Accessibility | Accessibility

Standards Based Development

Accessibility isn't about providing a cut-down experience, but neither is it about making your app's sighted experience available as-is. Always consider the implicit capabilities of the unimpaired user, and take steps to even the playing field. That's what accessibility means. Not special treatment, but tailored access to the same treatment. Put another way, don't just give special treatment to fully-sighted users.

Accessibility for iPhone and iPad Apps, Matt Gemmell

Most of all, accessibility is not an old-school attitude. We should be providing rich user experiences to everyone.

Jeremy Keith, http://adactio.com/journal/1457/, Adactio: Journal-Accessibility 2.0

Accessibility describes the degree to which a product, device, service or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity. Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities or special needs and the right of access to entities, often through the use of assistive technology.

Accessibility should not be confused with usability, which describes the extent to which a product, device, service or environment can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context use.

Accessibility is strongly related to universal design when the approach involves direct access, essentially making things accessibility to all people (whether they have a disability or not). An alternative is to provide indirect access by having the entity support the use of assistive technology(s) to achieve access.

Five Basic Principles

There are five basic principles underlying the idea of accessible design:

Flexibility.
Provide your customers with a flexible, customizable user interface that accommodates a variety of user needs and preferences.
Choice of input methods.
Provide users with keyboard access to all features and simple mouse click access for common tasks.
Choice of output methods.
Provide users with the ability to choose discrete and redundant output combinations of sound, visuals, text, and graphics.
Consistency.
Make your applications interact with other applications and system standards in a consistent, predictable manner.
Compatibility with accessibility aids.
Whenever possible, build your applications using standard and common user interface elements that are compatible with accessibility aids.

Basic Principles of Accessible Design

Understanding accessibility

Understanding accessibility requires an awareness of the special needs of multiple user groups, including people with disabilities and mature users with age-related disabilities. A person with a disability may encounter one or more barriers that can be eliminated or minimized by the software or Web developer, the assistive technology, or the underlying operating system software and hardware platform.

The four main categories of disabilities are Visual, Hearing, Mobility, and Cognitive.

Understanding Accessibility

Web Accessibility

Computer Accessibilty

Computer a11y, aka Accessible Computing, refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability or severity of impairment.

Accessibility is often abbreviated a11y (a numeronym), where the number 11 refers to the number of letters omitted. This parallels the abbreviations of internationalization and localization as i18n and l10n respectively.

Accessibility Design Guide: Universal Design Principles for Austrailia's Aid Programpdf

Accessibility Design Guide TitleSeven Universal Design Principles - Accessibility Design Guide Top Ten Tips for Promoting Universal Design - Accessibility Design Guide New BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines (2014-02)\

Accessibility Initiatives

Web Accessibility Portal for Info AXIA

Web Accessibility Portal for Info AXIA provides support for accessibility of Web sites, enterprises, government agencies, local governments, and educational institutions.

WebInSight

The goal of the WebInSight Project is to learn what impedes access to the web and develop technology to improve access. The accessibility of the world wide web is of paramount concern because of its growing importance in accessing information. Our initial work centered around providing alternative text for web images (a problem for web accessibility for at least a decade) to improve image accessibility.

wat-c (Web Accessibility Tools Consortium)

wat-c provides a collection of free tools to assist both developers and designers in the development and testing of accessible web content. wat-c is a consortium of some of the world's leading accessibility expert practitioners, founded by Accessible Information Solutions (Australia), Infoaxia (Japan), The Paciello Group (usa), Wrong html (Japan), and Juicy Studio (uk).

Cynthia Says

The HiSoftware Cynthia Says portal is a web content accessibility validation solution. It is designed to identify errors in your content related to Section 508 standards and/or the wcag guidelines. It is an online test which only validates one page at a time. This service will expose you to the underlying technology and the benefits of using HiSoftware's full-featured solutions for automated content compliance and Web governance.

This button requires minimum support for Section 508, wcag 1.0 P1, clf, or an Equivalent Standard. Once you have completed the process above, proudly use the Cynthia Tested button to indicate your accessibility efforts and commitment!

Cynthia Tested!

Accessibility Projects

Open Source Accessibility Components/Libraries

WAC Best Practice WAC Tutorial - Web Accessibility Center at The Ohio State University

Accessibility Initiative(s) Legislation

nts (National Transition Strategy) - Australia

In February 2010, the Australian Federal Government endorsed the use of WCAG 2.0 within Australia and this is now the benchmark for Australian Government websites.

Based on this endorsement, the Australian Government released its Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy in June 2010. The strategy stipulates that all federal government websites are expected to meet Single A conformance by 2012 and Double A conformance by the end of 2014.

Compliance with the NTS requires demonstration against the WCAG 2.0 pre-defined Sufficient Techniques; a move not required by the W3C. By not strictly implementing Sufficient Techniques a government department may unwittingly find itself falling foul of the NTS when an audit is undertaken.

All states and territories have now endorsed WCAG 2.0 and signed up to the NTS in principle.

Section 508 - America

The vpat (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) is an informational tool developed by industry and government to help facilitate the new market research responsibilities of Federal it professionals under Section 508.

Section 508: Uncle Sam's Guide To Web Accessibility

The most direct part of this law, as it applies to the Web, is very similar to the Web Accessibility Initiative�s WCAG 1.0; in fact, 13 of the 16 paragraphs in Section 508 have equivalents in WCAG. To be compliant with Section 508, though, your site must also meet the last three paragraphs.

Equality Act 2010 (uk

BuyAccessible.gov - Access to Resources and Tools for Meeting Section 508 Requirements
Section 508: Uncle Sam's Guide To Web Accessibility

The most direct part of this law, as it applies to the Web, is very similar to the Web Accessibility Initiative's WCAG 1.0; in fact, 13 of the 16 paragraphs in Section 508 have equivalents in WCAG. To be compliant with Section 508, though, your site must also meet the last three paragraphs.

Section 508: Uncle Sam's Guide To Web Accessibility

The most direct part of this law, as it applies to the Web, is very similar to the Web Accessibility Initiative�s WCAG 1.0; in fact, 13 of the 16 paragraphs in Section 508 have equivalents in WCAG. To be compliant with Section 508, though, your site must also meet the last three paragraphs.

Section 508 Compliance in Plain English

amis (Adaptive Multimedia Information System) is a Accessible Interface Design

AEGIS Open Accessibility Framework

The AEGIS project seeks to determine whether 3rd generation access techniques will provide a more accessible, more exploitable and deeply embeddable approach in mainstream ict (desktop, rich Internet and mobile applications). This approach is developed and explored with the Open Accessibility Framework (OAF) through which aspects of the design, development and deployment of accessible mainstream ict are addressed.

oaf (Open Accessibility Framework)

Design interfaces with outstanding usability - enhancing safety, effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction for all people.

Fujitsu Web Accessibility Guidelines
  • Don't Leave Money On The Table: Marketing To People With Disabilities

    • General Accessibility Guides on Wireless Technology

    Wireless Carrier’s Accessibility Resources