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A broad definition of accessibility covers people operating under situational limitations as well as functional limitations:
Functional limitations pertain to disabilities, such as blindness or limited use of the hands. Functional limitations can be visual, auditory, physical, or cognitive (which includes language and learning disabilities).
Situational limitations relate to the prevailing circumstatnces, environment, or device. These limitations can affect anybody, not just people with disabilities. Examples include mobile devices and device limitations, such as having no mouse, or constraining circumstances, such as interacting with a web site through a computer integrated into a car's dashboard, wher the use of the hands and eyes is limited.
Shawn Lawton Henry, Constructing Accessible Web Sites.
Something is accessible if it is able to be used by persons with disabilities. In the context of computing, this generally means that the software or device should be compatible with access aids, and should be able to transform itself into a needed format (see the Glossary of Bobby). The efficiency with which information can be accessed by people with various abilities and disabilities ultimately determines the degree of accessibility - it is clear that this is a highly subjective matter. Nevertheless, various criteria have been developed to help determine how accessible a web page is. I will follow the priorisation of accessibility errors as suggested by Bobby in http://bobby.watchfire.com:80/bobby/html/en/readreport.jsp:
seriously affect a page's usability by people with disabilities. A Bobby Approved rating can only be granted to a site in which none of the pages contain accessibility errors. Bobby Approved status is equivalent to Conformance Level A for the Web Content Guidelines.
are those which you should try to fix. Although not as vital as Priority 1 access errors, the items in this section are considered important for access. If you can pass all items in this section in addition to the Priority 1 section, including relevant User Checks, your page meets Conformance Level AA for the Web Content Guidelines. This is the preferred minimum conformance level for an accessible site.
are third-tier access problems which you should also consider. If you can pass all items in this section in addition to the Priority 1 and 2 sections, including relevant User Checks, your page meets Conformance Level AAA for the Web Content Guidelines.
If you think this is “fine print” that does not have to bother you, you are wrong: no lesser than the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) thought the same and was fined to pay A$20000 in a case that was brought to an australian court - see the Reader's guide to Sydney Olympics accessibility complaint for the whole story and an explanation of the court's decision, as well as Olympic Failure: A Case for Making the Web Accessible for the web designer's point of view.
You also cannot argue that this has happened “too far away” from you, perhaps on another continent. The world grows together and all western nations have passed legislation that is more or less similar on this point, based on the same legal principles of unequal treatment (“discrimination”; “unfavourable” treatment) and unjustifiable hardship (“undue” hardship or “burden”). It is a matter of time until similar cases appear to the courts. I hope you understand by now the following
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Important fact: |
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Accessibility is NOT optional! |
So what can you do to improve the HTML pages created by the tools I presented, from the accessibility point of view? You can pass any of your generated HTML pages to Bobby for an accessibilty test[1]. You will be presented with a list of errors, sorted according to priority as above. I will discuss them for a typical page that was generated with the tools I presented in the previous chapters.
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Mean tip: |
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Not all of the accessibility errors presented in the following sections can be reproduced when testing a page that was generated with the method presented here. To get the full idea, pass the
the Linux Accessibility HOWTO pages for a test at Bobby. |
For more information on accessibility, see the Bobby Accessibility FAQ and the the Linux Accessibility HOWTO.
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Note, however, that Bobby itself is just an attempt at automating an accessibility test and has not evaded criticism. In Accessible shopping, for example, we read:
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| Last updated Mon Sep 24 01:19:25 CEST 2007 | Permalink: http://www.karakas-online.de/mySGML/accessibility.html | All contents © 2002-2007 Chris Karakas |
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