Transcript Introduction - Homepages | The University of Aberdeen

Internet for All
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Internationalisation beyond English
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Accessibility for disabled
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Access as a necessity, not a luxury.
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Internet for All
Internet/Web should be available for
everyone, including
» People who don’t know English
» People with disabilities
Be aware of this when designing
websites and software!
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International Internet
Character sets
Localised web sites
Computer translation
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Character Sets
ASCII – only English
» Standard in USA?
» Still used for Internet names
Latin1 – also other W Euro Latin alpha
» French, German, Swedish, …
» Accented chars, eg é ß å æ
» Other, eg £ ¿
» Standard in UK
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Unicode
Unicode
» Add support for Japanese, Chinese,
Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, …
– Also Linear B, Cherokee, hieroglyphics, …
– http://www.unicode.org/charts/
Unicode is just a character set, need to
install font as well
» Complete Unicode font came with Office
2003
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Unicode
In principle supported by all major
programming languages, web browsers,
operating systems, etc.
» Problems can arise, though
» Java support for Unicode is not perfect
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Bidirectional texts
English written left-to-right
Hebrew, Arabic written right-to-left
» But embedded English left-to-right
» Does strange things to page layout
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Touchscreen Input
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International Domain Name
Internet software/standards assume
names are in ASCII
» www.abdn.ac.uk -- OK
» www.uquébec.ca -- not OK
– www.uquebec.ca instead
Unfair ….
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International Domain Names
International Domain Names (IDN)
» Allow Unicode in names
» Based on encoding Unicode as ASCII
Spread is slow
» Standard now agreed, but not yet
universally implemented.
» ICANN will allow Unicode top-level
domains
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Localisation
Web sites “localised” for different
places
» Language, currency, text direction, etc
– Spelling: eg, colour vs color
» Local news, offers
» Culturally differences
– Images: modestly dressed women for muslims
– Names: Icelanders don’t have last names
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Example
In-depth: office.microsoft.com
» Requires a lot of work!
Shallower: google.com
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Internationalisation
Making one web site (or Java app)
which is maximally useful worldwide
» Language: simple English
» Forms: allow Unicode, don’t assume
people have last names or postal codes
» Avoid images that might offend some
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Translation
Ultimate goal is to let people read web
pages in other languages
» translate.google.co.uk
» Quality variable, (slowly) getting better
» Widely used by many non-English speakers
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Accessible Internet
Not everyone uses mouse and (touch)screen
to access the Internet!
Web accessibility should address their needs,
including:
» Visual, motor, auditory, cognitive
disabilities and those affected by seizures.
How to help such people use the Internet?
» With a little bit of effort, developers can
really enhance accessibility.
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Visual Disabilities
Colour-blind
» Developers: don’t assume people can see
when something is red!
Poor vision
» Need large fonts and screen magnifiers
» Developers: DO NOT HARD-CODE
FONTS IN WEB PAGES!!!
– It may “look nice” to you, but means someone
with poor vision cannot use it
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Visual Disabilities
Blind
» Screen readers: speak out web pages
» Braille displays: display text in braille
» Embossed printers: print braille
Screen readers most common
» Essentially scan through a web page
» Developers:
– Include ALT tags for images
– Remember that blind user will not “see” entire page!
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Motor Disabilities
Poor hand control
» Use keyboard instead of mouse
» Developers: allow keyboard control!!
No hand control (or no hands)
» scanning interface, controlled by switch
– Assistive tech., head switch, sip/puff
– Maybe Eye tracking.
» Need special interface
» Often expensive
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Example: Scanning interface
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Auditory
If sound or spoken word is used, may
need to find alternative ways to convey
content to deaf or hard of hearing users.
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Cognitive Disability
General
» Keep things simple and clear
Dyslexia
» Avoid white backgrounds,
» don’t justify texts (stretch to fit column),
» avoid italics
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Seizures
Be aware that photoepileptic seizures
can be caused by flashing flights,
particularly repeated strobe effects.
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Disabilities
Plenty of guidelines exist
» http://www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines
Following them makes websites more
useful to disabled people, probably
helps normal people as well
» Helps mobile access in particular
Just need to make the effort!
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Accessibility Guidelines
The W3C has provided a set of web
content accessibility guidelines
Now accepted as ISO/IEC 40500:2012.
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Legal Aspects
Increasing legal requirement that
websites be accessible to disabled
» Especially for (quasi-)government sites,
such as Aberdeen University
» E.g., the Jodhan decision in Canada.
Good business sense as well
» Biggest disabled group is elderly, and they
have lots of money to spend
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Legal Aspects (UK)
UK Equality Act. E.G. The RNIB says it may be unlawful for a
website to:
» ``have links on that are not accessible to a screen reader
» have application forms (for instance, for bank accounts or
job application forms) in a PDF format that cannot be read
by a screen reader
» have core service information (for instance, timetables on a
public transport website) that is not in a format accessible to
screen readers.
» use text, colour contrasting and formatting that make the
website inaccessible to a partially sighted service user
» change security procedures (for instance, on an e-commerce
website) without considering the impact of blind and partially
sighted customers that use screen readers.’’
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Internet For All
Developers (us) have moral duty to
make our products available to all
» People with limited English
» People with disabilities
Also legal duty, sensible business
Tools exist, we need to use them!
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Recap: Helping Everyone
Internet should benefit everyone.
Essential for fair society!
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Helping Everyone
How should Internet be used in thirdworld countries?
» Bangladesh vs India vs Chile
» Much use via mobile devices now.
How can Internet help people at
“bottom of heap” in UK?
» Will growth of Internet hurt people who
cannot or will not use it?
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Helping Everyone
How can we make websites universally
useful?
» Non-English speakers
» disabled
How should the Internet be controlled
(governed)?
» So that it helps everyone!
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