You Are Here: IT Accessibility Committee February 2007 Newsletter
### Edited by Joel Obuchowski
February Committee Meeting
When: Thursday, 2/8, from 2:30 - 4:00
Where: NYS Forum Office, 411 State Street, Albany
We'll probably be discussing recent events concerning Executive Order 3, which requires that agencies develop plans to videocast their public meetings on the web by July 1, 2007. In addition, we'll discuss recent committee activities relating to our quest for an NYS-specific validation tool.
We will also be discussing potential offerings for our annual Webmasters' Guild presentation, which has been moved to May. If you have suggestions but cannot attend the meeting, please forward them to either Debi Orton or Mike Short.
Our Committee meetings are open to anyone who is interested in attending.
This Month's Feature
Standard 1: Text Equivalents for Non-Text Content
It could be argued that this standard alone accounts for perhaps as much as 50% of the problems associated with less-than-accessible web sites. Sometimes it is difficult for sighted people to understand the problems that non-sighted people or people with visual imapirments have when navigating web sites.
One of the most fundamental problems -- and ironically, the easiest to fix -- is transmitting information via image. You can appreciate how ingrained our reliance on visual cues is by answering these two questions:
- What company's delivery persons drive big brown step vans?
- How do you recognize a school bus?
It's likely that a totally blind person would have trouble with the first question, and their question to the second might be "by its sound."
New York's Standard 1 addresses those issues by requiring that if you use a visual element on your web page, you must provide a text equivalent, using the alt attribute of the img element, or for more detailed images, by providing a link to a longer, more detailed description, using the longdesc attribute of the img element to link to a text or html file containing the description. When providing that long description, it's good practice to provide a text link to the description as well.
For informational images, New York's standard sets a maximum length limit for alt attribute values at 150 characters. If you cannot adequately describe your image within that limit, it's a good indication that an optional longdesc element may be required.
There is some controversy on how to handle non-informational images, sometimes called "eye candy". Some users with visual impairments want every image described so that they can be sure they aren't missing anything. Other users with visual impairments are eager to get to the information and don't want to waste time on non-informational images. Regardless of how you decide to treat your non-informational images, they still require an alt attribute, even if it's an empty alt attribute.
Standard 1 also requires that "text versions" of dynamic web pages are updated whenever the dynamic pages change, and requires that pages be usable when scripts or programmatic elements are turned off in the user's browser (we'll cover this in more depth when we discuss Standard 12).
For more information on New York's accessibility Policy or Standards, please refer to http://www.nysforum.org/accessibility/resources/nyspolicy/index.html
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NEWS
COMMITTEE PRESENTS TO FORUM'S CORPORATE ROUNDTABLE.
Co-chair Mike Short presented our module on Policy, Law and Web Access to the Forum's Corporate Roundtable at its January meeting. The talk was well-received, and a good discussion continued for some time. Members of the Roundtable wanted to know how agencies were doing with their efforts to meet the standards (we reported that they were doing well, but there was more to do). Bob Kelly, CIO of HCR, discussed his approach when confronted with system developers who said accessibility would delay the project. "Then build it into your project schedule," he said, "because it's the right thing to do. We'll make time to do it right." Mike pointed out that it takes time to learn how to build accessible web sites, but once the skills are learned, it does not take any more time to build in accessibility.
CRITICAL SOFTWARE CANNOT BE USED BY BLIND TEXAS EMPLOYEES
National Federation of the Blind Files Suit for Equal Access
Austin, Texas - Feb. 5, 2007
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and three blind Texas employees filed suit today to enforce a provision of Texas law requiring all information technology purchased by the state to be accessible to blind employees. The suit was brought because blind state employees cannot use a human resource software program acquired by the state. The newly-acquired software replaced another software package that had, in large part, been accessible to blind users.
Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the NFB, said, "Access to information technology is critical to success on the job for everyone in the twenty-first century, and this is no less true for the blind than it is for the sighted. The NFB is committed to improviing access to all information technologies, and we will take all steps necessary to do so, including litigation."
Tommy Craig, President of the National Federation of the Blind of Texas, said, "The state legislature of Texas recognized the need for equal access for the blind by passing a law requiring it, and it is unconscionable that a state agency is violating that law. The National Federation of the Blind of Texas will not rest until all of the employees of the state of Texas have equal access to all the information they need to function effectively."
The suit, which names as defendants the directors of the Health and Human Services Commission and the Texas Workforce Commission (the agencies for which the blind employees work) and the state's acting chief technology officer, arises from the state's continuing renewal of contracts to purchase the inaccessible human resources software and other products, despite the fact that the software cannot be used by blind Texas employees. The plaintiffs have asked a Texas court to require the software to be made accessible to the blind and to require that the state discontinue its purchases of inaccessible software.
Edwin Kunz, one of the blind plaintiffs who directs a rehabilitation center for the blind within the Health and Human Services Commission's Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, said, "I am unable to review and enter information such as my hours worked and leave taken unless a sighted person helps me do so. Even worse, I can't access critical information about the employees that I supervise without the assistance of a sighted person. Because I must have sighted assistance for all of these personnel functions, both my privacy and the privacy of my employees are routinely violated. I've complained about the problems with the software, but nothing has been done to fix them. I hope this lawsuit will spur the current vendor to move quickly to correct this problem; otherwise the state will have to purchase human resources software from someone else."
{Extracted from an article located at
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20070205/UNM00605022007-1.html }
IBM HELPS DISABLED USERS GET MORE FROM ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY WITH IACCESSIBLE2
IBM has developed a collection of software interfaces that will make it easier for assistive technologies to provide those with disabilities access to advanced features in software programs -- such as editing functions, hyperlinks, charts and menus. These features are typically implemented in so-called "rich media" browser applications based on things like AJAX, and desktop applications based on the OpenDocumentFormat.
These new application program interfaces (APIs) have been designed for Windows and have been accepted by the Free Standards Group, which will develop and maintain it as an open standard, available for all to use. Major screen reading software developers Freedom Scientific and GW Micro, along with industry organizations such as IBM, the Mozilla Project, Oracle, SAP, and Sun Microsystems have all indicated an interest in helping to develop IAccessible2 as an industry standard, as well as use it in products with which they are associated.
Assistive technologies, such as screen readers, enable the blind to use computers by verbalizing information such as text and graphics controls provided by an application such as a browser or a word processing document. Until now, assistive technology programs have required constant, custom modifications to keep up with new versions of software applications, with new document formats and operating systems, and with the interactive way electronic information is presented.
Efforts to provide access to these types of applications have required non-standard means that may vary between applications and between versions of applications -- and are sometimes error-prone. Features and information in rich text documents that are difficult for those with disabilities to access include headings and captions in tables, fonts. text, colors, text selected for cutting and pasting, hyperlinks, and location.
Many "Web 2.0" technologies such as AJAX and live updates on a web page, don't have standardized programming interfaces to communicate behind the scenes with assistive technologies. They cannot easily say what is occurring on-screen and how interactions on a static portion of a Web page may affect a "live" region on another.
By standardizing the interfaces, and with the stewardship of the Free Standards Group, assistive technology vendors now have a more consistent, less expensive way to easily extend their software for new technologies and computer operating systems. Likewise, mainstream software application vendor can more easily extend their programming interfaces to communicate with assistive technologies.
{ Extracted from an article on the IBM web site at
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20773.wss }
DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING ACCESSIBLE WEB SITES FROM THE GROUND UP
By: Kurt Mueffelmann, HiSoftware president and CEO
Web sites serve as the public face for many different types of organizations: government, corporate, educational and non-profit. These Web sites must accurately represent and reflect company standards and legal information, and also adhere to increasingly stringent accessibility, operational security and privacy legislation within the US and around the world.
Businesses today understand that providing a quality online experience for customers is critical. In order to stay competitive online, organizations must develop and maintain ready, reliable and responsive customer-facing Web sites. The continuously changing environment of the Web, however, makes it extremely challenging for managers, marketing teams and IT professionals to create, implement, manage and monitor their organizations' Web sites for policy compliance, security, structure, integrity, and intellectual property usage.
When these standards can be structured and implemented they have great value. Implementing a solution to accomplish this task, however, has been unmanageable and cost-prohibitive to many organizations. Organizations often do not have dedicated IT and personnel resources to allocate to such challenges, yet business opportunities can be lost without implementation of an enterprise-wide solution. Approaching Web content quality management as an afterthought is not an effective strategy, and remediation after the fact can be costly and time-consuming. Organizations that include quality management as part of their development plans, and quality assurance and testing practices will have a tremendous advantage.
As developers build content for a Web site, they can and should test for compliance issues relating to security, privacy, accessibility and quality. By identifying and resolving these issues early in the development cycle, organizations can save a significant amount of time and money.
As compliance issues are identified, communicating the results and the steps being taken to fix them is an important consideration. A legal compliance officer needs to be assured that repairs are being made to address any problems with policies or legal standards. Implementing a solution that uses a standardized dashboard reporting feature can be a key factor in keeping a development project on-track and insuring that a Web site meets the highest standards in security, privacy, accessibility and quality compliance.
Standardized reports can provide managers with a snapshot of any compliance issues identified at the development level, and also monitor what issues are being addressed in a timely manner. In addition to using reports to provide a view of where things stand today, managers should also use them to show an analysis of trends and how the organization is maintaining its Web site for compliance issues on an ongoing basis.
Whether or not an organization has Web site quality or compliance built into the development cycle, it is still crucial to monitor the site regularly. With the amount of new information being posted to Web sites every day, it is difficult, if not impossible for an organization to manually check for compliance issues. Manually monitoring very large sites, and even smaller sites, can require extensive man-hours and be extremely costly. Organizations that monitor a Web site manually also run the risk of missing critical issues due to human error.
Implementing a solution that enables automated content compliance is a cost-effective way for organizations to lessen their risk management exposure by ensuring their Web sites meet compliance standards. Organizations that don't automate the monitoring of Web sites for compliance issues run the risk of facing substantial fines for security, privacy and accessibility. Additionally, by enforcing a compliance policy across a Web site, an organization can improve performance for their customers.
Developing and maintaining a Web site that meets accessibility compliance standards, an organization can reach disabled consumers who rely on some type of assistive device or software to access Web sites. With approximately 20 percent of the population identified by the World Health Organization as having one or more disabilities, this greatly expands an organization's reach. New York's citizens deserve a Web site that meets the highest standards in security and privacy compliance, instead of one that has known security and privacy issues.
As we move into the future of the Web, more and more organizations will realize the importance of developing and maintaining Web sites that promote the highest standards in security, privacy, accessibility and quality compliance.
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About Kurt Mueffelmann:
Kurt A. Mueffelmann is president and chief executive officer of HiSoftware (www.hisoftware.com). Mueffelmann draws on a reservoir of 15 years experience in helping high-tech companies reach their potential. Based on his extensive experience, he is responsible for defining and directing HiSoftware's worldwide strategic direction, software development, sales and business development efforts and market expansion activities. Additionally, Mueffelmann is a member of HiSoftware's board of directors.