Manchester Digital Accessibility Working Group

Changes to the MD Accessibility WorkingGroup

2006-05-09T12:12:00.000+01:00

The steering group met last week to discuss the way forward for the AWG.

Our feelings were that we needed to change the format for a number of reasons, not least being that we all have heavy daytime jobs to look after as well as doing this.

Notes from the meeting are as follows:

8<------

Notes of meeting of the AWG steering meeting 2nd May 2006:

Attendees: John Keys, Simon Wharton, David Kreps, Patrick Lauke.

During the discussion a number of points were agreed:

1. The focus of the AWG should be expanded to include web standards, accessibility and usability.

2. Instead of an event every 6 weeks that includes a presentation, the group agreed that it would target 4 presentation style events per yr. (Two in the April to June period and two in the September to December period). Additionally, a more informal social gathering of the group would then be planned to take place every 2 months, in a venue like the Circle Club.

3. Members of the group would be more pro-active in promoting accessibility to the wider business community by eg. taking a stand at relevant business events (if relevant).

4. To link the AWG blog better into the MDDA's & MD main site.

5. To develop more online resources etc. for use by the groups members and other interested parties.

6. To explore the opportunity of developing a collaborative toolkit that potentially could be marketed as a commercial offering by participating companies. Some suggestions included Wordpress Pluggin's, Dreamweaver addons.

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Presentations from Recent Events

2006-04-25T16:13:00.000+01:00

I've finally pulled my finger out and got some webspace to host the presentations from our recent events. Just last week we had an excellent presentation from Julie Howell from the RNIB on PAS 78. It was right on the money for what we needed.

A few weeks prior to that, Patrick Lauke did a more hands on presentation on using Firefox to test for Accessibility. Also excellent.

Spring Training Days

2006-04-19T12:26:00.000+01:00

fourquarters are pleased to make available our popular suite of courses in May/June 2006, face-to-face in the Learning Technologies Centre on campus at the University of Salford. All fourquarters web training courses begin with Accessibility as the foundational premise - especially our always popular Using CSS and Web Accessibility one day courses. See the fourquarters website for details and booking form www.fourquarters.biz

PAS 78 Deconstructed, slightly rescheduled

2006-04-10T11:40:00.000+01:00

We've had to make an adjustment to the PAS 78 Presentation on Thursday 20th April.
It will now be at 3.45pm and will be held at the Cube Gallery. Promptness is advised on this one as Julie Howells has an extremely tight schedule.

PAS 78 Deconstructed at the next AWG

2006-03-17T13:26:00.000Z

On the 20th April at the MDDA, we will have Julie Howell from the RNIB presenting on the recently released PAS 78. This is stuff you need to know about. Starts at 6pm. Drinking after 8pm.
Register via awg@virtuaffinity.com

Study into Accessibility in Web Projects

2006-02-21T13:50:00.000Z

One of our number is Lyndsey Pearce, a student at the University of Bolton. She is very interested in researching developer issues/constraints and would really appreciate your response to some questions attached in the following questions. You can contact her via lyndsey.pearce@ntlworld.com

The responses to the questions below are to be used as part of ongoing research for a University final year project that is concerned with accessibility on the web.

The questions are aimed at finding out about issues involved when building for accessibility such as time and cost incurred, and also to discover technologies and tools typically used and in what environments.

This questionnaire is to be filled in by willing participants who have developed or designed accessible web projects in the past, in particular, database driven web pages, where the future content is to be managed by a person in the client company via a content management system. A content management system is defined here as a system which allows users with administration rights to add, edit, delete text, graphics etc on the web pages.

There are 8 questions.

Please give as much detail as you can, and fill in your answers in the space below:-

Many of the questions are open so you can express your feelings or individual experiences.

Premise:

In your organisation, imagine a project comes along that you would class as a typical small - medium sized project.
You must build security measures in place so that a section of the site is secure for administrators.
You must build features into the project so that an administrator can add, edit and delete text, add and delete graphics; as well as add and delete audio files and video clips to all the pages.
You must also build in style sheets for formatting the front end.

Question 1

How often to you build accessibility into your web projects?

Question 2

Do you often build accessibility for all disabled groups such as those with Visual/Hearing/Cognitive/Motor disabilities? Explain what groups you design and develop for and why.

Question 3

Do you follow any standards to help guide your application of accessibility into web projects? What standards do you follow, how are they relevant for the groups you design and develop for, and why do you follow them?

Question 4

What tools do you use for projects dealing with accessibility? i.e. What server technologies do you use? What markup languages do you use? What software do you use? What environments are these used in? i.e. What platforms do you develop with etc? What limitations and/or advantages are there when using these tools and environments?

Question 5

What is the average time of an accessible project (using the premise as a rough guideline) and how much extra time does it take, if any, over a non-accessible project? Please explain why extra time might be incurred and what cost issues are considered

Question 6

What is your view of UK legislation for accessibility in web sites? i.e. Is is too vague, offers good guidance etc?

Question 7

Do you build for maximum/minimum accessibility in web projects? How do you go about achieving this? How do you define goals for accessible web projects?

Question 8:

What are the disadvantages/advantages to building accessibility into a project?

Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition

2006-01-24T14:12:00.000Z

The Blind Access Journal have started a petition to make their word verification feature accessible.

You can sign the petition here and you can read the press release to find out more about the petition.

fourquarters MD David Kreps to address PITCOM

2006-01-08T13:32:00.000Z

Monday 27th February 2006: Dr David Kreps will be one of two speakers at the forthcoming Parliamentary IT Committee (PITCOM) Meeting: "ICT For the Socially Excluded", House of Commons, London. PITCOM typically attracts up to 100 attendees with a mix of MPs, members of the House of Lords, plus a good number of industry and trade association representatives (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, BT, Nortel, Marconi, IEE, Intellect) and independent PITCOM members such as academics.

Sitemorse to present at next MDAWG Event

2006-01-03T15:39:00.000Z

Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year.

Just to let you know that the next MDAWG will be on the 11th January at 6pm at the Manchester Digital Development Agency premises.

The presentation will be from Lawrence Shaw of Sitemorse who have created quite a stir in the accessibility and website testing fields. I know for a fact that some of our luminaries are up for a healthy debate on the nature of automated testing vs human testing so it should be a good session. personally I think it's a superb way of getting the grey matter moving early in the new year

As always, we will be moving on to the pub afterwards. I find that this is where the most effective chat takes place so please try and fit it in to your schedule.

Talking of schedules, we have some potentially very interesting sessions coming up. I will do my utmost to have a few events scheduled in by the next meeting. Bear in mind that we really need your input to make these events work. They are here to help you make your business/job better so let us know what you want and if possible, give us a hand.

Would anyone who is interested please let me know and would you please make sure you pass this on to absolutely anyone who has an interest. It's the only way we will grow,

Hope to see you next week

Charging for MDAWG

2006-01-03T15:20:00.000Z

I'd appreciate your thoughts on what you consider to be fair. I have been running the MDAWG for free but under the umbrella of Manchester Digital, the trade body for digital industry in Greater Manchester. I think the wroking group has proved its' value. It is intended as a tangible benefit to MD members hence, I intend to introduce a nominal charge of £5 per event for non Manchester Digital members. Considering how cheap membership of MD is and the additional benefits you will get over this year, I think that is extraordinarily cheap. I would certainly appreciate your feedback as to whether you agree. Please comment this thread woth your thoughts

eAccessibility of public sector services in the European Union

2005-11-24T13:52:00.000Z

The UK Cabinet Office today published eAccessibility of public sector services in the European Union, a comprehensive report on accessibility of government online services across the European Union (EU).

The report was commissioned for the UK Presidency of the EU to help member states by undertaking an evaluation of eAccessibility and establishing the scope of public policy towards eAccessibility.

You can find out more about the report on the Cabinet Office's website.

CSS Generator

2005-10-19T22:28:00.000+01:00

Many web users could benefit from viewing properly coded websites according to the styles set by themselves rather than the web designer. This is very easy with an accessible website, because all the style is in the DocumentCSS - the Cascading Style Sheet drawn in by the HTML file. With a few simple clicks in their browser they can replace the DocumentCSS with their own UserCSS to view accessible websites in the style that they choose - be that with large blue text on a yellow background, or any other combination suited to their particular dyslexia, colour blindness, or visual impairment.

fourquarters are proud to announce the first version of a free Personal Style Sheet Generator now online at www.fourquarters.biz Follow the simple instructions to create your own "UserCSS " file.

Try it for your self - and please - give feedback, so that v2 can be even better!

Many thanks

Next Event Tuesday 11th October

2005-10-07T17:37:00.000+01:00

We'll all be meeting again at the MDDA in the centre of Manchester.

Dr David Kreps of Fourquarters will deliver a presentation on Accessible Data Tables:

"A look at Tables, examining what the WCAG actually says about tables, what linearisation is, the difference between layout and data tables, what structural markup is, how to make simple accessible tables, how to make complex accessible tables, and some hints toward making attractive tables. Hopefully room for plenty of discussion, as usual."

Nominated pub is the Pitcher and Piano.

If you would like to attend, please mail Simon Wharton at awg@virtuaffinity.com.

Blog spam

2005-09-19T16:51:00.000+01:00

We seem to be suffering from an influx of blog spam at the moment, so if you see any exotic enticements please bear in mind that they might not be totally above board.

This has actually highlighted an accessibility problem on Blogger. To reduce the chances of blog spam, we could turn on Blogger's "Word Verification" feature - a friendler name for the CAPTCHA challenge and response test.

This means that people have to type in text from a picture in order to prove that they're not a machine. However, there's no accessible alternative. If you can't see the image, you can't prove you're a person.

Hmmm.... What do you think about this?

Accessibility and the e-Government Interoperability Framework

2005-09-19T16:23:00.000+01:00

For those of you developing websites for the UK public sector, you may or may not know that there are specific standards you are expected to meet under the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), such as using particular image formats, using certain metadata elements, and so on.

The Technical Standards Catalogue of the e-GIF lists those standards, and the latest version (v6.2) now includes a section specifically for accessibility and usability.

One thing developers should be aware of is that the e-GIF is now recommending that government websites meet Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

(The Technical Standards Catalogue has also included the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 "for future consideration".)

What do developers think about this? Is it easier to comply with these requirements when producing static pages? How does this affect your content management systems?

Accessibility Strategy Event

2005-09-13T18:16:00.000+01:00

Stuart Smith at Manchester University is running an event at cafe Muse tomorrow (Wednesday 14th)

http://ukupa.org.uk/north/

Forthcoming Events

2005-09-13T15:13:00.000+01:00

The next two events will be at the MDDA premises in Central Manchester on Tuesday 11th October and Wednesday 23rd November.

The October event will be blessed with a presentation from Dr David Kreps on accessibility and data tables (I think). We're also going to nerd out a bit more. This event is going to be a live clinic. Previous sessions have switched people on to the necessity of accessibility. This time, I'm hoping were going to demonstrate some tricks of the trade. We want you to bring along some real world problems you're labouring with right now. We're putting together a panel of experts (Volunteers please!) and we'll get them to sort out your problems as best they can. So start thinking about the issues you have and where not commercially sensitive, bring them along to the meeting.

If you want to attend, please let me know via awg@virtuaffinity.com

The meeting in November we're going to skew to commercial considerations. How do you sell accessibilty to your clients? You can only deliver what the client specifies and pays for. Ideas on presentations and speakers on a postcard please.

And a last point, the nominated pub is the Pitcher and Piano by the Bridgewater Hall.

NLB Event Tells It Like It Is

2005-09-13T14:53:00.000+01:00

First of all many thanks to Carol Pollitt and the NLB for hosting the event. We got our hands on the kind of kit many of cannot afford to own. It becomes rather apparent that websites to standards is one thing but actually achieving meaningful accessibility can be something very diferent.

Once again, the turn out was excellent with delegates from around the North West including:

Amaze
Pavillion
Vanilla Storm
and Sputnik Internet

Carol gave us a presentation which I'm hoping to make available via the Blog. Very enlightening it is too.

We also did some live critique of brave souls websites . One of which was Fluid Creativity and it came out very well.

Any more thoughts on the event, stick them here

MDAWG Event at the National Library for the Blind

2005-08-17T13:41:00.000+01:00

The very kind people at the National Library for the Blind are hosting our next meeting which will be at 6pm on the 31st August.

The agenda for the evening is:

Brief overview of access technologies (5 – 10 mins)
Common accessibility problems – with access technology and live Internet link (15 mins)
Some unusual problems on sites where accessibility is otherwise very good (15 mins)
Suggest (your own?) sites to look at live with access technology (30 mins)
Break into groups and have a go yourself with JAWS and Supernova (30 mins)

The address of the venue is:

National Library for the Blind
Far Cromwell Road
Bredbury
Stockport
SK6 2SG
UK

(Location on Google Maps)

We had a superb attendance at the last event so pre-registration for this event is important. Please let us know via awg@virtuaffinity.com.

What is website accessibility?

2005-08-10T14:41:00.000+01:00

If you want to develop accessible websites but have little experience of doing so, you may not have an understanding of what is meant by "website accessibility".

The following articles are a good place to start:

Resources and links

2005-08-10T13:21:00.000+01:00

This is an ongoing collection of links to sources of information about website accessibility and tools to help you develop accessible content.

Please use the comments feature to suggest an addition to this list, or to let us know about a busted link.

Access Matters - Bob Easton's accessibility blog
Accessible Net - Large collection of website accessibility resources
Accessify.com - News, tutorials, tools and all sorts of useful stuff
AccessifyForum - Discussion forum
Building Accessible Websites - Joe Clark's book
Dive Into Accessibility - Mark Pilgrim's book answers the questions "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" and "How can I make my web site more accessible?"
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - The guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. Be warned that the text is very, very technical.
WebAIM - News and information from Web Accessibility in Mind.

Tools and software that can help you to develop accessible content:

A-Prompt - An application for Windows that examines web pages for barriers to accessibility, performs automatic repairs when possible, and assists the author in manual repairs when necessary. A bit more rigourous than Bobby.
Fangs - An extension for Firefox that attempts to emulate screen readers.
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar Beta - Microsoft's, ahem, version of the Firefox Web Developer extension, but IE only.
Web Developer - An extension for Firefox that does lots of cool stuff, like swapping out images for alternative text, identifying images with missing or empty alt tags, validate your local XHTML, and much more.
Web Accessibility Toolbar - A toolbar for Internet Explorer that does pretty much the same cool stuff as the Web Developer extension for Firefox.

Reasons to be

2005-08-10T12:24:00.000+01:00

The Manchester Digital Accessibility Working Group is focussed on bringing together digital industries in the Greater Manchester region, and further afield if you're prepared to travel, for the purpose of developing expertise in accessible website delivery. We do this by sharing expert knowledge as freely as the individual member is comfortable with.

Our target audience is varied and is not restricted to technical experts by any means. We also encourage customer facing individuals. It's critical that the client understands the necessity and benefit of having a properly accessible website.

The organisation is in an infant state but already having an effect. Attendance at the inaugural event, held on 13 July at the offices of Manchester Digital Development Agency, was superb and we know that many who attended have improved their working practice and derived real benefit already.

Our next event will be at the National Library for the Blind in Stockport on the 31 August. Attendance looks like being very good and places are limited. Preference will be given to Manchester Digital members but non members will be able to gain access to the events for a nominal fee though the event at the National Library for the Blind will be free. More details of the event will follow.