9 August 2012 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Roger Hudson Web Usability Arts, Media and Technology at the MCA

How many? 18.5% of all Australians (4 million people) Age related 8.6% of year olds 18% of year olds 40% of year olds Source: “2009 Disability, Ageing and Careers survey” Australian Bureau of Statistics

People with disabilities won’t / can’t / don’t use the Internet MYTH Internet Usage 53% of all people with reported disability 23% of people with ‘profound’ limitations

Social Inclusion

WHAT?

Different input devices; mouse, keyboard, switches, etc. Different output devices, browsers, screen readers, magnifiers, etc. Content of web pages should be accessible with:

Source: “Refreshable Braille and the Web” Device independence

Killing Bambi

Screen readers and Flash

Eclipse ACTF aDesigner Looking inside Flash

Accessibility = expensive Accessibility = difficult Accessibility = boring MYTHS

Rules and regulations

Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Australian Human Rights Commission Advisory Note) UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Ratified by Australia in August 2009 Commonwealth (AGIMO) and state government web guidelines Government websites should be WCAG 2 AA by end of 2014 All new websites should be WCAG 2 AA compliant. Existing non-government sites should be WCAG 2 AA by end of 2013

Four key principles of accessibility 1.Content must be P erceivable 2.Interface components in the content must be O perable 3.Content and controls must be U nderstandable 4.Content should be R obust enough to work with current and future user agents (including AT) WCAG 2 Structure – POUR Principles Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

WCAG 2.0 Recommendations “WCAG 2.0 W3C Recommendation” contains: 4 Principles 12 Guidelines 61 Success Criteria that specify what is required to comply with the guidelines. Three levels of conformance are defined for the Success Criteria (A, AA and AAA) Testable Success Criteria are statements that can be applied to different technologies and are testable by machines and/or humans.

WCAG 2.0 Techniques Advice about how to satisfy the Success Criteria is provided in the W3C “Techniques” document Sufficient Techniques: Ways of meeting the Success Criteria. Advisory Techniques: Goes beyond what is required to help authors better address the Guideline. Failures: Known failures to comply with the Success Criteria

How do you know if something is accessible?

A few simple accessibility questions Can you use the page without images? Can you use the page with the keyboard? When using a keyboard, do you know where you are? Do headings use heading elements ? How are form inputs identified? Is the colour contrast sufficient?

Accessibility testing tools can help a lot But, tools can’t tell you everything (Demonstration of the Web Accessibility Toolbar)

Screen readers output the content of accessible pages as either synthetic speech or refreshable Braille. Many different screen readers, including: JAWS Window Eyes NVDA (Great Australian technology that is FREE) Quick introduction to screen readers

NVDA in action: Reading a web page NVDA download:

Rapidly advancing web Same old problems

Common problems Failure to include text alternatives for images The need to provide equivalent text alternatives for all non-text content is the first accessibility requirement of WCAG Use of CAPTCHA The most common example of CAPTCHA is distorted images of text used as part of a login or registration process. 3. Failure to use HTML Header elements appropriately Header element should be used to identify and present different sections and sub-sections of the page.

4. Failure to identify form inputs adequately All form inputs should have explicitly associated labels or use the input title attribute for identification. Common problems Failure to mark-up data tables correctly With all data tables, users need to be able to associate the information presented in each data cell with the relevant row and column headers. 5. Failure to ensure sites can be used without the mouse Not all web users are able to use a mouse so it is important to ensure site pages can also be used with the keyboard.

Don’t forget older web users In Australia 2005: 24% of year olds are online 2007: 38% of year olds are online 2011: 71% of 55 – 64 year olds (age group with the greatest increase in use) Mature age ICT users survey % - text size is a problem at least sometime 23% - use of colour is a problem at least sometime ‘web sites are designed by young people with good vision’ (Participant comment)

Where next? Making exciting things accessible is exciting

Thank you Any questions Roger Hudson Web: Blog: