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A few months ago, I tweeted about a number of PDF sessions run by Adobe and AGIMO. The slides and advice are now available from AGIMO’s Web Guide PDF Accessibility page.

In summary, PDFs can be used as long at least one other accessible format is provided with all PDF documents.

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Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

This year, I’ve decided to write about someone who is relatively unknown in the broader web community but is very knowledgeable in the accessibility field. She would never blow her own horn, which means that only those of us who have had the pleasure of working with her knows how good she is. She’s a shy and quiet type, and is truly one of the nicest and most generous person I know. She has been working in the tech and user experience field for a while. She’s smart, passionate and she knows her accessibility stuff.

I want you to meet my friend and colleague, Kim Chatterjee. What I love about Kim is her willingness to share her knowledge and time to help everyone, even if it means very little sleep for her! She has a detailed understanding of accessibility and has spent quite a few years doing some cool accessibility work in Government. She’s also really great at communicating complex concepts through interesting and lovely visuals. She’s really humble about her achievements so if you do get to meet her, she won’t tell you how good she is but if you get to chat to her, you’ll soon realise the depth and breadth of her accessibility knowledge.

While others are out and about talking the talk, Kim is busy with the actual doing. She’s helped to inspire a number of people about accessibility, who have now gone on into other organisations either carrying a passion for accessibility or having an increased awareness of accessibility. Now that’s inspirational.

The good folks over at WebAIM recently conducted a survey of screen reader usage and preferences. The results of screen reader survey are now available. Interesting results to note include:

• The most popular screen reader is JAWS (74%), followed by Window-Eyes (23%), NVDA (8%) and VoiceOver (6%).
• 41% of screen reader users update their screen reader software after the release of a new version.
• 40% of screen reader users does some form of customisation.
• 28% of screen reader users sometimes uses the ‘skip to content’ link with 38% having no preference about the wording.
• 52% navigate by headings.
• 53% find pop-up windows somewhat difficult to very difficult to use.
• Interestingly, if a web page contains a photo (of the White House in the survey), 80% of screen reader users prefer the use of “Photo of the White House” rather than “The White House” (some had no preferences in this regard).

The most telling finding is the conclusion from WebAIM:

Perhaps the most significant conclusion we can make from these survey results is that there is no typical screen reader user… This survey emphasizes that screen reader accessibility is about real people – and people that have diverse abilities and preferences.

It’s good to see the Brits being proactive in the web accessibility field. The draft accessibility standard – BS 8878 Web accessibility – was released on 1st December for comment and aims to provide guidance on accessibility, usability and user experience processes in relation to people with disabilities, rather than on technical and design issues.

BSI British Standards is inviting all interested parties, and in particular marketing professionals and disabled web users, to review and comment on the draft of a new standard on accessible websites. DPC BS 8878 Web accessibility – Building accessible experiences for disabled people – Code of Practice is applicable to all public and private organizations wishing to offer accessible, usable websites to their customers. [...]

Based on PAS 78: 2006, Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites, DPC BS 8878 informs organizations of their legal responsibilities in relation to web accessibility, calling on them to appoint a specific person or department to oversee activity. [...]

The draft BS 8878 Web accessibility standard is available for viewing and commenting until 31 January 2009 – note that (free) registration and login is required.

Article via The Web Standards Project

My thanks to Max Design for highlighting the recent court ruling in California regarding the accessibility of Target Corporation’s website.

A federal district court judge issued two landmark decisions on the 2nd of October in a nationwide class action against Target Corporation.

The first decision involved the court certifying the case as a class action on behalf of blind Internet users throughout the country under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition to violating the ADA, the suit charges that Target has also violated two Californian civil rights statutes: the California Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Disabled Persons Act.

In the second decision, the court stated that websites such as target.com are required by California law to be accessible.

For more information:

• Court Ruling Says California Disabled Rights Law Applies to the Web
• Blind patrons sue Target for site inaccessibility
• Judge allows class action against Target Web site

This is a step in the right direction, although it’s sad that it has to get to this stage before action is taken by the big corporations. Remember, accessibility is best done proactively – not reactively.

Meet Glenda Watson Hyatt – she is an author, blogger, podcaster and she runs her own accessibility business called Soaring Eagle Communications in Canada. By the way, she has cerebral palsy.

Glenda shares her life story in her book I’ll Do It Myself to show others that cerebral palsy is not a death sentence, but rather a life sentence. Having previously visited Australia where she chatted with Jacqui Dalling at her blog Terrible Palsy, Glenda is back in the land down under. As part of her virtual book tour, she answers my questions about living with cerebral palsy and web accessibility.

Starting at the beginning…You mentioned being integrated into a regular classroom when going through school, plus going on to earn the highest award in Girl Guides, the Outstanding Junior Student Award and a gold medal in horseback riding! What was it like going through “mainstream” school with cerebral palsy?

To be honest, I preferred regular class to special ed class. For the most, I felt part of the group, albeit the fairly quiet part. I think I was challenged more and more was expected from me. I’ve probably accomplished much by being mainstreamed than I would have by staying in special education.

You recently coined a neat phrase – “Disability 2.0 – Nothing about us without us”. Are you able to expand on what you mean by this?

So many decisions, policies and such are made that affect people with disabilities, yet we are not part of the process. Some of these decisions and policies are absolutely ridiculous, yet we need to abide by them to get the services we truly need. By Disability 2.0, I mean a greater emphasis on self-determination – on people with disabilities being actively and equally involved in the decision-making process, and being present when information regarding them is shared and discussed.

It’s amazing reading about using your left thumb to type. Do you use a standard keyboard to type and navigate around websites? Are there any other technologies that you may use?

Yes, I plunk away at on a standard keyboard with only my left thumb; my four fingers glide along the top of the keyboard to steady my unsteady hand. However, it is becoming more difficult to find keyboards without an extra row of keys along the top.

In place of a mouse, I use a Traxsys (formerly Penny + Giles) joystick. Definitely not an inexpensive alternative at approximately $700 Canadian. OUCH! But I have much better control with the joystick than with the mouse. With the mouse, one involuntary or jerky hand movement and the mouse pointer goes flying across the screen. How frustrating!

I also use EZ Keys software for word prediction and abbreviation expansion. As I begin typing, the six most frequently used words starting with those letters appear in a small blue box on the screen. Different words appear as I continue typing. When the word I want appears, I simply hit the corresponding number and the computer completes the word. It does save me quite a few keystrokes! Although, even with this handy software, I still only type approximately ten or twelve words a minute, give or take.

Communication has always been a key message in your blog. With web 2.0 bringing new and fascinating ways of interacting with people around the globe, what are some of the key opportunities and challenges that you have faced with web 2.0 technologies?

These technologies have expanded the ways I can interact with people. The new opportunities to connect with people are truly amazing! I am eagerly waiting time to explore Second Life and to see what it is all about.

However, I am reluctant to fully embrace some of these technologies because they aren’t accessible to people with some types of disabilities and, if my business is about web accessibility, I feel I need to walk the talk as much as possible.

It has been interesting reading about your accessibility work for the Canadian Government and encouraging to see the growing awareness of accessibility and the W3C WCAG 1.0 in both the government and private sectors. To some extent, there seems to be a perception that web accessibility is mainly for people with visual disabilities. Developing websites for people with motor related disabilities is not often covered to the same depth as say, visual disabilities. Have you got any tips for our readers on some things to consider when developing websites for people with motor disabilities?

I agree that there is a misperception that web accessibility is mainly for people with sight impairments, and the barrier facing people with other disabilities are discounted. For me with limited hand function, I find those pop-out menus difficult to navigate – they either disappear before I can click or I end up clicking the wrong link and going somewhere I didn’t want to go. It would help if those menus were keyboard navigable so that I could tab through the links if necessary. Equally frustrating are tiny clickable areas; redundant text links are helpful. Also, timed tasks are some times difficult for me to complete before the session times out. A way to increase time would be appreciated.

Many thanks to Glenda for taking the time to satisfy my curiosity and for the opportunity to be part of her Summer Sojourn virtual book tour. Don’t forget to check out her Do It Myself blog where you can read and purchase her inspiring autobiography I’ll Do It Myself You can also help out by voting for Glenda in the “blog for a year” competition.

A local Canberra team, Team Audio Programming Assistant (APA) from the University of Canberra, have won Microsoft Australia Imagine Cup. APA presented their entry to a panel of judges at Microsoft’s Remix conference in Melbourne. The team used Visual Studio SDK to customise Visual Studio 2005 so that it could be used by vision impaired programmers.

The team demonstrated their entry by covering their laptop screen and using verbal commands to write code, including the use of the Intellisense autocompletion feature. In addition, the team presented a customised IE browser which read out links on a web page and lets users fill in input fields and dialog boxes. APA also designed a web site specifically for blind developers, consisting of tips, tricks, and tutorials for teaching the blind how to write code.

It’s good to see local tertiary talent take off! Well done to APA.

Source of information: APC mag article and Ars Technica article.

I’ve always been passionate about accessibility and in particular, the social aspects and implications of living with disabilities. One of the blogs I follow on a regular basis is Glenda Hyatt’s Do It Myself Blog. Glenda shares her experiences about living with cerebral palsy and it’s just fascinating having the opportunity to get an insight into her life and the interesting challenges that she and her husband face. Glenda recently posted about the Blog For a Year competition.

Blog For a Year is a social sponsorship experiment by Charles Jolley that awards one winner a year-long contract to blog full time on a blog of his or her own choosing. The award is funded by donations from the community and sponsors. The competition ends when the Blogger Fund reaches $160,000 or on January 1, 2008, whichever comes first.

It’s an interesting concept. Glenda writes:

Blogging is fulfilling my childhood dream of having a regular column in which to share personal experiences of living with a disability so that readers may come to know me, the person, and to realize that I am more than my cerebral palsy. My goal is to alleviate people’s fears of those with disabilities in a non-confrontational and humorous way. Unlike writing a column in a local newspaper, blogging has allowed me to touch people from around the world. My dream would be even sweeter if I could find a way to be paid for blogging.

You can vote once a day for a blogger of your choice. I’m showing my support for Glenda by voting for her. You can support her too!