1. Crowdsourcing Accessibility: Can Accessibility be fixed for free with Community Help? Terrill Thompson tft@uw.edu @terrillthompson http://terrillthompson.com

2. The Web Accessibility Puzzle…

3. … 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)

4. Another important piece…

5. Just Do It! Make it accessible ourselves

6. 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

7. Success Story: TED Open Translation Project As of November 19, 2010: 4192 volunteers 79 languages 12,815 subtitles

8. TED’s Tool: DotSub.com

9. 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

10. Crowdsourcing Web Accessibility

11. 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 http://help.samobile.net/Intro.html Can be accessed through System Access To Go, which is free: http://www.satogo.com

12. 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

13. Similar, Past Efforts Web Visum – http://webvisum.com/ 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 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)

14. 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

15. 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.orguserscripts.org Scripts tagged “accessibility”: http://userscripts.org/tags/accessibility http://userscripts.org/tags/accessibility My scripts: http://terrillthompson.com/gmscripts/ http://terrillthompson.com/gmscripts/

16. What Can We Do With Greasemonkey? 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….

17. 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!