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articles csun event presentations roundup twitter webaim

Link Roundup including CSUN – March 2010

Another set of great links on web accessibility for March 2010. In addition, see below for post-CSUN links, roundups and presentations!

CSUN Summaries

CSUN Presentations

Addendum

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articles twitter

Twitter Roundup – February 2010

Here are highlights of the many great links relating to web accessibility going around Twitter this past month:

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"assistive technology" articles

Types of Assistive Technology

Here is an excellent resource from Usability First on types of disabilities and corresponding assistive technologies:

Accessibility: Types of Accessibility Aids

Many devices are described, organized by the following types of disabilities:

  • Visual impairments
  • Hearing loss and impairments
  • Speech impairments
  • Motor impairments
  • Cognitive impairments
  • Repetitive stress
  • Color blindness

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articles screenreader survey visual

More on WebAIM’s Screenreader Survey

WebAIM’s Screen Reader Survey a few months ago (October 2009) sure drew a lot of attention, and for good reason. It is a much needed and well written survey, performed by one of the leading organizations in web accessibility, WebAIM. Here are some articles written in response to the survey. If you know any others, please leave a comment and let us know!

Related Articles

My Observations

Some of the more outstanding results of the survey I believe are:

  • 75% of respondents said they do NOT have JavaScript turned off (most had it on).
  • The most problematic items seem to be the same predictable items, unfortunately. The top 10 includes CAPTCHA, Flash, alternative text, forms, and headings.
  • 42% surveyed said they didn’t know ARIA Landmarks for navigation existed. I highly suspect this number will steadily decrease.
  • Although over 66% of users reported JAWS as their primary screen reader, almost half said that free or low-cost screen readers (such as NVDA or VoiceOver) are currently viable alternatives.
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articles disability testing w3c

Involving Users Early in Web Projects

The W3C article Involving Users in Web Projects for Better, Easier Accessibility gives excellent guidelines for developing accessibility in a web project. The article states:

Involving people with disabilities from the beginning of a project helps you better understand accessibility issues and implement more effective accessibility solutions.

In my experience, this couldn’t be more true. Nothing is much worse than having to retro-fit an existing web site or web application for web accessibility, or having to explain what assistive technology is to the author of the specifications document. You must plan from the start, and implement at the end (an old Hijax saying). When the different teams on a project understand accessibility, including the developers, it certainly makes the project run much more smoothly and efficiently.

The article discusses the following items in detail:

  • How Involving Users Early Helps
  • How to Involve Users throughout Your Project
  • Getting a Range of Users
  • Working with Users
  • Combine User Involvement with Standards

These techniques can be applied to more than web sites; also assistive technologies, media players, authoring tools, policies, and technical specifications.

For more, here’s the W3C blog discussing this article: Discover new ways of thinking about accessibility.