Web Accessibility is a multi component solution- part 2
- Web accessibility guidelines: along with advent and proliferation of websites W3C initiated “web accessibility initiative”. Under which they came up with certain guidelines to be followed during creation of websites. "WCAG1.0" was a first set of guidelines. As the web evolved, WCAG1.0 started falling short and W3C came up with “WCAG2.0”, and recently became a world wide accepted standard. WCAG guides developers to incorporate accessibility in the applications they build.
- Web content: anything that’s available online is a web content. It can range from simple text to highly interactive application. It includes text, graphics, animations, streaming audio, streaming video and documents available for download. HTML, css, java script, flash, are some of the technologies used to create and present the web content. These technologies provide certain intrinsic features to facilitate accessibility. For example HTML specifies “alt” attribute for IMG tag. Developers can convey the purpose or description of the graphical content by providing succinct value to “alt” attribute. It is developer’s responsibility to utilize these features and techniques in most usable way to achieve accessible web presence
- Authoring tools: they are the tools used to create web Content. WYSIWYG editors for HTML and XML, tools to produce multimedia, softwares to transform content to web formats, site publication and management tools all come under authoring tools umbrella. These tools need to support and facilitate production of accessible content. These tools should encourage and guide the content writer to utilize accessibility features of content creation technologies.
- User agent: it is a peace of a code responsible for retrieving and rendering content. It includes browsers; plugins for particular media etc. user agent bear the responsibility of supporting accessibility features and standards in a uniform manner. User agents need to facilitate job of assistive technologies by exposing right information about user interface elements and events in real-time.
- Assistive technologies (AT): they are the hardware, software of combination of both which enable differently able individuals to interface with computer and internet. ATs compensate for user’s disability for example screen reader transforms visual content into audio stream and delivers it to the user through speakers. Braille display renders text information in braille format which can be perceived using touch. voice recognition softwares allow user to interact with computer using voice. These technologies sit between web application and the user. ATs can work effectively if and only if web application exposes required information in a standard way. Content exposes certain information which is accessed by ATs and transformed into a form useful to the user. ATs must upgrade themselves with newer and advance content production formats in order to support respective accessibility APIs.
If you carefully look at the tight coupling between the components of accessible web, it is evident that every component must do it’s job in the most effective and efficient manner. If any link in the model is broken the inevitable effect is accessibility problem.
Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe
