Best Practices and Web Standards Accessibility

HCII 2009 Conference, San Diego, CA

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.

E-mail: jongund@illinois.edu

Division of Disability Resources and Education Services

College of Applied Health Sciences

University of Illinois

The Stereotypes of Web Accessibility

Hard to understand
Benefits only a small group of people
Takes a lot of time

The Stereotype Needed for Web Accessibility

Supports design and maintenance
Benefits everyone
Benefits the developer
Saves time and money
Tools are needed to support developers

Accessible Repair

At the end of the development process
Repair limited to a small set of requirements
Difficult to prioritize manual checks
Limited time and resources for repair

Accessible Design

Use of web standards
Beginning of design
Define specific techniques
Coding makes sense to web developers

Best Practice Resources

Best Practices

Coding practices and markup that make difference
Take into account markup, browsers and assistive technology implementation
Link back to accessibility standards:
- Section 508
- WCAG
- IITAA
Not a standard and can easily adaptable to new technology and implementation
Focus on automated rules

Titling Best Practices

Knowing what web page you on is important
Web site and sub page information
title element includes web site and sub page information
h1 element includes sub page and can contain web site information

Titling Rules

A web page must contain one title element (a child of the head element)
A web page must contain at least one h1 and no more than two h1 elements
title and h1 elements must contain text content
The h1 content must be a subset of the title element content

Relationship to Accessibility Standards

Section 508
- 1194.22 (o) A method shall be provided that permits users to skip repetitive navigation links.
WCAG 1.0
- 3.5 Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification.
- 13.4 Use navigation mechanisms in a consistent manner.
- 14.3 Create a style of presentation that is consistent across pages.
WCAG 2.0
- 2.4.2 Page Titled: Web pages have titles that describe topic or purpose.
- 2.4.6 Headings and Labels: Headings and labels describe topic or purpose.
- 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation: Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user.
IITAA 1.0
- 1.3 Provide meaningful page titles.
- 1.4 Use headings to introduce sections and sub-sections, and use them in the correct order.

Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator

Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator
Example FAE Report
Free service of the University of Illinois
Implements rules based on best practices
Reports organized by best practices

Illinois Firefox Accessibility Extension

Illinois Firefox Accessibility extension
Makes hidden accessibility information visible
Supports best practice view of markup
Implements rules based on best practices
Suports testing dynamically generated content

Firebug A11y Accessibility Extension

Firebug A11y Accessibility Extension
Move accessibility into mainstream DHTML debugging tool
Include ARIA specification best practices in the rule set
Rules can be customized
Develop compliance reports for WCAG 2.0
Rules being developed through the OpenAjax Alliance

Next Steps

Continue to develop the best practices and coding examples
Improve mapping of rules into Section 508, WCAG 2.0 and IITAA requirements
Provide tools that support best practice techniques
Improve reporting for Section 508, WCAG 2.0 and IITAA conformance