IT Accessibility Committee October 2007 Newsletter

### Edited by Joel Obuchowski

NEXT COMMITTEE MEETING

The next meeting of the IT Accessibility Committee will be held on Thursday, October 11, from 2:30 - 4:00 p.m. at the Forum offices, 411 State Street in Albany. Among the topics to be discussed is a progress report on the NYS-Specific Validation Tool and Committee plans for our upcoming presentation at the AT Expo in May, 2008.

UPCOMING EVENTS

SAVE THE DATE! - December 7, 2007

The December Webmasters' Guild meeting will be held on Friday, December 7, and will include a presentation on "ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and Web 2.0 Accessibility." As you are no doubt aware, web developers have embraced technologies such as AJAX, which disadvantages people with disabilities using assistive technologies. The Guild's December presenter, Richard Schwerdtfeger, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board.

Rich Schwerdtfeger is a Distinguished Engineer in the IBM Emerging Technologies Group responsible for accessibility strategy and architecture for IBM software. Rich chairs the IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board (AARB) and is an IBM Master Inventor. Rich has broad responsibilities spanning all business units within IBM and is a working member in W3C WAI, HTML, and XHTML working groups and co-chairs the IMS Global Learning Consortium and OASIS ODF Accessibility working groups. Rich led Java accessibility development at IBM including the IBM/Sun accessibility collaboration. Rich initiated and leads the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) effort in the W3C.

This is going to be a great opportunity to identify ways in which you can make "Web 2.0" content accessible to all.

 

NEWS

Validation Tool Update

The contract with HiSoftware has been signed. The development project kicked off October 2 with a Webex session among members of the core New York team and the core HiSoftware team. An ambitious schedule calls for the tool to be ready by the end of the calendar year.

We have assembled a team of 12 web developers to test and evaluate the desktop tool. Six more will be added later to check out the online tool, which will lag in development behind the desktop, according to the schedule.

GTC Webcast on Open Meetings Now Available on Forum Site

The NYS Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology, NYS Office of General Services, NYS Forum IT Accessibility Committee, WGBH and the New York Network/SUNY hosted an event on webcasting open meetings as part of the Government Technology Conference (GTC).

The presentation materials and video of this event are now available on The NYS Forum's website at http://www.nysforum.org/pastseminars/webcasting-9-26-07/.

NFB v. Target Case Moves Back Into the Spotlight

On Oct. 2, a federal district court judge issued two landmark decisions in a nationwide class action against Target Corporation. First, the court certified the case as a class action on behalf of blind Internet users throughout the country under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Second, the court held that web sites such as target.com are required by California law to be accessible.

Larry Paradis of Disability Rights Advocates, one of the lead counsels for the class, commented on the court's decision: "Target Corporation has led a battle against blind consumers in a key area of modern life: the Internet economy. The court's decision today makes clear that people with disabilities no longer can be treated as second-class citizens in any sphere of mainstream life. This ruling will benefit hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities."

Target spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg: "Target is committed to serving all of our guests and we believe that our web site is fully accessible and complies with all applicable laws.

At issue in the federal case is whether the web is a place of public accommodation. If the federal case is decided in favor of the NFB, it may mean that businesses that ignore web accessibility may become liable for similar suits.

AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! Unite to Advance Online Media Captioning

In an effort to overcome technology and production barriers, the leading providers of Web-based video have joined with media access pioneer WGBH/Boston to develop solutions that will increase the amount of online video accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have asked WGBH and its Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to establish and manage the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF). The ICF will initially address the technical challenges presented by online video repurposed from broadcast or other previously captioned sources, as well as video created specifically for the Web.

"More and more people are turning to the Internet to get their news, watch programs and other video," says WGBH's Director of Media Access, Larry Goldberg. "The scarcity of captions online is due to a variety of challenges, including a proliferation of media and text formats and players, editing of programs originally distributed with captions, and lack of clear online caption production and delivery requirements. The founding members of the ICF are all companies long dedicated to making their products and services accessible to people with disabilities. They recognize that working together on this challenge is the best, fastest and most practical way to get more captioned video on the Web."

The collaboration is expected to yield a range of solutions and tools, among them:

A database for online media distributors, populated by major captioning providers, of previously captioned programs. This tool will facilitate the location and reuse of existing caption files. Technical and standards documents, case studies and best practices for accomplishing pervasive online video captioning. Demonstrations of innovative practices to preserve captions while editing and digitizing captioned videos.

In addition to the global audience of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, beneficiaries of the ICF's initiative also include people who rely on translation engines to convert caption text into other languages, people using online video in noisy situations or at work, and search engines that use caption text to search and retrieve online videos.

Cheryl Heppner, executive director of the Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons says, "The formation of the Internet Captioning Forum will become a milestone in the history of access to media. The community of people who are deaf or hard of hearing has worked for decades to achieve the access to television captioning we have now. The partnership of AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! with WGBH promises to be a major step forward for accessible online video."

ICF partners share their thoughts on the collaboration:

"For several years now AOL has been working to tackle the range of challenges to facilitate timely delivery of captioned video content online: from the production and need for automated publishing of caption data to support for the display of captions in AOL's web-based media player. Our efforts have demonstrated that collaboration between content producers and content distributors is the best way forward to achievewide scale availability of captioned video on the web. It is our hope that the Internet Caption Forum will provide the venue for producers and distributors to come together to define the model for production and delivery of captions on the Web."
- Tom Wlodkowski, Director of Accessibility, AOL

"The Internet has been one of the most democratizing forces in the communications universe but it needs to accommodate the needs of all its users, including those who have need of features such as captions for audio and adaptable visual presentations. The Forum is one way in which information service providers can work together to establish reliable practices to improve access to Internet-based information."
- Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

"As a leader in the online media space, we recognize our responsibility to raise the level of service we supply so that it is accessible to everyone. Microsoft is pleased to join with our industry colleagues and WGBH to create solutions that will enable the industry to effectively deliver online captioned media."
- Rob Sinclair, Director, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit

"Yahoo! applauds the collaborative effort led by WGBH to create a solution for making online video content accessible to all. Because the need for online captioning will continue to grow across the Web, Yahoo! is excited to join with our colleagues to develop quality responses to this accessibility challenge."
- Victor Tsaran, Accessibility Program Manager, Yahoo!

FEATURE ARTICLE

Standard 4: Navigation and Links

This month, we return to our series on New York's Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001. So far we've helped explain the first three standards, and standard 6.

Standard 4 pertains to navigation and links.

4.1 Web pages will be designed to enable users to skip repetitive navigation links.

If your site's pages are designed with clusters of links along the top of the web page, or along the left side, people with mobility impairments, and those using assistive technology such as screen readers will need to tab through all the navigational links to get to the content of each page. To circumvent this, all you need to do is simply place a plain text link at the top of each page that links to the content section of your page. Use "Skip navigation" or "Skip to Content" as the link text. Some sources suggest making this link invisible, but doing so means that people with mobility impairments will not be able to take advantage of it.

4.2 All text links will indicate the destination or purpose.

When inserting a link into your page, be sure to wrap the link around text that describes the target of the link. This is best explained using an example:
"Click on this link for an updated copy of the manual."
You may see sites with the link wrapped around "Click on this link", but the proper way to do it is to wrap the link around "for an updated copy of the manual." "Click on this link" does not indicate the destination or purpose of the link. "For an updated copy of the manual" does state the purpose of the link.

4.3 All state agency web pages will allow the user to return to that state agency's home page.

4.4 Web pages will be designed to be device independent; for example, allow navigation with or without a mouse.

This standard is connected to the explanation of standard 4.1. There are a number of user classes that may not be capable of fine motor control, or users who may be accessing your site from a web-enabled handheld device, without access to a mouse or other pointing device. Enabling keyboard access ensures that everyone can use your site.

Next month, we'll review Standard 5, Flicker/Blink.