IT Accessibility Committee Newsletter: February 2006

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IT Accessibility Committee February 2006 Newsletter

### Edited by Joel Obuchowski

If you would like to provide comments about or items to include in this newsletter, please e-mail Debi Orton (dorton@goer.state.ny.us) and Joel Obuchowski (jobuchow@ins.state.ny.us).

February Committee Meeting

The February IT Accessibility Committee meeting will be held on Thursday, February 9. Please note that due to a scheduling conflict, this month's meeting will be held at the NYS Department of Civil Service, Building 1, State Office Campus, from 2:30 - 4:00.

For directions to the Department, please see http://www.cs.state.ny.us/announ/mainpages/howtofindus/howtofindus.htm (External Link) .

Our meeting will be held in Classroom 3. Attendees should report to the Main Desk to sign in.

Classroom 3 is on the first floor. From the main desk, take the hallway to the right. Go through the first set of double doors leading to your left. Then proceed through the next set of double doors. This will place you in a lobby. The classrooms will be to your right. Classroom 3 is straight ahead once you are in the classroom area.

On the agenda will be discussion about our continuing review of our curriculum, upcoming presentation opportunities, a report on progress with validation vendors, a report on the GOER/PEF training initiative, and more. We hope to see you there.

NEWS

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NYS Forum Executive Director to Appear on Newscast

The Forum's Executive Director, Greg Benson, was recently interviewed by Fox 23 about "digital divide" issues. His interview is scheduled to appear on the Fox 23 Evening News (10:00 p.m.) on February 7. Set your VCR / Tivo!

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Did You Know...New York State's TRAID Program

The Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities (TRAID) Program began in 1990 under the sponsorship of the Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities, and is now administered from the newly-merged Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities (CQCAPD). TRAID's focus is to increase access to assistive technology for persons with disabilities, through a statewide training program and its collaborative work with other state entities on assistive technology policy issues with statewide impact.

TRAID has also enabled consumers across the state to directly access assistive technology at a local level, through its sub-contracting with community organizations to provide this service. Since 1990, TRAID has increased the number of regional centers from four to twelve, located throughout the state. The TRAID program and CQCAPD sponsor Technology Opens Doors, the Governor's Expo on Assistive Technology, which is scheduled for Thursday, May 11, in the Empire State Plaza Convention Center.

For more information on the TRAID program, visit http://www.cqcapd.state.ny.us/newsletter/issue90/traid.htm (External Link) , and for more information about Technology Opens Doors, the Governor's Expo on Assistive Technology, visit http://www.ATEXPO2006.com .

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IE 7 Beta Available for Public Download

Microsoft has released a Beta version of IE 7 for public download. Although PC Magazine's reviewer gave this version 2.5 out of 5, developers might want to download this new version to see how it behaves with existing content.

The beta is only available for users of Windows XP, with Service Pack 2 installed.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a BETA release, and as such, still has some peculiarities.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx (External Link) and click on "Get Beta 2 Preview."

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"Opera releases version for Windows Pocket PC"

By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

Extracted from PCWorld.com

A few months later than planned, Opera Software announced Wednesday that it has released a beta version of its first Web browser for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC.

Opera Mobile 8.5 for the Pocket PC is based on the same core as the current Opera 8.5 for desktop computers. It runs on Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile 5.0 and, like other Opera browsers for small devices, includes Opera's rendering technology that shrinks Web pages to fit the width of a device's screen.

The beta version is available for download from Opera's Web site http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/ (External Link) as a 45-day trial to any Windows Mobile 2003 or Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC user. The final version is expected to be released within a month, says Tod Odland, a spokesperson for Opera.

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"The View from 50,000 Feet"

In December 2005, Google did an analysis of a sample of more than a billion documents. The results provide some interesting information on how web developers are using HTML. The analysis focuses on various topics:

Pages and elements

Elements and attributes

Classes

HTTP headers

Page headers

Metadata

Body

Text elements

Table Elements

Link relationships

The anchor element

The img element

Scripting and

Editors and their custom markup

You can find the study at http://code.google.com/webstats/index.html (External Link) .

The study notes: "You will need a browser with SVG and CSS support to view the result graphs correctly. We recommend Firefox 1.5."

TOOLS and TRAINING

The XML Test Bed Project

The Center for Technology in Government recently held its public presentation of the XML Test Bed Project.

Test bed participants included five state agencies: Higher Ed, Office for Prevention of Domestic Violence, Cultural Education (Archives and Museum) of the State Education Department, Housing and Community Renewal, and Civil Service.

The project had a dual focus. Teams developed business cases for the use of XML in the management of web content in their organizations, and received technical training in the use of XML and XSLT. For example, the Civil Service team's objective was: To provide Department staff with an examination announcement publication process that allows them to work with a single document with the information they need to produce a consistent final product. Others planned to use XML to generate all the web content (OPDV), or targeted parts of their web sites (Finding Aids for Cultural Education). HCR is now using XML for portions of its Intranet.

At the presentation January 25th, several good points were made about using XML for web content:

Once accessible web content is generated by a transformation, any XML document transformed using it will be accessible. This reduces the effort required to produce an accessible web site.

XML is a powerful tool, but ultimately, it's just another tool. It is still the understanding of the business that is the critical success factor for a successful IT implementation.

XML has a steep, but short, learning curve. It requires a shift in thinking, especially for IT's old dogs. Without the mind shift, the tools are arcane and difficult to understand. Once the mind shift takes place, the tools are powerful and flexible, and surprisingly easy to use.

The results from the test bed will be published as a major paper by CTG later this year.

CTG has also committed to providing an online XML Toolkit within the next few months.

You can read another story about the test bed here: http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=98072 (External Link)

Handling Abbreviations and Acronyms in Web Content

The January 16 issue of A List Apart, a popular site for web developers, includes an article entitled "The Accessibility Hat Trick: Getting Abbreviations Right" by Colin Lieberman:

"The WCAG Priority 3 checkpoints (and the WCAG 2.0 Level 3 Success Criteria) are clear enough in terms of purpose and implementation, but abbreviations and acronyms stand out as one of the trickier areas of AAA to implement well. In order to meet our three-part goal of standards compliance, backwards compatibility, and full accessibility, we need to give this aspect of our content a bit of thought."

This article explores the options, and does a good job of thinking through all of the ramifications for each choice. You can find the article at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hattrick (External Link) .