'Accessibility in 2006' seminar
In conjunction with Browsealoud, Webcredible held our inaugural Accessibility in 2006 seminar, in London on Tuesday 12th September 2006.
The event was heavily oversubscribed beforehand and was enjoyed by over 90 delegates in total. Individuals from organisations such as Barclays, HSBC, L'Oreal, the RNIB, The Telegraph, Virgin Atlantic, Visa and Yamaha attended, to name a few.
The seminar looked at the state of play of web accessibility both today (in 2006) and in the future. The agenda for the day was as follows:
- 9.30 - 10.00: Arrival & registration
- 10.00 - 10.40: Advanced accessibility (Trenton Moss, Webcredible)
- 10.40 - 11.00: Coffee break
- 11.00 - 11.30: Browsealoud - adding speech to websites (Ian Stuart, Texthelp Systems)
- 11.30 - 12.00: Accessibility and online customer service (Zoe Laycock, Hounslow Council)
- 12.00 - 12.15: Coffee break
- 12.15 - 12.35: The future of accessibility (Trenton Moss, Webcredible)
- 12.35 - 1.00: Expert panel Q&A session (panel included accessibility experts & a screen reader user)
- 1.00 - 2.30: Lunch & exhibition/demonstrations
Seminar summary
Webcredible's head of accessibility, Trenton Moss, delivered two lively presentations on the day:
Advanced accessibility
Advanced accessibility techniques for a number of user groups were outlined during this presentation. Some of these techniques, and the user groups they apply to, included:
Blind web users
- Use invisible text (e.g. to expand on link text meaning or provide a heading)
- Combine an image and its adjacent text into one link
- Provide a heading for every section
- Minimise noise by making presentation items background images (e.g. vertical bars)
Partially sighted web users
- Provide a visible font resizer
- Don't embed text in images
- Use numbered lists, where possible
Dexterity impaired web users
- Provide a focus state for links
- Increase the link target for vertical navigation lists
Web users with reading difficulties
- Front load page content and paragraphs
- Use descriptive headings and link text that stand out from regular text
The future of accessibility
Three different topics were discussed in this presentations:
- AJAX
- Applications such as the Amazon diamond search, Panic Goods drag and drop shopping cart and Google Maps were looked at and ways of making them more accessible discussed.
- User generated content
- The Blogger, Flickr and YouTube websites were looked at here. How can these sites ensure their content is accessible when they're not even responsible for creating it?
- WCAG 2.0
- An overview of the new W3C guidelines was provided, focusing on how the guidelines are vaguer and more general than previously.
The conclusions of these topics, and some of the consequences for the future of accessibility, were then outlined:
- Accessibility consultancies will stay because accessibility is getting more complex and less guideline driven
- There'll be lots of poorly implemented solutions because of this increase in complexity
- The owners of user-generated websites face a great challenge in how to ensure their websites are accessible
- Alternative accessible versions of complex applications will become the norm
- JavaScript, PDF & Flash will no longer be thought of as 'evil'
- Accessibility for mobiles will become a greater issue
About Webcredible
Webcredible is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and respected usability and accessibility consultancies in the UK. Their research articles have been re-published on well over 100 websites and in numerous offline publications. Clients include BBC, Environment Agency, Norwich Union, T-Mobile, Visa, the World Health Organization and Yamaha.
About Browsealoud
Owned by Texthelp Systems, Browsealoud is software that reads web pages aloud for people who find it difficult to read online. 7 million people in the UK have literacy problems, many of whom have downloaded Browsealoud already. Websites that are Browsealoud-enabled include BBC, BT, Google, the Home Office, UEFA, Yahoo! and hundreds of local councils and universities.
What next?
To get notified about other events as they're announced please sign up to our free monthly newsletter. The sign up box is featured on the left side of every page on this website, just below the sub-navigation.