Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: The Challenge of Accessible Tool Design Mike Elledge, Accessibility Team Lead Gonzalo Silverio, User Interface Developer

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Introduction 1.Sakai Accessibility Requirements (Mike) 2.Accessibility Accomplishments (Mike) 3.Sakai 2.1 Status (Mike) 4.Challenges (Gonzalo) 5.Solutions (Gonzalo) 6.Remaining Issues (Gonzalo) 7.What’s Next (Mike) 8.Lessons Learned (Mike/Gonzalo) 9.Q & A (Mike/Gonzalo)

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Sakai Requirements Technical Objective: –Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 Priority One and Two Compliant –Contained in Accessibility Style Guide Overall Objective: –Technical compliance –Usable

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Sakai Requirements Specifics: –Navigation Consistent and varied –Content Predictable and meaningful –Elements Cascading Style Sheets Minimal frames, Skips, accesskeystables Accessibility tips and info Title attributes Alt attributes Heading tags Table, form tags

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Accessibility Protocol Evaluation –Conversion to XHTML: Dreamweaver –Review: Firefox (Tabs, titles, CSS), Fangs (Headings, links), WebXACT (as needed) –Review and Repair: A-Prompt; hand-coding –Validation: W3C HTML Validator

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Evaluation

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Schedule Page

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Accessibility Protocol Evaluation User Testing –JAWS 6.1 and 7.0

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design User Testing

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Accessibility Testers –Sean Keegan, HTCTU for the California Community Colleges – John Howard, Indiana University – Mary Stores, Indiana University – Rich Caloggero, MIT – Stephanie Norton, MIT – Audrey Weinland, Stanford University – Mike Elledge, University of Michigan – Gonzalo Silverio, University of Michigan – Chris Ridpath, University of Toronto

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Accessibility Protocol Evaluation User Testing Results in Confluence: 2.1 Accessibility > Accessibility Results and Recommendations

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Accessibility Compliance Older (legacy) tools mostly compliant with Section 508/WCAG One & Two –Exceptions: JavaScript must be enabled Missing tags here and there Need additional titling

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design JSF Compliance New (Java Server Faces) widgets –Don’t replicate all html functionality Onkeypress,, –Have to customize JSF to add them

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Overall Usability “Getting better all the time…” –Still need usability enhancements: More informative frame, link titling More consistent content headings Deeper use of heading tags Accesskeys for common functions Still some unexpected/inconsistent tag behavior –Refactoring of some tools for functional consistency

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design 2.1 Status Accessible, if not perfect –More frequent and consistent use of accessibility tags –Emphasis on improving navigation and usability JAWS 7.0 Demo

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Procedural Challenges Development –Distributed development –Accessibility specialists not in at first –Learning as we go along Post – dev review –Recommendations came from individuals –Evaluation was “tool by tool + repair” vs “element by element + norm” –Room for interpretation –Many, many iterations

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Technical Challenges--Constructs Reliance on problematic constructs –iFrames –Dynamic html –Presentation tables

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Technical Challenges--Tools Legacy tools –Not modular (a change touches many files) Ie. Table formats Ie. Onclick + onkeypress –Variability (tools are all very different) –Tools are “legacy”: Contain traces of all the decisions made through their history – including things affecting accessibility

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Technical Challenges--Tools New JSF based tools –JSF has great accessibility hooks built in –But widgets and jsps are not obliged to use them –A norm is still needed 

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Technical Challenges--Tools Some JSF constructs are problematic –selectManyCheckboxlist –selectOneRadio Both produce a table –panelGrid –dataTable Complex tabular data difficult

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Solutions Portal –IFrames Use of invisible and visible headers (h1-h6) to stitch together the portal /portlet content –Accesskeys Tables –Removed all presentational tables –Semantic richness and consistency in tabular data tables Other –Alternate invisible info where appropriate When color / images / background image carry info Where dhtml broke the screen reader nav model

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Remaining Issues iFrame use Refresh: Great improvements made in but still some way to go. Javascript and alternates Dynamic content Being thorough – complex application – need to catch them all

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design What’s Next Short Term –Elimination of “extra” iFrame –Clean up of titling, missing tags –Heading enhancements –Accesskeys for functions Longer Term –Codification of accessibility—”Best Practices” –JSF customization –Tool refactoring –Learner preference content delivery (U Toronto)

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Process Lessons Learned Building-in vs. Retrofitting: Make accessibility part of design; make design part of development Working Collaboratively: Carrots taste better, but take longer than sticks Consistency is King: Establish consistent accessibility and evaluation standards, and stick to them Remember Usability: Compliance is only first step

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Technical Lessons Learned Internal norms + external guidelines + the best of intentions + retrofitting = a lot of work + error prone Possibilities: –Self validating code Against the declared doctype Against an accessibility schema –Accessibility views via faceless Sakai

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design Questions and Answers One question for you: Should we schedule a BOF to discuss this further? Your questions…

December 7, 2005 Accessibility and Sakai 2.1: Accessible Tool Design JAWS Demo Demo of Announcements, illustrating: –Tabbing –Accesskeys –Headings –Table summary Read existing announcements, add attachment, review announcement