IT Accessibility Committee July 2005 Newsletter

WEB SITE REDESIGN CONTEST UNDERWAY

We'd like to remind you that the Forum is sponsoring our "Accessible Can Be Beautiful" contest for the redesign of the IT Accessibility Committee's resource web site http://www.nysfirm.org/committees/access/resources/5-13-04/. Entries can be submitted up until August 1. You can find our complete contest guidelines on the Forum's site http://www.nysfirm.org/committees/access/contest/. The competition is open to individuals and teams of up to four people; members of the IT Accessibility Committee and employees of the Forum are not eligible to enter.

The goal of the competition is to demonstrate that incorporating accessibility does not stifle creativity or preclude designing a gorgeous web site. The winner will receive $500. The contest is being coordinated by Kathy Farrell from Empire State College and Lisa Hebert Ryan from MicroKnowledge, our new committee co-chair.

CONTEST JUDGES SOUGHT

Are you creative?

Have you developed usable sites?

Followed good design practices?

Then the IT Accessibility Committee is looking for you!

We need a small group of individuals to serve as judges for the "Accessible Can Be Beautiful" Web Design Contest.

Judge will be asked to review contest entries for:

  • Use of commonly accepted good web design practices.
  • Artistic appeal
  • Usability (e.g., intuitive navigation, clearly labeled links, etc.)
  • Continuity of concept

Interested parties should e-mail Lisa Ryan at lryan@MicroKnowledge.com.

Please provide, contact information and a brief paragraph describing your experience.

Please note that judging will take place between September 16th and October 2nd. When contacted, you will be asked about your availability during this timeframe.

STATUS REPORT

Every once in a while, it's useful to take time out to reflect on where you've been and what you've done. When Mike and I sat down to prepare a list of the IT Accessibility Committee's accomplishments for this Friday's Annual Planning Session, we were blown away. We certainly didn't do it all by ourselves, so we're reprinting the list here so that you too can marvel at our productivity.

Presentations:

  • Two sessions at GTC 2004 (Web Site Testing and Usability & Accessibility for Your Web Site)
  • CLEAR Conference, Kansas City
  • SUNY Webinar (with Pat DeCastro, OFT)
  • SUNY Trainings in Central NY (Mike Short with Sharon Trerise)
  • Webmasters' Guild - April (Jason Gleman, CSS) and May (Marilyn Cordell on NYS Policy and Joe Ingrato, Intercon Assoc.)
  • June 2005 repeat session on CSS

Collaborations with OFT on Policy and Standards Implementation

  • Agency Briefings (Debi Orton and Pat DeCastro)
  • Agency Consultations (ad hoc, most reflected in FAQ)
  • Development of Web Site Usability resource (Jeff Bennett and Steve Baum)
  • Established a section of the Committee's web site to educate and support web developers on Policy and Standards, including:
    • FAQ of agency questions on policy and standards
    • In-depth discussions of each Standard, including plain-English explanation, implementation advice and code examples
    • Ancillary support materials (e.g., side-by-side comparisons of NY Standards, Section 508 and WCAG, list of deprecated elements and attributes along with suggested alternatives, etc.)
  • Established Accessibility Clinics
  • Eliminated validation errors in code for common State banner
  • Partnered with the Webmasters' Guild and Forum staff to conduct Web Developer Survey (December), and follow it up with Focus Group sessions leading to a white paper on the state of web development as a discipline in State entities and outlining the issues compromising effective web development in State agencies.

Worked with Forum staff and Webmasters' Guild to forge partnership with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) to leverage their knowledge and certification standards.

Worked with the GOER to underwrite participants' cost for attendance at February WOW Sessions.

Worked with Webmasters' Guild, GOER and the PEF Professional Development Committee to:

  • Create a comprehensive "Web Development 101" curriculum stressing core skills and standards to achieve accessibility.
  • Write a Project Definition and Request for Proposals (using the OGS Backdrop Contracts) to find a vendor to deliver training on pilot basis.
  • Training should commence in early fall, 2005

Sponsored an "Accessible Can Be Beautiful" web site redesign contest.

Started a listserv (160 members) and a monthly e-mail newsletter to publicize committee

You all deserve credit for working to make all of that happen!!

ACCESSIBILITY CLINICS

Please note that we're suspending our monthly accessibility clinics for July and August. We'll pick up again in September with a session on web page validation.

STILL SEEKING VALIDATION INFORMATION FROM AGENCIES

Last month we sent out a message asking for information on what validation tool State agencies were using to check their sites. So far, the response has been light. Keep in mind that we'll be using this information to approach vendors about providing an option that conforms to New York's hybrid standards.

If your agency is using a validation tool, please e-mail the following information to Debi Orton at dorton@goer.state.ny.us:

  • the name of the tool;
  • the company that markets it:
  • whether the tool works on individual pages or in batch mode; and,
  • contact information.

UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS

FORUM'S ANNUAL STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSION

The Forum Executive Committee has asked our committee to deliver a 10-minute presentation on our successful work with GOER and PEF to design a training series on accessible web design as an example of potential of such collaborations.

GTC

We are planning to present two programs at this fall's GTC conference, and possibly a third in partnership with the Webmasters' Guild. On September 21, we'll be offering our popular half-day CSS session, along with a new overview session geared toward agency program managers. Keep an eye out for GTC registration materials, which should be coming soon.

CTG'S XML TESTBED PROJECT

On October 13, we will be presenting an overview on accessibility and a quick tour of New York's Mandatory Technology Standards for the organizations chosen as participants in the project.

NEWS OF INTEREST

NOT SO FAST...JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SLOWS ADOBE-MACROMEDIA MERGER The U.S. Justice Department has made a second request for information prior to approving the $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia, Inc. by Adobe Systems, Inc. The Department's second request is focusing on Adobe's Illustrator and Macromedia's FreeHand. The companies will need to wait a minimum of 30 days after complying with the Department's request for information to complete the acquisition. A spokeswoman for Justice said that the request was not a rare occurence, and both companies issued a joint statement announcing that they still expected to complete the merger by year's end.

NEW VERSION OF WCAG 2.0 WORKING DRAFT ISSUED BY W3C

On June 30, the WorldWide Web Consortium (W3C) issued a new working draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, and called for comments. You can find the new working draft at http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-20050630/ (External Link). While New York's standards are not aligned with any one standard, they incorporate many of the elements of the previous version of the WCAG. The working draft also links to implementation techniques that might prove useful.

CSS TIP: USING MORE THAN ONE CLASS AT A TIME

Do you have a situation where you want to combine the attributes of two existing classes? You might think you need a new class that combines the CSS rules, but you don't. You can specify more than one class.

For example, say you have a class called "Normal" that specified the type font and size for your entire page. Say you also have a class called "Critical" that changed the font weight and color in a particular way. If you wanted a paragraph that used the "Normal" font sizing and the "Critical" weight and color, you would mark it up like this:

<p class="Normal Critical">Your text here.</p>

If the two classes have rules that conflict, then it is the last class named that takes precedence. In this example, if "Normal" called for a blue font, and "Critical" called for a red font, the text would display as red. If you wanted it to display as blue, you could reverse the order the classes were specified:

<p class="Critical Normal">Your text is still here.</p>

Learning tricks like this can save you from "Class Bloat." Inexperienced developers often create many more classes than they actually need. While this won't affect accessibility, usability or your pages' look, it does lead to large style sheets that are difficult to maintain.

LINKS OF INTEREST

Article on "Accessible Error Messages" on the Standards Schmandards site: http://standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/06/25/21-accessible-errors (External Link)

Notes on a Joe Clark presentation about zoom layouts via CSS from Joe's site: http://joeclark.org/atmedia/atmedia-NOTES-2.html (External Link)

Interesting article on examining a web site's accessibility - "Toward User-Centered, Scenario-Based Planning and Evaluation Tools" from the WebAIM site: http://www.webaim.org/techniques/articles/scenarios/ (External Link)

Article on how screen readers handle semantically structured navigation lists vs plain lists from Bruce Lawson's UK site: http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2005/navigation-lists/ (External Link)

Advanced CSS tip from Eric Meyer's site, on Universal Child Replacement: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2005/05/31/universal-child-replacement/ (External Link)

NEXT COMMITTEE MEETING

The Forum's IT Accessibility Committee will be holding its regular monthly meeting from 2:30 to 4:00 on Thursday, July 14 (Bastille Day) at the Forum's office, 411 State Street in Albany. We'll get updates on the contest, our presentation schedule for the fall, and lots more.

Join us, won't you?

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If you have questions or topics you'd like to see covered in our monthly newsletter, please contact Mike Short (mbs1@cs.state.ny.us), Debi Orton (dorton@goer.state.ny.us) or Lisa Ryan (lryan@MicroKnowledge.com) to let them know.