The Adventures of Cindy Li

SXSW 2006: Web 2.1

March 12 , 2006

Speakers…

Moderator: James Craig, Sr Design Tech, Frog Design Inc

Faruk Ates,  Owner CEO Web Kaizen Specialist,  KuraFire Creations
(Development backend to front end design)

Derek Featherstone, Further Ahead
(Author/instructor/my own company)

Shawn Henry,  Web Accessibility,  W3C/WAI

James Craig,  Sr. Design Tech,  Frog Design Inc

Matt Vande Voorde,  Publisher,  Accessible Content Magazine
(bank of america website when the accessibility needed to be addressed 2003-2004)

W3c is the world wide web consortium

Henry: Covers text images and applications and forms when we talk about web content. Web content is developed by content developers. When we are talking about authoring tools: Dreamweaver especially today there are many authoring tools.

What are the exmamples of authoring tools?

CMS, Word... what about Flickr. Google video. Its not just dreamweaver. People making content users are offering content as well now. HTML validator.. Bobby there are a lot of validators now. They all have a role in creating content. The line between user and content producers is overlapping. Some people use assisted content readers for accessibiilty. People use many things to access content. They work together so that accessibility works together. The authoring tools can have a significant path to help accessibility. Some would strip out accessibility tools. The authoring tools need to do more to help accessibility. Especially the types of people that are adding content. Admins are adding content and won't understand accessibility. The more that the technoligies can work there is less burden on content developers.

What is the difference between the WCAG

Just to wrap up.. we do have guidelines for authoring tools. You should be pointing it to the standards. It also applies to authoring tools. Basecamp, authoring tools.

How many of you have seen people use or interact w/the web that are blind using a screen reader?

What are the isssues... screen magnification, color contrast, deaf, people can't use a mouse.

WCAG 1.0

Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewered by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.

WCAG 2.0

Text or diagrams, and their background, have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 5:1 We've moved WCAG a whole lot of text to understanding WCAG 2.0... just read that focusing on explaining what we mean with these guidelines. 2.4.5 Each programmatic reference to another delivery unit or to another location int eh same delivery unit, is associated w/text describing the destination, the intent of this success criterion is to help... (darn it .. slide changed)

Delivery unit

http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/

A set of material transferred between two cooperating web programs as the response to a single HTTP request. The transfer might, for example, be between an origin server and a user agent. Note: This term was taken verbatim from Glossary of Terms for Device Independence

Technology agnostic. Adopted as law WCAG 1.0.. and so will 2.0

Craig.. when you were trying to get bank of america site done?

Were you cocerned about the law? The bank wanted to do the right thing but the testing issues.. and as long as we had good faith the java script concerns, we had rare exceptions that we would pass off.

Are we going to require people to have javascript

Featherstone: there are going to be different literal translations. We all know that there is an age old myth...disagree or agree.. it has to have javascript on or off. A screen reader needs javascript on. It doesn't work well or is as compatible. I'm still a believer that it should work with it on or off. It needs to work with the screen reader. I know how I'm going to build sites.. but who knows about outside. The other stuff gets a little lost.

Web 2.0

Craig: tried to look it up.. what is it? Money money money....is back What is it? Guys????

What is your fave?

Faruk: changing our way of thinking about how we create websites. We are interacting new ways. How we make the users more important. Wikipedia is a good example.

Fave?

Derek: Edgio? A way of jobsites, edgio takes posts that are tagged and brings it to one place so you don't have to go searching. You can just put the tag and its an aggregator based off how you tag it. What a totally different way of thinking and it working. That web 2.0 This is a job post tag.. and it grabs it.

Desktop widgets

APIs, Rss, Podcasts, video blogs Craig: Web 2.0 is more for developers right now right Derek? Derek: Ajax/ruby on rails, all those things come out. Its great for developers and there is a benefit. That is an advantage but it hinders a lot of people. Basecamp, I've hired someone to market and test. He's blind. When we try to use basecamp it doesn't work. He can't do a lot of the things on the site. We tried to upload a document it took 5 minutes. The framework makes it harder to let people do the things they want to do. Henry: we need to focus on the basics, all sites compliant 1.0 and then go get more stuff in depth. Derek: make things more accessible from the start. Craig: what can I do to make sure its user friendly. Henry: Go test with users. It's amazingly powerful and watch someone use your site. Struggle or succeed. Involving users is great. You will see/approach the problem more effective solutions than just trying to read the guidelines. A team effort!! Kenneth looked this up (http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users) Vande Voorde: We brought in testers for Bank of America to see how the site worked. Henry: Plugged her book.. incorporating... Craig: So how do we fix the situations that come up? podcasts are not transcribed? Plenty of websites that don't use 2.0 techniques. What can we do to fix it? Derek: I know! I know!

One of the keys is keeping it simple KISS (keep it simple silly)

All your html should be clean. Combine the rock solid basis. If you are doing javascript and change the image. You need to change the source attribute you need to change the other attribute and TEST. There is a lot of accessibility. Flash does it hell of it better. Craig: should we get rid of ajax and just use flash? Macromedia has used a lot of money/energy to make it accessible. As a developer you can check the screenreader. (Sidenote: Battery died.. and Veerle let me switch w/her lost about 30 seconds...) Craig: how do you get your boss/peeps to give you time to research the accessibility.. do you lock them up? Vande: the new people have really picked it up. The knowledge transfer has worked. It's gotten into the standard process now. We wrote things right into that. We understood the steps. Amy Task can be overwelming... Henry: the other thing is fundamentally succeeds is the attitude. If people are excited about the challenge. They are excited it doesn't work because they see it as exciting and they want to fix it. The attitude is positive. We need to make accessibility cool.

WORD!!! Yo!

It is terrible before, boring and what we need is examples of beautiful sites that are accessible. How many of the awards are given to inaccessible sites?

<label for="username"> User Name <em> must not contain spaces</em> <nput type= "text" id="username" /> </label>

Use your label tags, you have your field that it is assoc with, they are semantically connected. By putting it inside the label tag you are now specifying the meaning of the actual error message. It is a simple technique. use css to do it. The label and text field might be next to it and place it however you want. It semantically places it all toegether. The AJAX and validation comes in the trouble with updating content. The AJAX content.. the javascript changed it in mid-flight. The screen readers have problems catching the new content. James Edwards and Derek were doing some testing. Change the label tag and focus on the tag it reads the update. Henry: Get a lot of information about the debates Colleges are now introducing accessibility now. A good development is that large corporations. Idictate-transcribing service...

Thank you.. questions?

Is there any work to do assisted technologies testing? What works on what screen reader? Which is better? Derek: we're trying to get vendors to get in the loop and push them into certain directions. Simon: Derek touched on javascript not working properly. Is there any efforts on the vendors for the readers? Derek: Infancy but the next version of screenreaders run on top. They on't have their own DOM, they have a view of the DOM tree. Certain elements show up though. The screen readers have their own dom tree they tell themselves to update. Don't use certain frameworks... that work or haven't worked? Which recommended? Not really....? Do we believe in laws of forcing accessibility?

Should we enforce it?

Henry: I'll answer off the stage Voorde: Bank of America.. it was the law Faruk: International laws... thinking more of a mobility issues then web Kenneth: no laws.. Belgium...