Web Accessibility is Fun!

Web AccessibilityJust Fix It!Casey WrightITaP Informatics@caseyveronica4#bweb111Web Application Programmer , ITaP InformaticsMember, Web Accessibility CommitteeWho is this person?2Accessibility infoIssues and tipsExciting demosA gift for you!Additional resourcesQ&AAgenda3People with disabilities constitute the nation's largest minority group, and the only group any of us can become a member of at any time. Web accessibilitywhy care?http://www.disabilityfunders.org/disability-stats-and-factsApproximately 54 million Americans have at least one disability and this number is expected to double in the next 20 years due to the aging population.

People with disabilities constitute the largest minority group in the United States, making up an estimated 20 percent of the total population. It is a diverse group, crossing lines of age, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.

Disabilities may be visible or not; it may be long-term or short-term; it may be present from birth or acquired. - http://www.disabilityfunders.org/

Several types of disabilities:Mobility and physical impairmentsVision impairmentsHearing impairmentsInvisible disabilities not immediately apparent to others such as chronic pain, diabetes, or sleep disordershttp://www.disabled-world.com/disability/types/4Accessibility benefits everyoneWeb accessibilitywhy care?http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.phphttp://www.nws.noaa.gov/sec508/index.htmDesigning accessible websites doesnt only benefit people with disabilities, but benefits everyone.

A key principle of Web accessibility is designing Web sitesthat are flexible to meet different user needs, preferences, and situations.

Your web site can be used byThose with temporary or long-term disabilities Folks using smart phonesThose with slow dial-up connections (especially common in rural areas)Those who have turned off graphics for faster page loadinghttp://www.nws.noaa.gov/sec508/htm/myths.htm

5Purdues Web Accessibility PolicyWeb accessibilitywhy care?http://www.purdue.edu/policies/pages/information_technology/v_2_1.shtmlhttp://www.purdue.edu/webaccessibility/Need to focus on Appendix A states the rules youre trying to comply with.

Purdues Web Accessibility Policy went into effect on March 15 of last year.

All new webpages must be in compliance with policy, and there is a 4-year plan for bringing legacy pages into compliance. Legacy webpages are any pages that were online prior to the policy implementation.

Yearly accessibility status reports due on April 1. 6How can you tackle this enormous project?

Ok, I care. Now what?Im going to be covering some of the big issues that our group ran into and some of the things that we did to combat those issues. Theyre not necessarily industry best practices, but suggestions of what worked for us. If anyone has methods that worked better for them, please feel free to share them at the end of the presentation. I realize that some people work in groups, and some work alone, so they may not be universal approaches to the problems.

7Problem: Massive undertaking.Solution: Baby StepsHurdles? Absolutely.In the beginning we had to figure out some major items:What you need to check for first refer to Appendix A of the policy How to check your sites - refer to committee website for references and checker toolsHow to split up and prioritize the workload if you work on a team

8Problem: No standard plan of attack.Solution: Create one.Easy to do? Not really.Hurdles? Absolutely.Problem: Having no standard plan of attack for teammates to check their sites and ensure policy complianceLed to a lot of confusion and stress

Solution: Created a plan with team buy-inWe talked over ideas and modified the plan until it fit our specific needsTook a phased approach Decided on a specific order for fixing items that made most sense to usStarted with fixing results from automated scans first, and then moved on to manual checks

Work with your team, department, (yourself?) to create a plan of attack.It helped to break up the work into manageable chunks and set goals for when youd like each phase to be completed.Makes it less daunting and gives you a sense of direction. Reduced stress once we knew exactly what we were dealing with.

9Problem: Coordination of efforts/progress.Solution: Wiki-fi-it.Hurdles? Absolutely.Problem: How were we going to coordinate work within our team and be sure we werent duplicating efforts or neglecting sites?

Solution: Team wiki.We kept a running list of all of our sites and the developer(s) in charge of them on our team wiki site.Next to each site we had a place for the automated scan results, date fixes were applied, date manual scans and fixes were completed, as well as any outstanding issues.

Keep track of progress.Makes reporting on what youve accomplished a lot easier.List a site and what has/has not been fixed.Ready-made to-do list for the next years fixes.10Problem: Manual scans are painful.Solution: Find an automated scanner.http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete.htmlHurdles? Absolutely.Find an automated scanner that would scan an entire site for Section 508 compliance at once BOTH free and paid options available.Save a ton of time versus page by page manual scannersGives you a place to start and identifies items to be fixedAllows you to focus on easy wins firstYou can log into restricted areas and scan them, just like using a browser toolbarallows you to scan an entire site in just a few minutes and identify certain items to fix, such as:Missing alt text and table headersNo skip navForm fields missing labels or idsPDFs missing tags or image alt textand more

Note: Scanners cant catch all issues, but it gave us a place to start.Well get to the particular tool we used in a bit.

11Problem: Image alt text. Solution: Gift for you!Be excited!Hurdles? Absolutely.12Problem: VideosSolution: Automatic Sync Technologieswww.automaticsync.comYouTubeHurdles? Absolutely.Not endorsing this service, this is just what we use.

Transcripts, captions, subtitlesPaid service you can buy a block of minutes to caption

Can send them videos with or without transcriptsTurnaround time and price are lower if you can include transcriptsReceive captions in return

Free option YouTubeCaption accuracy rate is very low, but you can edit them to make them correctMore time intensive on your end but if youre strapped for cash it may be worth the extra effort

13Problem: Customer-provided PDFsSolution: Still working on that one.Hurdles? Absolutely.Identified problem PDFs with automated scanner that we used though it can only catch issues with tags or image alt text missing

Acrobat Pro has ability to check for Section 508 standards compliance Either by single file or batch processing of an entire folderCreates reports and gives explanations of issues

Web Accessibility Committee will be providing training on PDF accessibility in the future

14Problem: Scanners cant catch everything.Solution: Manual checks. Sorry.Hurdles? Absolutely.Browser toolbars like the WAVE toolbar help, but you still need to use your best judgment and thoroughly look at the pages. No other way around it.

There are checklists out there that can help guide you as you look through your sitesAppendix A of the policyWebAIM Section 508 checklistBoth found on committees resources page15Scan on development or QA sites ONLYUnless you block scanners from hitting delete links, they WILL delete dataStill need to do manual checksAutomated Scanner CaveatsNEVER scan your production site if it contains links to modify data always scan the development siteUnless you block the scanner from delete links, it will delete data as it crawls through the site

16NOT endorsing this productRequirements:Desktop edition WindowsOnDemand any deviceFree 30-day trialwww.powermapper.comEducational discountSortSitehttp://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/index.htmhttp://www.powermapper.com/buy/index.asp?Store=Education&Products=AllCaveats:I do NOT endorse SortSite, but am providing a demo of the tool to illustrate the benefits of automated scanners. This just happens to be the tool we use.

Can check for:Section 508 complianceW3C WCAG 1 and 2 complianceBroken linksW3C HTML/CSS standards validation17The CheckerWere giving this to you for FREE!Requirements: Windows.NET 4 frameworkAlt508 CheckerALT508Developed by James OCull ITaP InformaticsScans an entire site and generates a report of every image, page its located on and its corresponding alt text (or lack thereof). Do NOT use this on your production site, the same rule for automated scanners applies to this tool.

Lock to starting domain: Use this option if you do not want to leave your original domain. For example: itap.purdue.eduAvoid repetitive query strings: Use this option if you want to avoid links that end with things like... /Edit/123, /Edit/321, edit.aspx?id=1234, etc... These links will be scanned at least once, but future occurrences of them will not be scanned.Directories to lock to: Using this option will make sure that any scanned links start with the directory/directories specified.Partial URLs to avoid: Using this option will avoid links that contain the keywords provided. For example: /posts/delete/13Maximum workers: This option sets how many links will be checked at the same time. Be careful. Setting this value too high may overload the server and cause your links to time out.18Demo time!19Where can you get your hands on Alt508 Checker?www.purdue.edu/mixableGroups > Web AccessibilityEverybody loves freebies!Why Mixable? Only being distributed to Purdue affiliated people.202011 Web Accessibility Awards$1,000 award given to 2 winners per year during 4-year policy implementationMust use monetary award to further efforts in area of accessible web designNominations due April 22 to Office of Institutional Equityhttp://www.purdue.edu/ethics/oie/documents/2011WebAccessibilityAwards.pdf

You could win an award!Purdues Web Accessibility Awards were initiated this year as a way to recognize colleges, schools, departments, programs, and units that have made great strides in meeting or exceeding the Universitys standards for accessible web design while demonstrating excellence in design and communication.21Web Accessibility Policyhttp://www.purdue.edu/policies/pages/information_technology/v_2_1.shtmlWeb Accessibility Committeewww.purdue.edu/webaccessibilityMixablewww.purdue.edu/mixable > Groups > Web AccessibilityListservhttps://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/webaccessibility-lAdditional resources22Special thanks to:James OCull Alt508 CheckerMarcy Hintzman and the Office of Institutional EquityWeb Accessibility CommitteeITaP Informatics teamThank you!23Questions?24