W3C Web Accessibility Initiative

Web Accessibility Initiative      

Leading the Web to its full potential

  1. About WAI
  2. About the Web Content Guidelines
  3. Accessibility in XML and the future

Charles McCathieNevile, Jason White

The Web - Better for everyone?

Description

The image being described:
http://www.w3.org/Talks/1999/11/4-5-wai-europe/edem.png

A cartoon I made. Somone in a wheelchair is at the bottom of the stairs. At the top of the stairs is a computer, showing a red and a green button and the word "VOTE!". A banner on the image proclaims "democracy"

Picture by Charles McCathieNevile, 1999.

What is the World Wide Web Consortium?

What do we do at W3C?

About 65 members of the team (employed by W3C) work with around 50 groups

The groups are employees of member organisations, and invited experts..

They create and publish the standards of the Web (HTML, XML, etc)

The official language of W3C is English. The Internationalisation activity

The Web Accessibility Initiative at W3C

How do we work?

What does WAI do?

  1. Ensure the accessibility of W3C's work
  2. Create guidelines for accessibility
  3. Develop tools to evaluate and repair accessibility
  4. Conduct education and outreach

1. Ensure the accessibility of our work

WAI works with other groups in W3C on the accessibility of their specifications:

2. Create Guidelines for Accessibility

We Work on More Guidelines

3. Coordinate Accessibility Tools

Coordinate research and development of tools to facilitate accessibility.

4. Conduct Education and Outreach Activities

Education & Outreach Working Group coordinates:

Quick Tips

Now available in over 15 Languages

End of Part One

General Questions on W3C and WAI?

Part Two - Web Content Guidelines

Jason White - co-chair of the Working Group.

Purpose

Early history

Development of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Structure of 1.0 Guidelines

Why work on version 2.0?

Glimpse of current work

Outline of Requirements

Currently 6 guidelines in WCAG 2.0 draft

  1. Text equivalents: content for varied modalities
  2. Separation of content and structure from presentation
  3. Designing for ease of comprehension
  4. Designing for ease of browsing and navigation
  5. Support for multiple input methods (keyboards, voice...)
  6. Compatibility with browsers and adaptive technologies

Invitation to Participate

End of Part Two

Questions on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?

Accessibility in the coming Web

XMLGL

XML allows people to create languages

Languages must support accessibilityfor browsers to use

XML Guidelines for making this happen

Demonstration of using them: SMIL, SVG, ...

Technologies to enable this: RDF, Xlink, ...

Summary of XML Guidelines

Similar to Web Content...

  1. Rich alternatives for content
  2. Structure and meaning in markup
  3. Presentation support
  4. Device Independence
  5. User Control
  6. Use existing standards

What is SMIL?

Example: "car"

What is SVG?

An example of SVG

Comparison
Bitmap Version SVG Version
a small bit map image... looks like a small vector image

After magnification...

The bitmap version

Traditional bitmap images do not magnify well...

And with SVG...

but vector images are much clearer

Text in SVG: Structure

HTML inside SVG

It is possible to use HTML or another XML language within SVG to provide text with all the features (links, structure, etc) of that language.

Alternatives in SVG

The whole network

with CSS can be...

Network An example of a computer network based on a hub

Hub A typical 10baseT/100BaseTX network hub

Computer A A common desktop PC

Computer B A common desktop PC

Cable A 10BaseT twisted pair cable

Cable B 10BaseT twisted pair cable

Cable N 10BaseT twisted pair cable

and we can do better with XSLT

Network:

An example of a computer network based on a hub

With these components

Hub
A typical 10baseT/100BaseTX network hub
Computer A and Computer B
Common desktop PC
Cable A, Cable B and Cable N
10BaseT twisted pair cable

Captions (SMIL 1.0 and 2.0)

<!-- CAPTIONS --> 
  <switch> 
    <textstream src="carcaps.rt"
      region="textregion" system-captions="on"/> 
  </switch>

Sign language captions...

Descriptions of video (SMIL 2.0)

<!-- Audio Descriptions -->
 <audio src="card.au" systemAudioDesc="on"
    systemOverdubOrSubtitle="overdub"/>

<!-- Text Descriptions -->
 <textstream src="cardc.rt" systemAudioDesc="on"
    systemCaptions="on"/>

Control of the language (SVG and SMIL)

<!-- AUDIO -->
  <switch> 
    <audio src="carnen.rm" systemLanguage="en"/> 
    <audio src="carnde.rm" systemLanguage="de"/> 
    <audio src="carnen.rm"/> 
  </switch>

Accessible Animations

SMIL 2.0 and SVG provide a way to create accessible animations.

HIT ME!

There are examples in the Note "Accessibility features of SVG".

Metadata...

What is it?

old technology: PICS

level is 0, health is 9, colour is 27

Works easily in major browsers (often used for rating porn...)

I want more than 3 smiles, and colours 12 or 14??

RDF - (a bit) more power

Something

is the
subject/friend/status/etc
of

something else

More with metadata

Using RDF in SVG - the cup is on top of the table

- there is a text-only SVG browser!

Surprise A cartoon of an open-mouthed face

is perhaps an image of the idea: surprise

Using metadata to assess, or find accessibility

Summary of XML Guidelines

Similar to Web Content...

  1. Rich alternatives for content
  2. Structure and meaning in markup
  3. Presentation support
  4. Device Independence
  5. User Control
  6. Use existing standards

Resources

Thank You!

All W3C presentations are on the Web: http://www.w3.org/Talks

Questions for the panel?

The panel is:

Does W3C work on accessiblity of email, and if not why not?
CMN It was outside the scpoe of W3C work (the web). That may be changing

MF ...it's important to us in Universities, and we should be able to provide important input

If we collect names of peoploe who know about accessiblity, this could be useful. What are the downsides?
LN Well, you could get someone's name when they aren't producing accessibility. It is important to keep the responsibility for checking the quality of the work where it can be properly checked - e.g. the customer could ask for demos of work. But knowing where to find people who care would be helpful

MF There is a need for willingness, and a big stick behind. The NCET site will be accessible. Martin K Fathers Promises this... Saying "point me to a site that is truly accessible" doesn't necessarily come up with a good result. And there is a tension between developers wanting to finish, and getting teh result right.

JW The Education and Outreach group is working on getting information into training programs and materials

How proactive is W3C in talking to people about guidelines? When WCAG came out I had to revise my ideas - I had been used to Bobby, but then there was a whole lot more.
CMN We try to be proactive. We don't have a lot of resources and we rely on participation. It is important to be refreshing ideas of accessibility, and to have a process where statements can be challenged.

LN W3C stuff is in development, and teh work that is out there already is based oln what the web was like. But there is a big question on the web about trust. Who do you trust? A friend? a friend of a friend? It would be nice to have "an authority" to check up and take care of telling us if something is accessible. But it is not practical. A lot of the work on metadata, search engines, and so on is designed to allow that to be easier, not for "an authority" but for people to make statements about what is around them that they know about. Then you can ask for trusted information about information.

We started with whether we would advertise people who do accessibility, but there are still questions of trust and credibility. Endorsement is important, and industry bodies need to be careful about giving endorsements.
LN Of course people can change what they did. But if you have a body who says what they know, then you can't guarantee it forever, but you can have information made available. The Web way to do things is to make available an information space, where people can make statements and decide how to use those.
What's a 1-sentence way to raise the profile of accessibility
CMN Well, you could make a few more people disabled, so they understand then problems...
JW Add it to books, information, training material
MF Look at education and get the students to learn it
LN I spoke in New Zealand about accessibility. Talking and getting people together is important, but it also has to be at government level.