Planning an Accessible Website: Beyond Alt Tags Stephanie M. Randolph School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Indiana University

Session Outline Section 508 WCAG 1.0 Resources

Section Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act Federal agencies are required to make their electronic and information technology accessible to employees and the public Criteria for web-based applications based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative

What are the guidelines for evaluating accessibility? Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Current version due out soon WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Applies more broadly to different technologies More comprehensive Testable Organized differently (guidelines and checkpoints versus principles and success criteria) If you conform to 1.0, you will probably conform to 2.0

Guidelines 1 and 2 1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content Be as descriptive but succinct as possible Caption video and multi-media 2. Don’t rely on color alone Provide sufficient color contrast Not So Good – Our school is the best in the nation. Good – Our school is the best in the nation. Not So Good – wedding photo Good – a bride feeds wedding cake to the groom

Guideline 3 and 4 3. Pages should be readable without a style sheet Separate structure from presentation HTML and CSS 4. Clarify natural language usage Identify primary language – EN

Guideline 5 and 6 5. Create tables that transform gracefully Avoid using tables for layouts Identify row and column headers and 6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies can work in older browsers or for people who choose to turn off features

Guideline 7 and 8 7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes Avoid screen flicker, scrolling and text blink 8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces Javascripts and applets

Guideline 9 and Design for device-independence Tab indexes and access keys 10. Use interim solutions No pop-ups or new windows without alerting user Don’t use auto refresh

Guideline 11 and Use W3C technologies and guidelines HTML, XHTML and XML for structure CSS and XSL for style Avoid deprecated tags 12. Provide context and orientation information Identify frames (or don’t use them) Group blocks of information appropriately

Guideline 13 and Provide clear navigation mechanisms Site map, understandable navigation, skip over navigation 14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple Simple language and grammar Not So Good – for a description of our program, click hereclick here Good – for a description of our program, please visit our program info page. program info

Resources Web Accessibility Web Accessibility Initiative ( Web Accessibility Initiative WebAIM ( WebAIM Accessibility Forum ( Accessibility Forum Dive Into Accessibility ( Dive Into Accessibility Web Axe ( Web Axe Section 508 Section508.gov ( Section508.gov Validation Tools Accessify.com ( Accessify.com Watchfire ( Watchfire ATRC Web Accessibility Checker ( ATRC Web Accessibility Checker Hermish ( Hermish Cynthia Says ( Cynthia Says Anybrowser.com ( Anybrowser.com

Resources Browsers Lynx ( Lynx JAWS ( asp) JAWS Opera ( Opera Other Colorblind Web Page Filter ( Colorblind Web Page Filter Using Opera to check accessibility ( Using Opera to check accessibility Magpie ( Magpie Adobe Accessibility Resource Center ( Adobe Accessibility Resource Center Web developer toolbar ( developer/) Web developer toolbar Flash ( Flash