My talk at Riga 2016 Web Accessibility Meetup

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Web Accessibility - why we are still here?

Dr Vladimir TombergSenior Research Fellow

Tallinn University

24 November 2016Riga Accessibility Meetup

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Accessibility is a law•Banks, energy providers and public bodies should be

subject to web accessibility rules;• Just a third of the 761,000 public sector websites in

the EU currently conform to "international web-accessibility standards“;

Source: http://www.out-law.com

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EU Directive on the accessibility of public sector bodies' websites•Organizations whose websites would be subject to

the new rules would have one year from the introduction of the new laws to ensure that new content added to their sites complies with the new rules;•They would have three years within which to adapt

existing content and five years if that content is "live audio“

28 Feb 2014

Source: http://www.out-law.com

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Web accessibility is nicely standardized

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WCAG 2.0•Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ─ guidelines

and techniques for making websites and web applications accessible to people with disabilities;

•WCAG consist of 4 principles and 12 guidelines and many success criteria

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Principles•At the top are four principles (POUR) that provide

the foundation for Web accessibility: • Perceivable;

• Operable;

• Understandable;

• Robust

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Guidelines•Guidelines are under the principles; •The 12 guidelines provide the basic goals that

authors should work toward in order to make content more accessible to users with different disabilities

8Image: http://www.projectrics.org

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Success Criteria•For each guideline, testable success criteria are

provided to allow WCAG 2.0 to be used;• In order to meet the needs of different groups and

different situations, three levels of conformance are defined: •A (lowest), •AA, and •AAA (highest).

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Library Ramp Analogy

Sourse: http://acc.nics.gov.uk

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WAI-ARIA•Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite – a

framework for adding attributes to web documents in order to make actionable elements accessible to people using assistive technology

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Different input devices

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Challenges for accessibility

1. Awareness2. Responsibility

3. Avoiding Ignorance

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Challenges for accessibility1. Awareness (Education, empathy modeling)

Image courtesy to http://err.ee

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Challenges for accessibility1. Awareness2. Responsibility

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Typical training requirements for different professional roles

Executive Manager

Middle Manager

Software & Hardware Developer

Designer Reviewer & Tester

(QA)

Marketing & Communication

Human Resources

User Interfaces S O D D O S S

User-Centred Design S O O D D O S

Assistive Technology S S O D D S S

Web Applications S O D D D S S

Summary (S) Overview (O) Details (D)

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Challenges for accessibility

1. Awareness2. Responsibility 3. Avoiding Ignorance

For whom is this ramp?

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I guess that is the only one possible answer

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Measuring awareness on accessibility standardsA study

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Demographic distribution

• 92 Participants • 16 countries

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Industry

Public Sector

Academia (university, etc.)

Startup

Self-employed

Industry (Insurance, Baking, Consulting, etc.)

Other

Software company

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

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Job

Mobile Developer

Project Manager

Technical Lead

Back-end Developer

Application Developer

Senior Back-end Developer

Senior Front-end Developer

Other

Front-end Developer

Interaction Designer

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

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Measuring Awareness

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Do you consider yourself aware about accessibility issues on the Web?

I am expert in this field I know quite much about it

I don't know anything about it

I know something, but not so much

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

25

Writing accessible code enables me to produce higher quality software

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

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I am aware of what are the WCAG & WAI ARIA specifications

WCAG WAI ARIA

22

70

Yes No

32

60

Yes No

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Measuring Responsibility

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My colleagues always use accessibility standards and guides in their work

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

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Most of developers I know, consider no real necessary in use of accessible technologies

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

30

Do you use sometimes WCAG guidelines in your projects?

17

15

Yes No

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What was a purpose for you to use WCAG? 

I think that it is important

It was a project requirement from a client

It is standard practice of our development process

It is regulated by national law

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Do you use sometimes WAI ARIA guidelines in your projects?

8

14

Yes No

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Ignorance

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It is very time consuming task to learn about accessible technologies

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

35

Using accessibility standards increases need for communications among developers

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

36

My organization provides libraries that already contain required accessible markup in code

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree Strongly Disagree0

5

10

15

20

25

30

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Participate in my study, please!

https://goo.gl/60rp2d

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Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Every 3th Thursday of May

http://www.estchi.org/gaad/

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Thank you!Email: vtomberg@tlu.ee