Transcript Government for All - Including People with Disabilities

Government for All:
Including People with Disabilities
Shadi Abou-Zahra
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)
“Leading the Web to its full potential”
• Initiated and directed by Tim Berners-Lee
• International, vendor-neutral consortium
• Multi-stakeholder, consensus process
• Develops open and royalty-free standards:
• HTML, CSS, XML, SVG, SMIL, ...
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
W3C Internationally
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
The Web of Today
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI)
Develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to
make the Web accessible for people with disabilities:
• Accessibility support in W3C technologies
• Guidelines for implementing accessibility
• Methods for evaluating web accessibility
• Conducting education and outreach
• Coordinating with research and development
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Barriers on the Web
Web accessibility barriers for people with hearing,
movement, sight, and cognitive disabilities include:
• Images, video, audio with no alternative text
• Layout and font do not expand and shrink well
• Controls can not be used by keyboard alone
• Inconsistent and overly complex navigation
• No user control, no language identification, ...
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Relevance of Web
Accessibility
The Web has become an essential medium for:
• news, information, commerce, entertainment,
• education, employment, workplace interaction,
• civic participation, government services, …
Access to information, including on the Web, has
been recognized as human right by the UN.
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Business Benefits
Web accessibility benefits many more users:
• People with ageing-related limitations
• People with low literacy or computer skills
• People experiencing temporal limitations
• Limiting situational or external influences
• Reduced bandwidth or processing power
• Mobile technologies and access devices
Fact: up to 65% of the population can benefit from
accessibility features (source: Microsoft Research)
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Essential Components
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Accessibility Standards
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops:
• ATAG – Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag
• UAAG – User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag
• WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Implementation Steps
Steps needed to successfully implement accessibility:
• Awareness raising and educating all stakeholders
• Development of policies and implementation plans
• Translation of standards and educational resources
• Providing trainings and capacity building programs
• Conformance assessment and progress monitoring
Fact: solutions exist, it is a matter of adopting them.
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)
Thank You
Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C/WAI
Activity Lead, WAI International Program Office
http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
[email protected]
Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio)