blog.

Last month I was privileged enough to have the opportunity to spend a day with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) super-accessibility-squad, or SAS for short, and blown away by how much information can be picked up in just a day.

I was in the "Working through WCAG 2.0" day-long workshop, and I would recommend it to anyone who would like to work out some of the differences between the old and new Website Accessibility Guidelines, and/or learn some up-to-date best practises on attempting to meet these guidelines.

My experience was made even better because I was able to sit next to someone who only coded using screen-reading technology, and was therefore able to gain an insight into a level of accessibility know-how that I could not have gained any other way.

I was interested in the realistic approach taken by the RNIB. Whilst they have every right to scream and shout about the unbelievable amount of inaccessible material out there on and off the web, they instead pointed out the small things that you can quickly change to make a big difference to all of your users. This was the least that a user should expect from a website, allowing us all to progress into more complex issues with a good understanding of the standards expected by the RNIB.

Another interesting idea was that by trying to meet all AAA Priority guidelines in WCAG 2.0 could in fact exclude more users than aiming to meet the AA Priority guidelines and only a few but well chosen guidelines from AAA Priority! Obviously this is determined by the user group, but it was an interesting point that could only be really made by the experts!

Hopefully I've sung their praises enough, so please have a look for yourself as I would recommend this course to small and big companies alike, because this is the way web best-practise is definitely taking us.

Course details: http://www.rnib.org.uk/..../work_through_WCAG_2.0.aspx
Related article: http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/..../uk_law.aspx

We've all been impressed by a new website launched by the British Red Cross this week.  Its main aim is to provide parents with free, simple, trustworthy advice on emergency first aid that could one day help to save their child or baby's life. 

What struck us was the level of accessibility incorporated into such a media rich site.  As well as including well-known text-resizing functionality, they have also added subtitles to videos and sensible title tags on navigational links. 

It's clear that they have thought about the whole range of potential site visitors, from the visually impaired to dyslexic and hard of hearing users.

What's slightly disappointing is that they fail to meet the basic validation requirements set out by w3c.  Hopefully this is just a 'work in progress' glitch - it is after all mentioned on their main website that accessibility is something they are constantly trying to improve.

At a time when all web developers should be getting to grips with the new WCAG 2.0 guidelines, this site is a lovely example of user inclusivity.

The W3C have recently brought out a new series of guidelines for web accessibility (WCAG 2.0) that we've been  digesting here in the office.  The most immediate change noticeable is the shift in how accessibility is defined.  There are now four principles that all have to be adhered to for conformance, rather than a series of levels you can choose to comply with or not.  The levels are whether your website is:

1. Perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
2. Operable - User interface components and navigation must be operable.  (This means that the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
3. Understandable - Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
4. Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Ref: WCAG Introduction 

Although there are several improvements, the language is still very jargony, and an attempt to simplify some of the terms has actually resulted in making some areas more vague.