| Web accessibility for older users: successes and opportunities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-6 | |
| Andrew Arch | |||
| Web accessibility for older users -- are we there yet? We understand many of
the needs, however there are some gaps in our knowledge and much integration
and adoption still required.
The Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation (WAI-AGE) project analyzed the Web accessibility requirements of older Web users based on the research and investigation of many people examining this issue over recent years. The changing abilities of older users as they experience age-related functional impairments were also considered. We found that many of the requirements fall under usable accessibility rather than technical accessibility, and that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 are able to assist developers to meet most of them. These usability aspects include factors such as the presentation of Web content, the inexperience of many older users, and the information overload often experienced. There is also an identified need for more usable browsers which can accommodate the varying experience, skills and impairments of older people and others in accessing the Web. Why isn't the current knowledge being fully utilised? Our review found that one reason is that people often aren't aware of it; the WAI-AGE project is working towards addressing the issue of educating researchers, developers and users alike. And what about the gaps in our knowledge? We identified that additional research is required to address gaps in our understanding, especially around some of the cognitive issues of ageing and around the way in which older users navigate the Web and interact with Web applications. This paper discusses the successes and examines reasons why, with regard to Web accessibility for older people, we are not there yet. It describes some of the challenges facing us and the associated opportunities as we all contribute to the enhancement of Web accessibility for all users. Keywords: ATAG, UAAG, W3C, WAI, WCAG, World Wide Web, accessibility, ageing,
disability, impairment, older people, usability | |||
| Age and web access: the next generation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 7-15 | |
| Vicki L. Hanson | |||
| When today's young adults become 'older adults' will they exhibit
difficulties with technology that appear to characterize the current older
generation? This paper is intended to begin a discussion of technology
experience as related to aging. The goal is to challenge some existing
characterizations of older Web users and consider the implications for the
future. Are technology difficulties an inescapable fact of aging? Or are there
factors that will serve to equip future generations of older adults with skills
that will erase or lessen these difficulties? Keywords: older adults, web access | |||
| A survey of technology accessibility problems faced by older users in China | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 16-25 | |
| Dengfeng Yao; Yunfeng Qiu; Zaixin Du; Jianqing Ma; Harry Huang | |||
| Internet accessibility for older users has become an important issue to
promote inclusion and participation in the Information Society. In this paper,
we propose an investigation into the technology accessibility problems faced by
the elderly in China. We have conducted the research by means of an exploratory
survey with a Web-based questionnaire and held discussions with older users at
meetings. The study had 180 valid answers and involved representatives from
each of the 25 provinces of China. The results show that 39% of the
participants cannot or can only partially access information because of all
kinds of accessibility problems in China. Many participants indicated that the
main problems in the getting on the Internet were the health barrier, the
circumstance barrier, and the Internet design barrier. The possible reason for
these difficulties could be that the government doesn't foster a social
environment conducive to helping the elderly get online, and that it does not
provide services for the elderly designed to help them access information
electronically. The poor rate of industry accessibility for the elderly, as
well as the lack of the Chinese accessibility laws, is an important issue that
must be dealt with to promote greater Internet accessibility for the elderly. Keywords: accessibility, internet, older users, survey | |||
| Hera-FFX: a Firefox add-on for semi-automatic web accessibility evaluation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 26-35 | |
| José L. Fuertes; Ricardo González; Emmanuelle Gutiérrez; Loïc Martínez | |||
| Website accessibility evaluation is a complex task requiring a combination
of human expertise and software support. There are several online and offline
tools to support the manual web accessibility evaluation process. However, they
all have some weaknesses because none of them includes all the desired
features. In this paper we present Hera-FFX, an add-on for the Firefox web
browser that supports semi-automatic web accessibility evaluation. Keywords: accessibility evaluation, evaluation tools, web accessibility | |||
| Transition of accessibility evaluation tools to new standards | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 36-44 | |
| Amaia Aizpurua; Myriam Arrue; Markel Vigo; Julio Abascal | |||
| While automatic tools are not intended to replace human judgement they are
crucial in order to develop accessible web sites. The release of WCAG 2.0
entails that the existing plethora of accessibility review tools will have to
be updated. This paper presents an evaluation framework for making the
transition from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 in a less painful way. A framework is thus
proposed that allows developers to create new guidelines, and update or reuse
the existing ones. A case study to test its feasibility has been carried out by
incorporating WCAG 2.0 guidelines into the framework. The results are
satisfactory, since 55% of the automatic and 16% of the semi-automatic ones
could be expressed using the framework. Therefore, it is demonstrated that even
if the framework does not fully support the transition process, at least it
makes it less burdensome. Moreover, by analyzing WCAG 2.0 we have learnt how to
extend the existing tools in order to provide greater coverage and thus
increase their effectiveness. Keywords: automatic evaluation, guidelines, web accessibility | |||
| A framework for filtering web accessibility guidelines | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 46-49 | |
| Rehema Baguma; Roger G. Stone; Jude T. Lugega; Th. P. van der Weide | |||
| This paper first presents a framework for filtering the Web Accessibility
Guidelines according to contexts of use. It then presents a prototype that
implements the framework and explains an evaluation of the prototype. Keywords: content filtration, context of use, web accessibility, web accessibility
guidelines | |||
| Prosumers and accessibility: how to ensure a productive interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 50-53 | |
| Yod Samuel Martín García; Beatriz San Miguel González; Juan Carlos Yelmo García | |||
| User-generated content (UGC) has become prevalent on the Web. It is not
created by professional developers, but by prosumers: basic web users that also
produce their own content. Thus, they lack any background, training,
wherewithal, awareness and accountability regarding accessibility. We have
extracted from top-used UGC sites a set of best practices to improve
accessibility of UGC, focusing on the role the community itself plays in
ensuring it. As we have merely compiled best practices, authoring tools and web
content guidelines have not been redefined, but rather referenced and
instantiated by UGC-specific recommendations. Keywords: ATAG, accessibility assurance, community-supported accessibility, prosumers,
user-generated content | |||
| Augmenting social media accessibility | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 54-57 | |
| Roberto Borrino; Marco Furini; Marco Roccetti | |||
| The popularity of social media is affecting society as they are changing the
way communication, collaboration, interaction, and information are produced and
consumed. A part of the society (e.g., the one more technologically advanced)
takes advantage of social media, whereas another part of society (e.g., old or
people with different abilities) is left out from the so-called social media
revolution. In this paper we propose an architecture that aims at augmenting
social media accessibility. The proposed architecture, named SOMFA (SOcial
Media For All), finds, gets, transforms, and enriches social media contents for
a presentation over TV sets, so that people with technological, sociological,
or physical limitations may enjoy social media and may participate to the
social media revolution. Keywords: accessibility, adaptation of web contents, social media | |||
| Audio presentation of auto-suggest lists | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 58-61 | |
| Andy Brown; Caroline Jay; Simon Harper | |||
| One of the most significant advances behind World Wide Web (Web) 2.0 is the
ability to allow parts of a Web page to be updated independently. This can
provide an exciting, interactive experience for sighted users, who are used to
dealing with complex visual information. For visually impaired users, however,
these pages may be confusing: updates are sometimes not recognised by screen
readers, while in other cases they may interrupt the user inappropriately. The
SASWAT project aims to develop a model of how sighted users interact with
dynamic updates, and use this to identify the most effective ways of presenting
updates through an audio information stream. Here, we describe a 'thin slice'
through this project, focusing on one form of update -- the auto-suggest list.
These provide the user with suggestions for entry into an input text field,
updating with each character typed. Experiments with sighted users suggest that
the suggestions receive considerable attention, and appear to offer reassurance
that the input is reasonable. Suggestions that are further down the list are
less likely to be viewed, and receive fewer and shorter fixations than those at
the top. We therefore propose an implementation which presents the first 3
suggestions immediately and allows browsing of the rest. Keywords: AJAX, Web 2.0, eye-tracking, visual disability | |||
| Accessibility perspectives on enabling South African sign language in the South African national accessibility portal | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 62-65 | |
| Louis Coetzee; Guillaume Olivrin; Ilse Viviers | |||
| Persons with disabilities are often marginalised from economy and society
due to the lack of access to disability related information and services.
Through the use of assistive technologies access to the information and
services can often be obtained e.g. a visually impaired user using a screen
reader. The Deaf however, cannot use such technology to break the barrier
because of differences in literacy and comfort with written material. The Deaf
thus requires another intervention to improve their access to information and
services. One such mechanism is by embedding animated Sign Language in Web
pages. This paper analyses the effectiveness and appropriateness of using this
approach by embedding South African Sign Language in the South African National
Accessibility Portal. Through experiments, user evaluations and web-metrics it
is found that such techniques can improve the accessibility for Deaf users in
experimental conditions. However, real world pervasiveness will be limited
because of practical concerns such as the difficulty to create and maintain
animated Sign Language and bandwidth constraints that impact on users' browsing
experience. Keywords: South African national accessibility portal, South African sign language,
accessibility, deaf, internet, web | |||
| The third age web: empathic design achieved through persona development & storytelling | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 66 | |
| Mike Paciello | |||
| The Third Age Web -- a usable Web designed to accommodate older adults --
embraces the principles of user centered design; that is, a world wide web that
is engaging, interactive, easy-to-use, navigable and otherwise relevant to the
information & communication technology needs of Third Age users.
Really, though, who and what are older adults? Is it possible to clearly characterize, classify, and precisely catalog their user needs? If so, how? Once we've learned how, can we transfer findings to the web to ensure contextual, functional and meaningful user interaction? This presentation proposes a design process that accentuates the Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) creation of user personas in the world of individuals with disabilities and complements it through the growing phenomena of storytelling. Keywords: World Wide Web, accessibility, ageing, design processes, disability,
impairment, older people, personas, storytelling, usability | |||
| Web presentation layer bootstrapping for accessibility and performance | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 67-74 | |
| Clint Andrew Hall | |||
| In websites today, most browser incompatibilities are overcome using
detection by available client features or the user-agent. This logic is often
baked into JavaScript libraries client-side to limit functionality, or clients
are filtered server-side to redirect to alternate versions of the site. In this
paper, I present a technique called the Web Bootstrapper, a technique that
allows a developer to write a single site while still providing multiple
experiences, or "skins," without altering source or running costly client-side
code. It is a process by which an accurate collection of only those static
resources and metadata necessary for a unique experience be delivered
passively, by the most performant means possible. In further contrast to
existing methodologies, this approach determines resources based on capability,
form factor and platform by targeting and collecting the often-immutable
attributes of the client, not specifically its identity or version.
Bootstrapping allows for rule-based, externalized, server-side configuration,
further promoting progressive enhancement and client performance. Keywords: JavaScript, accessibility, cascading styleheets, performance, user
interface, web, web browsers | |||
| Combining SADIe and AxsJAX to improve the accessibility of web content | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 75-78 | |
| Darren Lunn; Simon Harper; Sean Bechhofer | |||
| The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has allowed once static Web documents to
be transformed into online interactive applications. To facilitate the
accessibility of this dynamic content, Google have developed the AxsJAX
framework that can insert Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)
statements into the content dynamically. Such statements allow assistive
technologies to interact with dynamic content and make it accessible to users.
SADIe is an approach that uses semantic annotations of a Website's Cascading
Style Sheet (CSS) to drive a transformation process that can improve access to
Web pages for visually impaired users who use a screen reader. Previously SADIe
transcoded static pages by refactoring the content into a format more suited to
the sequential audio output of a screen reader. In this paper we present a
prototype SADIe transcoder that uses CSS annotations to generate AxsJAX
framework code and insert it into Web pages. Such an approach allows users to
access static content using a consistent set of key presses in a manner akin to
an online application. This demonstrates the flexibility of the SADIe approach
as the same annotations can be used to generate an alternative transcoding
format. It also supports the use of SADIe as a lightweight method for allowing
Web designers to make use of AxsJAX without requiring knowledge of the
underlying AxsJAX technologies. Keywords: AxsJAX, SADIe, transcoding, visually impaired users | |||
| Evaluation of techniques defined in WCAG 2.0 with older people | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 79-82 | |
| Sergio Sayago; Laura Camacho; Josep Blat | |||
| Although WCAG 2.0 offer techniques for making web content more accessible to
all people, very little is known about how these techniques enhance web
accessibility for older people. This paper addresses two techniques,
keyboard-based navigation and design of links purpose. They are evaluated by
using simple prototypes in the course of designing two websites for old-age
pensioner associations. Participants (N=11) ranged in age from 65 to 80 years
old and were familiar with web concepts. The results indicated that
keyboard-driven navigation did not improve web accessibility. Older people
preferred to use the mouse because of inclusiveness, despite their difficulties
using it. 'Click here to' links helped participants clarify where they had to
click and what would happen after clicking, despite not being suggested by the
WCAG 2.0. Click-able pictures should resolve to full size renderings of those
images rather than opening a new web page. These findings suggest that WCAG 2.0
do not consider carefully enough some important needs of older people. The
paper discusses some alternatives for taking them into account. Keywords: WCAG 2.0, older people, web accessibility | |||
| Virtual teaching in a society of learning | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 84-87 | |
| António Eduardo Martins; Felipa lopes dos Reis | |||
| Education is a social practice historically placed and goes beyond all human
activity, spreading to the network of relations that takes place in the social
fabric, mediated or not by some kind of technology. Online education -- that
is, computer mediated communication -- for educational purposes carries with it
questions relative to its teaching and the overall nature of online learning.
Online education constitutes a new professional configuration, a possibility of
the effective use of teaching and the effective construction of knowledge from
another spatial-temporal logic, without losing sight of the objective
conditions of social networks, in particular new forms of social connections
brought out by wider social changes, strongly marked by a technological
presence. Keywords: e-learning, virtual teaching | |||
| Adapting learning environments with AccessForAll | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-91 | |
| Greg Gay; Silvia Mirri; Marco Roccetti; Paola Salomoni | |||
| ATutor is an Open Source Web-based learning environment that has
accessibility as a guiding development principle. From its beginning, ATutor
was created to fill a need for an accessible network-based Learning Management
System (LMS) [2] [3].
Continuing with its attention to accessibility, ATutor adds the first implementation of the ISO FDIS 24751 [4] accessibility standards. Keywords: IMS AccessForAll, ISO FDIS 24751, accessibility, content adaptability,
learning management | |||
| User tests demonstration: real experiences in measuring web accessibility needs for people with disabilities and the elderly | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 93-95 | |
| Jesus Hernandez Galán; Martinez Usero; J. Ángel; Varela Méndez; M. Jesús | |||
| A practical user test session with people with disabilities and the elderly
is presented. The background and expert knowledge on web accessibility
evaluation of ONCE Foundation, CIDAT and Technosite will be used to carry out a
demonstrative workshop on how a non accessible web site can be improved through
WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 as well as the results of real user tests in order to make it
compliant with universal guidelines. Keywords: elderly people, people with disabilities, user tests, web accessibility, web
usability | |||
| TeleWeb: accessible service for web browsing via phone | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 96-97 | |
| Yevgen Borodin; Glenn Dausch; I. V. Ramakrishnan | |||
| In this paper, we present TeleWeb -- a telephony service for web browsing
via the most ubiquitous communication device, the Phone. TeleWeb integrates a
simple and usable phone interface with the intelligent features such as
context-directed browsing, template-detection, and macro-replaying. We expect
that TeleWeb will equally appeal to people with vision impairments, older
adults who may not be comfortable using computers, and anyone who wants to
access the Web on the move. Keywords: HearSay, TeleWeb, blind users, older adults, phone browser, screen reader,
telephony service, web browser | |||
| Accessibility for the HTML5 <video> element | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 98-100 | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer; Conrad Parker | |||
| In this paper, we describe existing implementations for putting subtitles
and captions alongside the HTML5 <video> tag inside Web pages and a
proposal for standardizing such approaches, which will make them interoperable
and easier to be processed by automated tools. Since video and audio are
fundamental data types that any Web user will want to make use of nowadays --
if young or old -- if impaired or not -- a standard means of providing
accessibility to such fundamental data types is of utmost importance as part of
the standardization process of the <video> and <audio> tags. The
proposal is an outcome of a Mozilla grant and of extensive discussions within
the Xiph accessibility group. Ideas discussed on the WHATWG mailing list have
also been taken into account. Standardization work for this is ongoing. Keywords: captions, subtitles, video accessibility, web video | |||
| Web-based Chinese sign language broadcasting system | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 101-103 | |
| Dengfeng Yao; Yunfeng Qiu; Harry Huang | |||
| We have analyzed the requirement of the deaf who were aware of the necessity
of using sign language animation to broadcast the text on the web pages. So we
have designed the architecture and implemented the web-based Chinese Sign
Language Broadcasting System.
Some deaf participants were asked to test this system through viewing the news. They think that the system can express the meanings of text via true and accurate sign language successfully and naturally, which can be made into the plugins of the browser, so we hold the idea that the client can use browser to download and install the plugins, and browse the web effectively and independently. The evaluation of these participants shows that this system meets the initial goal of ours. Keywords: broadcast, deaf, sign language | |||
| About the relevance of accessibility barriers in the everyday interactions of older people with the web | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 104-113 | |
| Sergio Sayago; Josep Blat | |||
| This paper reports key findings of a 3-year ethnographical study of the
everyday interactions of older people with the web. The data consisted of
in-situ observations and conversations with 388 older people while using
myriads of web and computer technologies daily. The results revealed that the
accessibility barriers that had a more negative effect on the daily
interactions of older people with the web were due to their difficulties in
remembering steps, understanding web and computer jargon and using the mouse,
despite their willingness to use it. These obstacles were much more important
than those caused by their difficulties perceiving visual information,
understanding icons and using the keyboard. The prioritization of barriers was
explained by two key aspects in ageing with new technologies, independency and
inclusiveness, and a desired condition of web (user) interfaces, consistency in
terminology. These results suggest that these three aspects should be
considered carefully in enhancing web accessibility for older people, as well
as allowing us to grasp older people's everyday web accessibility barriers. The
paper discusses possible ways of making use of these findings to make the web
more accessible to older people. Keywords: barriers, ethnography, older people, web accessibility | |||
| User requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal with emphasis on semantic accessibility for older users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 114-122 | |
| Michael Leitner; Özge Subasi; Norman Höller; Arjan Geven; Manfred Tscheligi | |||
| In this paper, we present the results from a survey on user requirements for
older users of online ticketing services of a nationwide railway ticket and
travel information portal. Our survey shows that older users differentiate in
their attitude towards internet according to their experience with internet
services and the service provided, not only according to their age. Further,
our study indicates that in contrary to common belief advertisement or
interactive elements are not perceived as negative all the time. The results of
a questionnaire with 1200 responses, focus groups, interviews and qualitative
analysis of user feedback also indicate that in order to improve and optimize
the usage of the online system for older adults, it is needed to supply the
system not only with technical accessibility requirements but also with an
understanding of universal accessibility requirements. Universal requirements
are defined by real user and usage cases and they consider standardization on
not only coding but also predictability of usage and same patterns of
interaction for similar websites. Keywords: accessibility, older adults, user centeredness | |||
| Getting mobile with mobile devices: using the web to improve transit accessibility | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 123-126 | |
| Darren Minifie; Yvonne Coady | |||
| The current model for public transportation in urban environments poses many
limitations for travelers who are blind or visually impaired. Small communities
are serviced by transit authorities with constrained budgets. Accordingly, few
resources are available for accessibility reform. Larger communities have begun
to implement services that take advantage of modern technologies; however, the
majority of these services are targeted at the population at large with little
regard for these special interest groups.
In this paper, we define an approach based on best practices to support web accessibility, and incorporate new technological advances in mobility to provide a solution that complements the current transportation model. Problems of adapting existing web content, and end-user customizability are addressed. Preliminary evaluation includes feedback received from the blind community, and consultation with small-scale transit authorities. We believe that the most effective solution, in terms of cost and user satisfaction, will rely on ever-pervasive wireless internet connectivity, accessible web services, and adaptive mobile devices. Keywords: accessibility, mobile devices, mobile web, public transportation | |||
| Guideline aggregation: web accessibility evaluation for older users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 127-135 | |
| Giorgio Brajnik; Yeliz Yesilada; Simon Harper | |||
| Web site evaluation methodologies and validation engines take the view that
all accessibility guidelines must be met to gain compliance. Problems exist in
this regard as contradictions within the rule set may arise, and the type of
impairment or its severity is not isolated. The Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method
goes someway to addressing these issues by enabling barrier types derived from
guidelines to be applied to different user categories such as motor or hearing
impairment, etc. In this paper, we use set theory to create a validation scheme
for older users by combining barrier types specific to motor impaired and low
vision users, thereby creating a new "older users" category from the results of
this set addition. To evaluate this approach, we have conducted a BW study with
four pages, 19 expert and 49 non-expert judges. This study shows that the BW
generates reliable data for the proposed aggregated user category and shows how
experts and non-experts evaluate pages differently. The study also highlights a
limitation of the BW by showing that a better aggregated user category would
have been created by having a severity level of disability for different
impairment types. By extending the BW with these impairment levels, we argue
that the BW would become more useful for validating Web pages when dealing with
users which multiple disabilities and thus we would be able to create a
"Personalised Validation and Repair" method. Keywords: evaluation, older users, web accessibility guideline | |||
| Quantitative evaluation for web accessibility with respect to disabled groups | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 136-141 | |
| Pornpat Sirithumgul; Atiwong Suchato; Proadpran Punyabukkana | |||
| In this research, we propose a methodology for evaluating web accessibility
with respect to disabled users, especially the vision-impaired and the
hearing-impaired. Two stages are involved in our approach. In the first stage,
we adopt barriers proposed by the Barrier Walkthrough method to classify
possible barriers for each group of users on a web page. In addition, this
method proposes checkpoints of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) as
barrier causes. All barriers found at this stage would be transformed into the
relevant checkpoints. In the second stage, the severity of barriers is assessed
by analyzing violated checkpoints. Our formula will also calculate
accessibility value from the violated checkpoints. The result of our approach
can identify whether the evaluated web pages are suitable for different groups
of the disabled. Keywords: disabled, evaluation criteria, web accessibility | |||
| Metrics for accessibility on the Vamolà project | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 142-145 | |
| Silvia Mirri; Ludovico Antonio Muratori; Marco Roccetti; Paola Salomoni | |||
| How far are the Web sites from accessibility? Such a question implies a
measure and, before, metrics or a set of metrics to quantitatively describe
distances or closeness to one or more aspects of inclusion. Quantitative
evaluations can effectively guide the improvement of sites quality and of
skills which are necessary along the content authoring process. This paper
details the hypothesized metrics and measures on the Vamolà project,
which has been issued to integrate a monitor and a validator of the Web
accessibility, according to the Italian Law. On Vamolà, the validation
tool output can be effectively used in defining metrics inside the monitor
application. Keywords: accessibility, evaluating accessibility, metrics, monitoring accessibility | |||