1. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Government for All: Including People with Disabilities Shadi Abou-Zahra W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/

2. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) “Leading the Web to its full potential” Initiated and directed by Tim Berners-Lee International, vendor-neutral consortium Multi-stakeholder, consensus process Develops open and royalty-free standards: HTML, CSS, XML, SVG, SMIL,...

3. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) W3C Internationally

4. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) The Web of Today

5. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to make the Web accessible for people with disabilities: Accessibility support in W3C technologies Guidelines for implementing accessibility Methods for evaluating web accessibility Conducting education and outreach Coordinating with research and development

6. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Barriers on the Web Web accessibility barriers for people with hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive disabilities include: Images, video, audio with no alternative text Layout and font do not expand and shrink well Controls can not be used by keyboard alone Inconsistent and overly complex navigation No user control, no language identification,...

7. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Relevance of Web Accessibility The Web has become an essential medium for: news, information, commerce, entertainment, education, employment, workplace interaction, civic participation, government services, … Access to information, including on the Web, has been recognized as human right by the UN.

8. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Business Benefits Web accessibility benefits many more users: People with ageing-related limitations People with low literacy or computer skills People experiencing temporal limitations Limiting situational or external influences Reduced bandwidth or processing power Mobile technologies and access devices Fact: up to 65% of the population can benefit from accessibility features (source: Microsoft Research)

9. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Essential Components

10. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Accessibility Standards W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops: ATAG – Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag UAAG – User Agent Accessibility Guidelines http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag

11. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Implementation Steps Steps needed to successfully implement accessibility: Awareness raising and educating all stakeholders Development of policies and implementation plans Translation of standards and educational resources Providing trainings and capacity building programs Conformance assessment and progress monitoring Fact: solutions exist, it is a matter of adopting them.

12. Copyright © 2009 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio) Thank You Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C/WAI Activity Lead, WAI International Program Office http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/ shadi@w3.org