CSUN Conference, 26 March 2010San Diego

Roger HudsonWeb Usability

Ten Years of Web Content Accessibility Rules:

Time for a Rethink?

Different Disabilities

Sight 34%

Physical 20%

Hearing 11%

Intellectual 4%

Psychiatric 5%

Acqd Brain Damage 5%

Some Australian stats

Source: “Disability, Ageing and Careers survey”Australian Bureau of Statistics

Intellectual disability 56%

Physical disability 17%

Hearing loss 14%

Visual loss 9%

Autism 3%

Source: Jaye Johnson, “Students with Disabilities in Post Secondary Education. Issues and Trends For a New Decade”

Of Year 12 Students with a disability, percentage of different disabilities

Cognitive and learning disorders?

“The incidence of learning disability in Australia, as in other western countries, is suggested to be 10% to 12% of the population, with 4% being severely affected”.

Learning disabilities

Source: Australian Learning Disabilities Association

Social inclusionDon’tdissmy

abilitiesMore Info: Social Inclusion for the Web

http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/social-inclusion-for-the-web/

10 Years ofaccessibility

rules

Web use today

CATEGORY AUST USA

Social Networking/sharing: 12 sites 18 sites

Search & info: 16 13

I.T. info & web services: 21 29

Buying & selling: 14 8

News, sport, weather: 10 10

Banking: 5 2

Porn: 5 7

Govt info/services: 4 1

Others: 13 12

Most visited site categories (from the top 100)

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

BBC – Visualising the Internet

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8562801.stm

Accessibility: Better or Worse?

7 Most visited sites - Australia

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

WAVE Home page errors

JavaScript on home page

Contains Non-W3C content

Google Australia 4 Yes No

Facebook 15 Yes Yes

YouTube 24 Yes Yes

Yahoo!(7) 41 Yes Yes

Windows Live (bing) 0 Yes No

eBay Australia 19 Yes Yes

NineMSN 52 Yes Yes

7 Most visited sites - USA

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

WAVE Home page errors

JavaScript on home page

Contains Non-W3C content

Google 4 Yes No

Facebook 15 Yes Yes

Yahoo! n/a Yes Yes

YouTube 24 Yes Yes

Myspace 2 Yes Yes

Amazon 1 Yes Yes

Wikipedia 1 Yes Yes

Gov 2.0

Gov 2.0For everyone?

Carrots and sticks

Speak softly & carry a big stick

Shout& a Small twig

Regulators&

Complaints

Universality: Web for all?

It ain't 1999: Party or no party

WCAG 1.0 –

Technological prohibition

Source: “Wheeling in second life” video

Killing Bambi

Technological Technological diversitydiversity

WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Support 1.Content works with assistive

technologies

2.User agents are available and don't discriminate

WCAG squib

Technology cross-roads

Prohibition

Acceptance

NZ Guidelines WCAG 2.0, Level AA

• Do not rely on scripts, applets and other programmatic objects (e.g. Flash, Silverlight and Javascript)

• Do not provide content in document formats other than HTML (e.g. PDF, RTF, Word, Flash, etc)

Source: NZ Government Web Standards, http://www.webstandards.govt.nz/technical/

Time for a rethink

Sticks don't always work

Incentives not barriers

Look to the future

Embrace WCAG 2.0

Conformance requirements

Assistive TechnologiesNot content Technologies

Compliance statements

Forgive the sins of the past

Raise awareness

Source: “Refreshable Braille and the Web” video

Pictures worth a thousand words

Developer resources

Technology costs,but who pays

Educate assistive technology users

Thank you

Comments please

Roger Hudson

Email: rhudson@usability.com.au

Web: www.usability.com.au

Blog: www.dingoaccess.com