You Are Here: IT Accessibility Committee November 2005 Newsletter
### Edited by Joel Obuchowski
November IT Accessibility Committee Meeting - Special Topic
The next IT Accessibility Committee meeting will be held on Thursday, November 10, from 2:30-4:00 at the NYS Forum, 411 State Street, Albany. Our main topic this month will be a discussion of the NYS Policy and Standards, and we will be collecting suggestions for changes to the policy and the standards. If you have an opinion on this matter, please attend. If you cannot attend but have BRIEF comments you would like read into the record, please forward them to Debi Orton(dorton@goer.state.ny.us) before c.o.b. on November 9.
November Accessibility Clinic Scheduled
Our November Accessibility Clinic will be held from 1-4 on Tuesday, November 15. We'll have some information for you on print style sheets, and will be available to help with problems and answer questions. Bring your pages on a thumb drive or CD and we'll be able to help you on the spot. We'll can also help deconstruct sites/pages you'd like to emulate, or if there's something you'd like to try with experts available to help.
Please note that you need not stay for the entire clinic to sign up. To register, go to https://www3.oft.state.ny.us/glc/index.cfm and scroll down to the 11/15 entries.
Accessibility Web site - NEW DESIGN!
The Accessibility site now exhibits the design which won our "Accessible Can Be Beautiful" contest held this summer. The winning designer was Charlynda Winkley from the University of Buffalo.
Thank you to judges John Comanzo, Steve Baum, Jeff Bennett, Christopher Desany, Dave MacEwan and Eleonora Morrell for the Accessible can be Beautiful contest. After reviewing 5 sites, ranking several accessibility and usability these folks found the winning web site design which you see applied to the IT Accessibility committee's page.
You can find our new site at http://www.nysforum.org/accessibility/resources/, and we encourage you to stop by and take a look around. We'll be adding a few more finishing touches as time goes by, but if you would like to see any specific additions, please let us know.
If you find any problems or have any comments, please forward them to Debi Orton at dorton@goer.state.ny.us.
- NEWS -
- From October 2005 - Lawsuits Settled
Parallel lawsuits, one filed by a Commission Protection and Advocacy contract office and the other by the U.S. Department of Justice, have been settled on terms favorable to individuals with physical disabilities who attend movies both locally and nationwide. The October 6, 2005 Albany Times Union reports that Disability Advocates, Inc., a Commission federally funded contract agency in Albany that represents individuals with disabilities in legal and administrative actions statewide, brought suit in 1998 on behalf of Sybil McPherson of Albany and Susan Meineker (who died in 2002), against the then Hoyt's-owned Crossgates Stadium 18 cinemas. The lawsuits alleged the stadium-style theaters discriminated against individuals with mobility impairments because of the poor visibility in areas reserved for wheelchairs, which were either too close or too far from the screen.
Regal Entertainment Group, the world's largest movie exhibitor, "inherited" the lawsuits when it bought more than 50 Hoyt's theaters at Crossgates and in six other Capital Region sites in 2003. Regal settled with the Justice Department under terms requiring it to modify the Crossgates theaters and more than 1000 others nationwide, as well as to build-in wheelchair access to stadium seating in all future theaters. The company reportedly will spend more than $15 million on ramps, structural changes and other alterations. Disability Advocates withdrew McPherson's lawsuit last month after the settlement with the Department of Justice was finalized.
- RESOURCES AND TRAINING
- New Training Series Announced
GOER and PEF have announced a new series of classroom courses (part of the Public Service Workshop Program) designed to help NYS employees effectively use the web to deliver services and communicate with customers and citizens using standards-based principles. The series includes a track for non-technical individuals, such as public information officers, program managers, and agency executives, in addition to a series of technical courses reinforcing the standards set by the W3C (such as HTML, XHTML, CSS,etc.) along with usability tips and examples of "best practices."
This is an excellent opportunity to expose agency program managers and executives to the issues web developers need to consider when preparing their content for web publication. The presentations for this audience will be non-technical in nature and range from 2.5 to 4 hours in length.
The classes will also provide a background for traditional application developers transitioning into the web environment. This series is open to PEF-represented PS&T unit employees and those designated Management/Confidential at no charge, and will be held in Albany, the Rochester area, and New York City. Classes begin December 5. The training will be delivered by MicroKnowledge Inc., a training company well-known in the Albany area.
For more information on the training series, see http://www.goer.state.ny.us/train/WebCommunications/
. - WAI Announces New Resource
The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative has unveiled a new resource for web developers entitled "Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation." The site provides a wealth of practical, useful information about how to effectively empower users with disabilities to make a positive change on your site. However, the site clearly states:
"Involving users with disabilities in evaluation has many benefits; however, it alone cannot determine if a Web site is accessible. Combine user involvement with evaluating conformance to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure that accessibility is provided to users with a range of disabilities and situations."
You can find this new resource at http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users
.It's worth spending some time to explore it.
- Other W3C News of Note
WAI Tutorials Updated - See http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
for the updated "Introduction to Web Accessibility" tutorial.Mobile Web Initiative - Their motto is "Making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device." See the initiative home page at http://www.w3.org/Mobile/#waDI
, and the working draft of "Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" at http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-mobile-bp-20051017/ . - Switching to CSS-Based Navigation?
If you're thinking of changing all of those clunky, image-based navigation buttons on your web site to navigation based on CSS, Listamatic is a great resource for you. The simple tutorials show you how to style simple unordered lists into navigation that has all of the features you used to incorporate using JavaScript. You can find the Listamatic site at http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
.
- UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
- Capital Area Technology Alliance
Mike Short will deliver a brief overview of usability and accessibility concerns for web sites at the November monthly meeting of the Capital Area Technology Alliance, to be held on November 16 at the Albany Italian American Center on Washington Avenue Extension. For more information about the meeting, go to the Alliance web site at http://cataconnect.com
. - April 2006 - Webmasters' Guild
The Committee will be delivering a presentation on web site testing in preparation for the 2006 NYS Forum Best of the Web competition. Validation will be a pass/fail test for contestants this year, so we want to be sure that those interested in the competition know what we'll be looking for.
- May 2006 - Governor's Assistive Technology Expo
The Committee is looking for suggestions on programs to deliver at this biennial conference. If you have an idea for something you'd like to see, please contact Mike Short mbs1@cs.state.ny.us, Debi Orton dorton@goer.state.ny.us, or Lisa Ryan lryan@MicroKnowledge.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------
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.