Transcript PowerPoint format

Web Accessibility:
Will WCAG 2.0 Better Meet
Today’s Challenges?
Experiences Of WCAG 1.0
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
UK
Contents
• Introduction
• What's Happening?
• Survey of UK University Home Pages
• Reports From Other Sectors
• Typical Problems
• Conclusions
What's Happening?
UK University Home Pages
In Sept 2003 survey of accessibility of 160+ UK
University entry points carried out
• Used Bobby (to report on problems which an
automated tool could spot)
• How many WAI AA pages were found?
The survey found:
• Only four entry points complied with AA
• One was a JavaScripted page so isn't accessible
The UK HE community is generally aware of and
supportive of WAI issues, uses email lists to discuss
issues and share solutions (esp. in light of legislation
introduced in Sept 2002). So why this low figure?
See <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue33/web-watch/>
What's Happening?
Scottish Political Parties
Survey of the accessibility of 8 parties standing
in May 2003 Scottish Parliamentary elections
carried out (by David & Martin Sloan)
Four parties' home page failed Cynthia Says
test and manual testing found that all have
accessibility problems across the Web sites:
• missing ALT tags, contrasts, graphical navigation,
poorly implemented frames, non-compliant HTML,
PDF files, …
A number of political parties pledged support for
accessibility, the Web sites had been developed for the
election and had a high profile. So why the poor
findings?
See <http://www.dmag.org.uk/election/>
What's Happening?
RNIB Web Site
Bobby was used on 7 May 2003 to test the RNIB
home page at <http://www.rnib.org.uk/>
Two priority 2 errors were found
Is the RNIB home page really inaccessible?
Similar findings have been reported for other
high-profile accessibility organisations
Concerns
The Context
One University Web manager, following survey
publication, said:
"I too have been struggling with just how rigorously the
WAI guidelines should be implemented … I certainly
aspire to comply as full as I can with the WAI
guidelines but …"
• Some guidelines are too theoretical
• I will have a pragmatic approach:
• Will use tables for positioning
• Will not associate form controls for search
boxes
• Will not necessarily nest headers correctly
• …
These are seen as WAI
requirements. Are they?
Concerns
Specific Problems
Typical problems reported by Bobby's
automated testing:
• Missing ALT text
• Missing DOCTYPEs
• Use of absolute positioning
• Repeated link phrases
The justifications for these requirements is well-known
They could be fixed easily for an entry point
But:
• What about workflow issues
• What about tools used today
• Are there usability issues?
Typical Problems
MS Office Case Study
A typical organisation (including universities):
• Has significant investment in Microsoft Office
products
• Has conservative users who typically won't
appreciate new tools being forced on them)
In MS Word / PowerPoint:
• How many users will know how to add ALT text to
images?
• How many would use this option if they knew
about it?
If PowerPoint presentations are held on the Web primarily for file delivery
with little expectation of use by others should (a) effort be spend on ALT
tags, (b) do as at present or (c) remove files from Web site?
Typical Problems
Using A Text Editor
Many experienced Web authors / software developers
may use a text editor in preference to a HTML
authoring tool (I use HTML-kit)
This should be more usable these days (just create
simple HTML elements, and leave formatting to a CSS
file)
But:
• Isn't it too difficult to maintain ids for cell elements
in complex tables
• Isn't it worse to get ids wrong than not have
them?
Should the WAI guidelines be explicit on this point?
How will users of text editors react?
Typical Problems
Large Web Sites
A typical university Web site:
• Has devolved authorship
• Uses a wide range of technologies, applications,
etc.)
• Has hundreds of thousands of Web resources
Differing perceptions:
• Web teams would like to install centralised
Content Management Systems to help apply
consistent best practices
• Users typically don't like central service
departments and want to manage their own
resources, use their own favourite applications,
etc.
Typical Problems
WAI Compliance Levels
Is it unreasonable to regard:
•
•
•
But:
•
•
WAI A = Good effort
WAI AA = Even better
WAI AAA = Top of the class
Is this really the case?
Aren't some of the AA and AAA requirements
based on assumptions of how the Web will be in
the future?
Typical Problems
Too Theoretical?
Are some WAI guidelines too theoretical?
13.2 Provide metadata to add semantic information to
pages and sites. [Priority 2]
For example, use RDF ([RDF]) to indicate the
document's author, the type of content, etc.
Some questions
• How many use RDF today?
• Isn't RDF an unproven technology which is
currently of research interest?
• Isn't this using WAI as a mechanism to promote a
favoured W3C format?
• If I can't / won't do this, will other
Priority 2 requirements be ignored?
Typical Problems
Too Theoretical?
Have some WAI techniques not being used sufficiently
to expect widespread use?
1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text
element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or …
But
• longdescr not supported in widely used browsers
• There is little implementation experience:
•
•
•
•
•
Should the file be text, HTML, … (it's not defined)
How will the information be rendered?
Should I provide navigation to the original document?
What about the management of the content?
If it's not widely used, can we implement a better
solution (e.g. based on XLink)
Typical Problems
Best Practices Or Today's
Practices?
Does WAI:
XML
CSS
SMIL
SVG
RDF
• Act as an evangelist for emerging W3C
technologies?
• Assume that the W3C philosophy is true ("by
following these guidelines content developers can
create pages that degrade gracefully …")
• Address real world concerns in an environment of
broken browsers, commercially driven interests,
proprietary formats, …
G6 Ensure that pages are accessible even when
newer technologies .. not supported
If I use SMIL, how do I dumb things down to HTML?
Typical Problems
Cost Of Web Accessibility
MYTH #2: Accessible Web authoring is expensive and
time-consuming
MYTH #3: Web accessibility is too difficult for the
average web designer
http://aware.hwg.org/why/myths.html#m2
But doesn't:
• #2 ignores the workflow issues
• #2 ignores the documented costs of providing and
maintaining metadata (an ALT tag is metadata)
• #3 ignores the real world difficulties of, say,
deploying CSS
It is acknowledged that
this is not from WAI
Wouldn't it be better to be open about the costs in order
to gain acceptance? We don't pretend that safety in
cars, providing fire safety in building, etc. is cheap.
Cost Of Web Accessibility
Diveintoaccessibility.org provides
valuable advice on making Web sites
accessible.
But look at what it describes:
p {font-size: 12px;}
/*/*/a{}
body p {font-size: x-small;
voice-family: "\"}\"";
voice-family: inherit;
font-size: small;}
html>body p {font-size: small;}
/* */
…
1. First, we're defining an absolute size
(12px) for every <p>. All browsers apply this style …
2. Then we include the odd-looking comment "/*/*/". Due to
bugs in Netscape 4, everything between this comment and
the following one will be ignored. That's right, all the
following styles will only be applied in non-Netscape-4
browsers.
3. Immediately after the odd-looking comment, we include an
empty rule "a {}". Opera 5 for Mac is buggy and ignores this
rule (and only this rule). It applies everything else.
Conclusions
To conclude:
• Public sector bodies who want to provide
accessible Web sites seem to find it difficult to do
so, even on individual high-profile pages
• The WCAG 1.0 guidelines appear to promote littledeployed emerging W3C technologies
• It appears to be difficult / expensive to produce
richly functional & accessible e-learning resources
Or is this taking the WAI WCAG guidelines too literally?
Don't the guidelines do a good enough job in the
majority of cases, and to highlight exceptional cases or
esoteric aspects is to undermine the valuable work that
WAI is doing (and provide a loophole for avoidance)?