include multimedia - movies and audio clips and a variety of interactive elements."

Those interested in building accessibility into digital materials may also want to review the results of another NCAM initiative which promotes the design of accessible learning management systems, used by many schools, universities and workplaces. NCAM's Specifications for Accessible Learning Technologies (SALT) Partnership established an accessibility working group within the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS). This work, producing specifications for a universally designed infrastructure for adaptable learning systems, will result in an international standard from the International Organization on Standardization (ISO).