No session on accessibility, though.

No session directly about accessibility, anyway. Which is weird, given the dedication to accessibility usually witnessed amongst standards-committed website-makers. Or maybe not. AEA is, after all, based on the premise that standards = good, and for many, standards = accessibility. Look at thenetawards.com description of their category ‘standards champion’ – ‘This gong will be awarded to a site, individual or organisation promoting accessible design in 2009’. It’s true, standards and accessibility do go hand-in-hand, clutching each other tightly, but they’re not the same. Adherence to standards doesn’t guarantee accessibility.

So perhaps the absence of a session devoted specifically to accessibility at AEA is compensated for by its spoken and unspoken presence in (almost all) sessions. This was notable in Dan Cederholm’s talk on ‘Progressive Enrichment with CSS3’. Cederholm demonstrated some unbelievably amazing things that can be achieved with ever-so simple CSS3 in some browsers – transitions, re-sizing, movement and more. But he preceded his talk by saying, more or less, ‘none of this matters – and that’s why it’s OK to do it’. In other words, the fact that these effects can only be viewed in certain browsers, or not at all if CSS is disabled, doesn’t get in the way of what really matters – the content. Make content usable and accessible, and then add bells and whistles. In fact, from an intellectual disability perspective, the bells and whistles might make content more accessible.

Eric Meyer couldn’t avoid the accessibility question in his talk ‘JavaScript will save us all’. What if you haven’t got JavaScript? But again, he was talking about using it for progressive enhancement, not for core content. And again, what he was talking about might make content more, not less, accessible for people with intellectual disabilities.

What was really interesting in Eric’s talk was the call – in something of an aside – for a Web Accessibility Project, along the lines of the Web Standards Project. It makes sense. Many web designers complain that the WCAG guidance is complex to understand and implement (see this blog and our ‘core findings’ page). So evangelical translators are needed. Individuals are already doing this, but banding together under the label of the Web Accessibility Project might add impact.

So accessibility was there at AEA, albeit discretely. But accessibility for people with intellectual disabilities was, as ever, absent.

Please help us evaluate and improve it by filling in our site evaluation survey at: http://www.survey.leeds.ac.uk/websitesurvey. It should take you about 15 minutes, once you have looked through the site.

If you’d like to read our reports on the project – here are 2 PDF documents to download:
summary of INMD report

full INMD report

Helen

The video below shows people with profound intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links. The same PDF is used for people with severe and profound learning disabilities.

Profound Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

The video below shows people with severe intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that, there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links. The same PDF is used for people with severe and profound learning disabilities.

Severe Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

The video below shows people with mild intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that, there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links.

Mild Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

• Intellectual disability
• Learning disability
• Learning difficulty
• Cognitive disability
• Mental retardation
• Developmental disabilities.

Who uses which term? Term use can be summed up as follows:

• Most UK social/health services use the term ‘learning disabilities’ and are likely to continue doing so.
• UK Government guidance in most areas also uses ‘learning disabilities’ interchangeably with ‘learning difficulties’.
• In practically every other country ‘learning disabilities’ is used to describe scholastic disabilities, such as those often characterised as dyslexia.
• The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommend the term intellectual disabilities.
• The WHO (along with the United Nations (UN)) also use the term mental retardation, but this has negative connotations in the UK.
• It’s important to be aware that most non-UK references to learning disabilities are not referring to intellectual disabilities.

what is intellectual disability?considering affected people

The UK Government Paper Valuing People (2001) quotes 1999 figures for incidence of learning/intellectual disabilities as:

• Mild intellectual disabilities: 25 per 1000 people or 1.2 million people in total.
• Severe and profound intellectual disabilities: 210,000 people.

The Mencap Website (2008) quotes 2007 figures as:

• 1.5 million people in the UK have an intellectual disability.
• 200 babies are born with a learning disability every week.

The number of people with intellectual disabilities is rising by about 1% a year because of:

• better life-expectancy, for example for people with Down’s Syndrome.
• better life-expectancy and post-natal care.
• the increasing number of children surviving birth complications.

screen readertext-to-speech

Simpler applications, working transparently to convert text-to-speech and providing more selective announcement of semantic elements, are likely to be the most effective solutions for ID users. Provision of text-to-speech server-side may also be a preferred solution for developers, particularly if a predictable, testable and consistent approach is required for their audience. Numerous text-helper and server-side tools exist, some of which are free to end users, the most common we have encountered are summarised on the ‘text-to-speech applications’ page.

touchscreentouchscreen

While essentially just emulating a standard mouse and requiring no major technical adaptations per se, touchscreens have a few implications which developers and designers should account for:

• Screen Resolution
  Touchscreen users often use low screen resolutions such as 640x or 800x to increase the size and accessibility of clickable areas and prevent erroneous ‘clicks’. Pages which do not render fully in smaller viewports and require use of scrollbars will present barriers. Lower viewport widths should be supported without horizontal scrolling and in-page navigation using anchors employed to mitigate requirements to interact with vertical scrollbars or a keyboard.
• Button/Icon/Hotspot sizes
  Since the hand and finger can often obscure the display during interaction, use of very small buttons, icons and links in close proximity should be avoided
• Mouse Button/Click Behaviour
  In many circumstances actions should be mapped to mouse button press rather than release events – eg in Flash using the onPress rather than the default onRelease event handler will most often be required for time critical operations such as within games.

The majority of switch users without ID, use switches via assistive software, to provide sophisticated means of keyboard or mouse emulation. For these users, predictive text and dynamic scanning grids allow an efficient means of entering text or controlling applications using standard keyboard controls and shortcuts. From the developer’s perspective such switch users can be effectively included online, providing attention is given to WCAG2.0 guidelines, particularly in respect of keyboard operability.

ball switchsingle switch

Switch users with ID are less likely to be using accessibility ‘middleware’ and custom controls accepting keypresses directly will often be required, if users with severe and profound are to be supported by an application. Most switches used by this group are connected to the computer via a simple interface which allows the keypresses sent by switches to be selected, but a good default choices would be ‘1’ and ‘2’. Sometimes users may map two switches to ‘tab’ and ‘enter’ as a means of navigating web pages generically.

Single switch users rely on the application they are using, or accessibility middleware, to move focus automatically – in a web page context akin to pressing the ‘tab’ key automatically after a set delay, leaving the user to press ‘enter’ when the desired item has focus. A more able user may be able to undertake more complex and efficient operations via single switch, for instance narrowing a number of group selections to a single item, rather than stepping through a large number of items individually.

Even if switch users are not targeted or provided with custom controls, consideration should be given with respect to difficulties certain common practices present to switch users.

A single switch user accessing a page with a 2 second scan delay for instance could take 1 minute to arrive at the 30th link on a page. Use of prominent in page navigation therefore can be an essential aid to switch users, rather than simply a usability convenience. The increasing trend to employ off page positioning for in-page navigation, without focused items to view, effectively prevents their use by many users. Likewise using text links without graphical annotation for in page navigation is likely to exclude many ID users accessing a page via switches.

SAW5 is a free Windows application from which simple and complex switch scanning grids to be created, sample grids for common browsers are included.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/saw5

HotSpots 2.0 provides a free and simple means of retrofitting switch accessibility to web applications without the need for custom controls to be scripted. This application is used to define a sequence of absolute (screen) positions for progression by switch. Ensuring a fixed screen resolution is defined and the requesting browsers are run fullscreen, allows a measure of consistency to be assumed between different users.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/hotspots2

For further reference and testing, a large suite of free switch-accessible software and applications, mostly intended for non-ID users be downloaded from:
www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/

summary of INMD report

full INMD report

As a result of engaging in INMD, all participants took action in relation to ID inclusion, passed on what they had learnt to others, or planned future action. The kinds of action taken include: adapting use of imagery to support text; using large fonts and simple text; re-checking previous work for ID accessibility; passing on information at work, or through blogs. Thus INMD succeeded in contributing to the inclusion of people with ID in the WWW, but mainly for people at the mild end of the ID spectrum. Participants recognized that adaptations for this audience – such as simple text, nice graphics, simple choices and a clear message – could widen and benefit all audiences. In contrast, accessibility measures for people with severe or profound ID may be intrusive to non-disabled audiences. Consequently, participants acknowledged that it would be less likely that they would attend to these audiences’ needs in their future work.

Reception of existing WCAG guidelines was mixed, as participants acknowledged both their value and their limitations. They were widely seen to be complex to understand and implement. It was feared that they may lead to a tick-box culture, and not to genuine accessibility. Nonetheless, the efforts of the WAI have been successful in ensuring that accessibility is a central component of the work of many web professionals. Other factors that have contributed to this development include: legislation which builds on the WCAG guidelines; designers’ own passionate commitment to an open and accessible web; their increasing concern with their own professionalism and a subsequent desire to standardise their work; changes made to design tools; and evangelising about the benefits of accessibility by web design gurus.

But despite the importance attached to accessibility by our participants, barriers to achieving it were also identified. These include: the attitudes of decision-makers, who may not share participants’ commitment to an accessible web; the nature of the projects they work on; a lack of understanding of the accessibility needs of ID audiences, and a lack of guidance about how to address these needs, for example within the WCAG guidelines. The diversity of impairments experienced by people with ID, and their subsequent diverse, complex and non-standardised accessibility requirements, communication systems and assistive technologies account for such absences, as does the historical lack of expertise about ID amongst WCAG working groups. This means that a) WCAG guidance needs to be exceeded to address ID accessibility needs and b) information about how to do this, and on ID accessibility, needs to be made widely available, for example through the development of an online resource. Key decision-makers in the web design process – clients, line managers, copy writers, editors – play an important role in ensuring maximum accessibility. In order to achieve inclusive new media design and ID accessibility, it is necessary to engage with these stakeholders of web design in future action research.

The recommendations regarding how to encourage or achieve ID accessible design emerging from INMD are:

1. Develop an online resource about ID accessibility: including tips, how-to videos, examples of good practice and of user interaction; information about how to exceed WCAG guidelines; and the facility to build a community of web professionals committed to ID accessibility.
2. Engage with intellectually disabled web users: most participants cited user testing as the most beneficial aspect of our workshops. User testing put a human face on the issues discussed with participants, and addressed their lack of understanding about ID audiences and their accessibility needs.
3. Engage a diverse range of stakeholders: decision-makers affect accessibility practice. Further research needs to engage with a more diverse range of stakeholders – line managers, copy writers, policy makers – in order to make ID accessibility happen.
4. Develop research with people at the severe/profound end of the ID spectrum: people at the severe or profound end of the ID spectrum are more likely to be left out of the web, because accessibility measures which address their needs are more intrusive to non-disabled audiences than measures which address mild ID, or sensory or physical impairment. Therefore further action research is needed to attempt to achieve their digital inclusion.