- From: Cynthia Waddell <CyWaddell@ciber.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 08:52:18 -0800
- To: "Jean-Marie D'Amour" <jm.damour@camo.qc.ca>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Hello, Catherine Roy and team gave a wonderful presentation yesterday at CSUN. Many questions were asked as to whether or not a follow-up study will be funded. The methodology and results were very interesting. Good job! Cynthia Waddell --------------------------------------- Cynthia D. Waddell, JD CIBER Principal Consultant Subject Matter Expert Accessibility Center of Excellence (800)547-5602 or Fax (800)228-8204 ACE Offices are located at San Jose, CA, Sacramento, CA and Raleigh, NC USA San Jose Office: PO BOX 5456 San Jose, California USA 95150-5456 http://www.icdri.org/cynthia_waddell.htm -----Original Message----- From: Jean-Marie D'Amour [mailto:jm.damour@camo.qc.ca] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:21 PM To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Subject: How assistive software supports Web Accessibility Hello all, My colleague Catherine Roy and me will give a presentation at CSUN wenesday at 14h50, room Newport at Hilton. The title is: How assistive software supports Web Accessibility. Here is the introduction: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and the Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. There are 14 guidelines and 65 check points. These check points refer to 85 different techniques. All of these elements comprise what is asked of Web developers. However, screen reader software doesn't always provide access to information required from Web developers to ensure content accessibility. For example, complex images, like diagrams and graphics, must have a long description via the "longdesc" attribute. And only the most recent version of JAWS and IBM Home Page Reader, a voice browser, give access to this particular information. As a result, Web authors are asked to use the "longdesc" attribute and to add a d-link as an alternate solution. Among Web accessibility experts and Web developers trying to make their sites accessible, numerous questions have been raised concerning the way various assistive software treat or simply ignore the accessibility information added to pages. Not surprisingly, developers are rather unmotivated to bring modifications that will hardly be, if at all, considered by the assistive software. And when the accessibility information is treated, they would like to understand how it will actually be rendered to users in order to adjust their methods to attain the desired results. Unfortunately, the aforementioned example isn't an isolated case. That is why we felt it necessary to conduct this comparative study on various screen readers and text to voice browsers in order to verify to what extent these tools support Web accessibility recommended by the WAI as well as to explain how the accessibility information is treated or not and how it is transmitted to users. Our study answers such questions and could become a useful reference tool to those concerned with Web accessibility. Additionally, our evaluation proposes recommendations for screen reader software developers that would allow them to improve support to Web accessibility. To attain this goal, there is effectively a need for Web and assistive technology developers to work together. Regards, Jean-Marie D'Amour, M.Ed. CAMO pour personnes handicapées www.camo.qc.ca > Montréal, Québec, Canada >
Received on Thursday, 21 March 2002 11:48:11 UTC