Transcript Crowdsourcing Accessibility: Can Accessibility be fixed for free with

Crowdsourcing Accessibility: Can
Accessibility be fixed for free with
Community Help?
Terrill Thompson
[email protected]
@terrillthompson
http://terrillthompson.com
The Web Accessibility Puzzle…
… has many pieces
• Web developers must understand and practice
accessibility
• Web authoring tools must make it possible
(and easy) to create accessible content
• Assistive technologies and browsers must
support accessibility standards
• Policy makers must demand accessibility (and
policies must be enforced)
Another important piece…
Just Do It!
Make it accessible
ourselves
Crowdsourcing
The act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally
performed by an employee or contractor, to
an undefined, large group of people or
community (a crowd), through an open call.
-Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
Success Story:
TED Open Translation Project
As of November 19, 2010:
• 4192 volunteers
• 79 languages
• 12,815 subtitles
TED’s Tool: DotSub.com
UniversalSubtitles.com
• 3097 videos captioned
• Download in various caption
formats, including .SRT for
uploading to YouTube, or
• Embed a YouTube player on any
web page with captions
uploading captions to YouTube
not required)
• Example
Crowdsourcing
Web Accessibility
Serotek C-SAW
• "Community-Supported Accessible Web“
• http://help.samobile.net/C-SAW.html
• Requires a subscription to the System Access
Mobile Network:
http://help.samobile.net/Intro.html
• Can be accessed through System Access To Go,
which is free: http://www.satogo.com
How C-SAW Works
• On an inaccessible image, use Alt+L to label it
with alternate text
• On an inaccessible form field, use Alt+L to add
a label
• Insert + S stores your labels to a master
database, available to all users
Similar, Past Efforts
• Web Visum
– http://webvisum.com/
– Firefox plug-in
– Community driven tagging and page enhancements.
– Automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving
• IBM Social Accessibility Project
– http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/socialaccessibility
– Provided a tool to facilitate collaboration between
“screen reader users” and “volunteers”
– Included rewards for volunteers (e.g., rankings)
FixTheWeb.net
As of November 19, 2010:
• Still in BETA
• 77 reporters
• 199 volunteers
• 146 websites reported
• 14 owners informed
• 14 owners acknowledged
• 9 owners fixed
Greasemonkey
• Firefox extension that allows users to run
scripts that modify HTML web page content
every time a specified page is loaded
• http://wiki.greasespot.net
• User script repository: userscripts.org
• Scripts tagged “accessibility”:
http://userscripts.org/tags/accessibility
• My scripts:
http://terrillthompson.com/gmscripts/
What Can We Do With
Greasemonkey?
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Add alt to images
Add labels and fieldsets to forms
Add headings
Add ARIA landmarks
Add other ARIA markup
Add custom HTML controls for inaccessible video
players (APIs permitting)
• Rewrite inaccessible dynamic menus to make
them accessible
• Etc….
Considering the Potential
• Fix the problem now – provide immediate
access
• Demonstrate accessibility solutions to the site
owner or developer
• Teaching tool for kids learning web design
– Learn about HTML, Javascript, & DOM
– Learn about accessibility
– It’s fun!