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March 04, 2010

The 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference

Attendee registration is open for the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference http://csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000218&p=149. The conference is happening between March 22-27, 2010 at Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, San Diego, CA. There are a number of very interesting sessions scheduled for CSUN.

Rakesh Babu, PhD student of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro is conducting a session at CSUN titled Accessibility and Usability of Web-Enhanced Instruction: Blind Student’s Challenges in Online Assessments ( http://csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000218&p=151&page=scheduledetail&LCID=3886&ECTID=0) on March 24th.

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 08:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 04, 2010

ISO 23026 -2006

According to an estimate by the WorldWideWebSize there are over 50 billion web pages on the WWW today. Unless these web pages (and in effect websites) are properly engineered, managed and maintained over their life cycle, there are bound to be several frustrated web users out there who are unable to accomplish their goals and objectives when visiting a website.

Continue reading "ISO 23026 -2006" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 09:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 15, 2009

Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility means providing equal access and hence equal opportunity to the people with physical disabilities. Web, as it has evidently become an important resource in our activities makes it imperative that it remains accessible so that the users with disabilities can use it with same ease as people without disabilities. With governments enjoining new laws and guidelines to make the Web accessible, Web Accessibility is no more a discretion.

W3C’s WAI is one such effort to improve accessibility of the Web. WAI with the help of other interest groups formed guidelines and techniques to help different component of web accessibility. The major components of Web Accessibility are: Web Content (web page or web applications), Authoring (HTML Editors), Content interaction tools (user-agents, screen readers etc.) and Evaluation tools.

The guidelines recommended for these different components are as follows:
1. User Agent Accessibility Guidelines – Provides guidelines for the User Agent developers so that the user agents are accessible.

2. Authoring Tool Guidelines – Provides guidelines for the Authoring Tool Developers to build tools which generate accessible content. For example: ATAG 1.0 , ATAG 2.0

3. Web Content Guidelines – Provides guidelines and solutions for making the Web content more accessible and usable across devices. For example: WCAG1.0, WCAG2.0

4. EARL – provides a standard way for generating test results by the Accessibility evaluation tools.


The guidelines specified are basic, individual countries can have their custom accessibility standards. For example: 508, DDK etc.  

Though these Guidelines, address various issues of Web Accessibility, they all essentially relate to technical specifications (HTML, CSS, SVG, and XML etc.) which are used to develop the Web content.

Vijaya Bhaskar Peddinti
vijayabhaskar_p01@infosys.com
Technical Specialist
Web 2.0 Research Lab - SETLabs

Posted by Guest Author at 02:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 27, 2009

AMCIS 2009

The 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), 2009 was recently held in San Francisco. The conference was themed as 'The Golden Gate to the Future of IS (Information Systems)'. As part of the research group at Infosys, from the Web 2.0 Research Lab Dr. Jai Ganesh and I chaired three mini-tracks in this conference. These were:

  1. Web 2.0 and Collaborative Value Creation
  2. Business Impact of Virtual Worlds and Web 2.0
  3. Web Accessibility - Challenges, Regulation and Reality

The overall conference was replete with variety of parallel tracks including those on Design Theory,  Analytical Modeling and Simulation, Decision Support Systems, diffusion of IT, eBusiness and eCommerce, Enterprise Systems all the way to Social issues of IT.

Continue reading "AMCIS 2009" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 02:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 21, 2009

Learning from CISTM 2009

I was recently involved in couple of panel discussions on Web Accessibility as well as Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing at the CISTM 2009 held at MDI Gurgaon. Sharing some quick learning from those discussions.

The first discussion focused on whether Web 2.0 poses challenges for web accessibility. The panelist were Rahul Gonsalves, a trained designer and a usability and accessibility enthusiast; Dinesh Kaushal, a lead developer at an accessibility solutions organisation and himself a developer of screen reader enabled for Indian languages; and yours truly. I believe that the topic was interesting for most people attending the conference. I say this because although the discussion started at a late hour and went on till almost 7:30 PM, we had a good audience which was very inquisitive and interacted actively. We primarily discussed what and why of web accessibility, some business considerations for making the web accessible and legal regulations around the world that necessitated equal accessibility for everyone. The participants were so involved in the discussion that we barely touched upon the aspects of Web 2.0 posing a challenge to accessibility.

Continue reading "Learning from CISTM 2009" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 02:50 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 15, 2009

Web accessibility lawsuits- some past cases

Further to my post about Accessibility complaint against Arizona state university, Let us walk through some past incidences of accessibility lawsuits.

The accessibility case that introduced me to web accessibility was Sydney Olympics accessibility complaint by Bruce Maguire. This complaint was lodged under Disability Discrimination Act of Australia. The reason for the complaint was poor accessibility of the SOCOG website. SOCOG lost the case, reinforcing that  accessibility is essential and is not a difficult thing to achieve.

America online had to face the lawsuit due to inaccessibility of the client software which was required for accessing AOL services. The case got settled out of court when AOL promised accessibility of the AOL client software

Another lawsuit which made headlines is the complaint by NFB against the famous retailer Target.com. This case is particularly important because it is for the first time any court has formally accepted that the web is a place of public accommodation and Americans with disabilities act (ADA) applies even to websites and web properties. Target lawsuit became a class action suit. According to the NFB, the ruling sets a precedent establishing that retailers must make their Web sites accessible to the blind under ADA.

Web has come way ahead since inception and so are the disability laws, but it is really ironic that lawsuits are required to compel companies to build accessible websites. Laws are means to achieve justice but companies need not wait till someone sues them. Accessibility should neither be an afterthought nor a compulsion, but should come as a natural practice of web software life cycle.

 

Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe
Accessibility Specialist- SETLabs
Shrirang_s@infosys.com

 

Posted by Guest Author at 11:16 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 11, 2009

Web 2.0 and Web Accessibility Panel Discussions in CISTM 2009

The seventh annual Conference on Information Science Technology and Management (CISTM 2009) is being held from 13th until 15th July 2009 at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India. The schedule of the event is available here. We will be chairing two panel discussions at this conference.

Dr. Jai Ganesh will be chairing a discussion on 'Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing'. In this discussion we will explore the complementarities as well as points of intersection between the principles of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing.  

I will be leading another discussion on "Does Web 2.0 Challenge Accessibility?" This discussion will bring to fore some of the challenges posed by Web 2.0 technologies for people with different abilities and debate the adequacy of regulations as well as technological solutions to address these challenges. Other panelists for this discussion include an independent accessibility consultant as well as a leading technology developer in the field of screen readers.

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 04:41 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 10, 2009

Accessibility law suits, it is not only about websites.

Most of the times web accessibility law suits turn out to be an eye catcher and eye opener for online businesses. But disability laws like American with disabilities act have much wider scope and much deeper penetration than it is usually perceived. Unlike Target and AOL accessibility law suits, recent complaint by NFB against Arizona state university have a flavor of accessibility of devices used by visually challenged users. Plans of the university to deploy Amazon’s Kindle DX electronic reading device as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students have triggered the case. Kindle is capable to read aloud the books to users who are blind, but surprisingly enough it lacks necessary accessibility provisions which will allow blind users to access the functionality in first place. The menus on the device are not accessible making it is impossible for blind users to utilize the text to speech capability.

Darrell Shandrow, a blind student pursuing a degree in journalism at ASU, said:
“Not having access to the advanced reading features of the Kindle DX—including the ability to download books and course materials, add my own bookmarks and notes, and look up supplemental information instantly on the Internet when I encounter it in my reading—will lock me out of this new technology and put me and other blind students   at a competitive disadvantage relative to our sighted peers. While my peers will have instant access to their course materials in electronic form, I will still have to wait weeks or months for accessible texts to be prepared for me, and these texts will not provide the access and features available to other students. That is why I am standing up for myself and with other blind Americans to end this blatant discrimination.”

This clearly indicates that accessibility requirements need to be catered end to end. Accessibility features and provisions can be of help only if they are implemented in usable and accessible manner. There is nothing called partly accessible, it is either completely accessible or it is inaccessible.

 

Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe
Accessibility Specialist- SETLabs
Shrirang_s@infosys.com

 

Posted by Guest Author at 02:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 05, 2009

National Workshop on Web Accessibility

A National Workshop on Web Accessibility is being organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) from June 5 to 7, 2009 in Bangalore. The workshop is meant for web developers and aims at highlighting the importance of creating accessible web sites.

The workshop intends to educate web developers, from public as well as of private sector organisations, on how to incorporate accessibility features into existing web sites as well as those being newly developed.

The workshop will comprise of conceptual as well as hands-on sessions. The trainers are specialists in various aspects of web accessibility. The main focus will be on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The participants are expected to have good knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, etc.

More information on program schedule, speakers and registration details are available at http://www.cis-india.org/events/national-workshop-on-web-accessibility-june-2009

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 10:02 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 04, 2009

Infosys iProwe: Product for Web Accessibility Assessment and Remediation

A few months back, we launched Infosys iProwe, which is a product in the domain of Web Accessibility Assessment & Remediation. Infosys iProwe is a patent pending Web Accessibility Assessment and Remediation Product from the Web 2.0 Research Lab. About 20% of the global population suffers from some form of disability and a large part of the World Wide Web (about 97%) is not accessible to this disabled population.  Disabilities include visually challenges users of screen readers, hearing impaired users, low-vision users, color-blind users, users with a motor disability, and users with cognitive disabilities. iProwe leverages built-in intelligence to automatically analyse the accessibility issues of Websites and recommends remedial measures to make Websites accessible. iProwe provides comprehensive assessment and recommendation at the same time drastically reducing the time, cost, effort as well as errors involved in assessing and fixing Web accessibility issues. iProwe is targeted at enterprises with an online presence and it enables enterprises to achieve enhanced Web accessibility for differently-abled users better, faster and cheaper. iProwe is an enabler for enterprises planning their Web Accessibility strategy from dimensions including legal, economic as well as corporate social responsibility. Accessibility is a requirement from a legal perspective (legal regulations enforcing accessibility requirements), economic perspective (large potential customer base) as well as a corporate social responsibility perspective.

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 03:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 12, 2009

Assistive technology- What’s that?

 

“I am 100% blind and I really love programming in c++”, “Internet browsing and reading online books is my favorite pastime; doesn’t matter whether I can move my hands”, “’BLACK’ is the best movie I have ever seen; and you are reading it right; I am visually challenged”.
People get astonished and sometimes they find it hard to believe when they hear/read such statements. The credit goes to the technologies which make all this possible for differently able individuals popularly known as Assistive Technologies (ATs). These technologies comprise hardware, software or combination of both. They assist user to accomplish the tasks which otherwise the user can not perform. They augment the gap between required abilities and abilities which user have. They adapt the system to the constrained operating environment user is living with.
As a concept Assistive technology was always known to us, the most ancient assistive technology Mankind uses is magnification glass. But focus of this note is ATs relevant to human machine interaction.
Here are some examples:
·        screen readers, programs those transform the GUI into stream of audio
·        screen magnifiers, programs to enlarge the information on the screen
·        sip and puff devices to control the mouse movement using breath
·        Voice recognition software to accept spoken input
·        On screen keyboards
·        Touch screens
Usually these products are highly sophisticated and technology intensive.
Author: Shrirang_s@infosys.com

 

 

Posted by Guest Author at 10:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 19, 2009

Web Accessibility is a multi component solution- part 2

  1. 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.

     

  2. 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

     

  3. 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.

     

  4. 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.

     

  5. 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

 

shrirang_s@infosys.com

Posted by Guest Author at 09:40 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 09, 2009

Web Accessibility is a multi component solution- part 1

Further to Chandan’s blog post Understanding Web Accessibility, where he has succinctly described the concept of web accessibility, let us try to answer the question How can enterprises can achieve the objective of accessible web for all.

 

Web accessibility is not the sole responsibility of the web designer or developer or user agent. Accessibility is a multi component solution. It is a merger between web accessibility guidelines, web content, authoring technologies/tools, user agent and assistive technologies. Let us understand each component in brief.

 

Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe

shrirang_s@infosys.com

Posted by Guest Author at 04:14 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

December 06, 2008

Interrelationship between Accessibility and Usability

As mentioned my previous blog posting, Web Accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web - they can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Web. Usability on the other hand means that products – IT or otherwise – are easy to learn, easy to memorize, can be used without making errors and allow the users to accomplish tasks efficiently.  

Continue reading "Interrelationship between Accessibility and Usability" »

Posted by Chandan Gokhale at 01:27 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

November 30, 2008

Web Accessibility and the Law - EU Part I

Continuing our discussion on the laws dealing with web accessibility around the world, this blog focuses on the legislations and regulations in the European Union (EU). It should be mentioned here that the European countries have been one of the key funding contributors (besides US and Japan) to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). To that extent there is an acceptance of the recommendations of the WAI across the EU. But the efforts are not limited only to passive contribution to the WAI. The EU has independently adopted several recommendations from councils and commissions set up especially to address the issue of an inclusive global information society.

Continue reading "Web Accessibility and the Law - EU Part I" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 10:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 27, 2008

Web Accessibility and the Law - India

I would really like to thank Vijay Krishnamani for his comment on the previous post. Essentially, because it helped me dedicate this post only for the law in India. Vijay, thanks for your interest in the post and also for your question. Let me start with a short answer – To the best of my knowledge, we do not yet have a law that governs web accessibility in India. The last I know of is that a working group has been set up, in Jan 2007, under the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. The stated objective of this committee is to formulate “Policy and Procedures for Implementation of Web Accessibility Standards”. This is the only public information available.

Continue reading "Web Accessibility and the Law - India" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 10:53 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 25, 2008

Web Accessibility and the Law - UK

Another country that has taken web accessibility and regulations thereof very seriously is UK. The primary regulation there, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) dates back to 1995. The Part III of this act that is applicable to websites and requires them to be accessible came into effect on 1st October 1999. In the same year the Disability Rights Commission Act came into effect to set up the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), which was responsible for “elimination of discrimination against disabled persons” besides other tasks. This commission actively promoted the Part III of the DDA 1995.

Continue reading "Web Accessibility and the Law - UK" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 11:49 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 23, 2008

Web Accessibility and the Law - Australia

Continuing from the previous post, if the changes in the US regulatory systems have been more visible as a consequence of the Target vs. NFB case, the laws in other parts of the world have actually been in existence for quite some time now.

Australia has particularly taken a lead in institutionalizing regulations / guidelines that make web accessibility a mandatory requirement. This blog lists some of these regulations.

Continue reading "Web Accessibility and the Law - Australia" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 09:39 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 22, 2008

Web Accessibility and the Law - US

A few days back Chandan Gokhale’s blog discussed web accessibility and the efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) via its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). It briefly touched upon the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 (draft 11)).  While the WCAG is an independent effort being driven by W3C, there are several legal / regulatory efforts being steered in countries around the world. This blog discusses some of these regulatory requirements for web accessibility in the US.

Continue reading "Web Accessibility and the Law - US" »

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 10:38 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 21, 2008

Economics of Web Accessibility - Part 2

The above statistics underline the fact that the size of the market for accessible technology is larger than commonly perceived. This is important because for disabled users, everyday actions can often be completed more quickly and efficiently on the web. Moreover of the 54 million Americans with a disability, 4 in 10 are online and these users tend to spend more time logged on and surfing the Internet than nondisabled users. The number of people with disabilities – and income to spend – is likely to increase as the likelihood of having a disability increases with age, and the overall population is aging. As the world’s population is living longer, there are more older adults using the Internet and physical impairments hamper web usage for users. Moreover over 20% of the EU will be over 65 years of age and the number of people aged 60 or over will double in the next 30 years. This will account for a large section of population which needs effective and efficient access to the Web.

 

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 11:05 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 20, 2008

Economics of Web Accessibility - Part 1

A large part of the World Wide Web is not accessible to a large section of the disabled population (about 18-20% of the global population suffers from some form or disability). About 97% of websites fail to meet the most basic requirements for accessibility. These are rather shocking numbers given the fact that the Web plays an important role and offers significant benefits for people with disabilities. The below statistics highlights the economics behind making the World Wide Web Accessible to the physically challenged population:

 

 

Continue reading "Economics of Web Accessibility - Part 1" »

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 01:09 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2008

Understanding Web Accessibility

Starting this week, we will be addressing the area of Web Accessibility - organized in multiple blog entries – to address various facets of Web Accessibility.  In this posting, we will look at the big picture, the meaning of Web Accessibility and its relevance for promoting Equal Opportunity.  

Continue reading "Understanding Web Accessibility" »

Posted by Chandan Gokhale at 09:25 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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