A human right mandate for the UN  A General Assembly mandate since 2004  Established as a human right by article 9 of the Convention on the rights of people with disabilities.  The General Assembly, […] Also requests the Secretary-General to continue the progressive implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services of the United Nations system, taking into account relevant provisions of the Convention Resolution A/RES/62/170 on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Beyond the “alt tag”  Initial resistance due to some misconceptions  Takes too much time and resources  Poses too many limitations on the design  Takes significant efforts for the benefit of a handful of users  Raising awareness in the Department of Public Information  Organizing a demonstration with a screen reader user  Providing training on accessibility and CSS  Creating of a taskforce

Taskforce Objectives o Research best practices in the field of accessibility o Foster expertise within the Department of information o Address misconceptions o Establish consensus o Provide a guidance document o Provide a validation methodology

Guidelines for Accessible UN Websites  Based on WCAG 1.0  Left out some outdated checkpoints  Out of scope: o Multimedia o Official documents  Published on

Providing guidance on validation  Pressure to recommend automated tools  Those tools are limited, generate false positives / false negatives  Provided guidance to perform a point by point validation with tools such as Firefox developer toolbar  Validation procedures available online

A set of accessible templates  CSS based  Proper structural mark-up (headings, list for menus…)  Skip links  One version with un.org new branding

Challenges Ahead

Fostering Awareness and Expertise  Growing number of editors without technical background, using different tools  Need to:  Raise awareness on accessibility among content editors  Provide ongoing training

Filling the Gaps  Multimedia  PDF (ODS documents in particular)  Rich Internet Applications

Providing Tools  There is a demand for solutions  Create a UN Accessibility Practitioners Network