An Accessible Work-Wide Web

This is a copy of an article written by Robyn Hunt for the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand. Robyn is a partner in AccEase, founded in 2001 with to ensure website information is easily accessible. She is one of New Zealand’s leading experts in the field of disability, and an award winning journalist and communicator with a particular experience in creating accessible web content.

“If anybody asks me what the Internet means to me, I will tell him without hesitation: To me (a quadriplegic) the Internet occupies the most important part in my life. It is my feet that can take me to any part of the world; it is my hands which help me to accomplish my work; it is my best friend — it gives my life meaning.”
Dr. ZhangXu, practising orthopaedic surgeon (via the Internet), Anshan, China

Web technology is a key resource in the workplace, whether as a website, intranet or extranet – and an increasing number of software applications are web-enabled, presenting a browser interface to the user.

This technology has growing application for everyday workplace activities including collecting and reading news, information gathering and dissemination, commerce, education and training, distance learning, job searching and workplace interaction.

It is complementing or even displacing traditional sources of information and interaction such as print materials and libraries and even workplace discourse.

There are significant access barriers to this technology for disabled and some other people. The Forrester Report found that a surprising 60% of working age people can benefit from accessibility features some of the time, while 22% of working age people need accessibility features all of the time.

With a rapidly aging baby boomer population and worsening skills shortages, greater attention must be paid to accessibility.

Older people
As people age, they may experience vision and hearing changes and changes in dexterity and memory. However, that does not mean they will leave the workforce, or become unproductive. With the abolition of mandatory retirement, many older people are choosing or needing to work longer.

Frances West, director of IBM’s Worldwide Accessibility Centre, thinks a PC should be programmed to automatically realise that if a person is older than age 45, the font size on all applications should be larger.

"The system recognises who you are and responds accordingly," she said.

Disabled people
About 20 percent (one in five) of people living in New Zealand have a disability of some sort.
People in the workplace have a variety of impairments, not always obvious to an outside observer or disclosed to others. They include blindness, low vision and colour blindness in various forms.

Hearing impairments can range from some loss to people who are prelingually deaf and identify as culturally deaf. Some have a variety of mobility impairments such as OOS, arthritis, cerebral palsy, MS or Parkinson’s with dexterity or co-ordination problems. Others may have reading or learning difficulties.

Workplace barriers for disabled people include; providing computer input, interpreting output and reading supporting documentation.

Hardware and software tools (known as adaptive or assistive technologies) have been developed to provide functional alternatives. Examples include screen reading voice output software such as JAWS and BrailleNote, and screen enlargement software such as ZoomText.

Accessible web technology is now providing disabled people with unprecedented access to information and a crucial gateway to the world of work. Without such access, disabled people may be unable to participate at all in work for which they are qualified.

This is a waste of an increasingly well-educated and skilled population, and could result in human rights complaints. It starts earlier when a disabled child’s learning potential is inhibited because they cannot access information and output it to the same extent that able-bodied students can.

The net result is that their skills and knowledge suffer and they struggle to develop their potential. These students will in future years desire to become useful, contributing members of the workforce.

What is accessibility?
An accessible web site is one where information and services are available to everyone regardless of physical, sensory or cognitive impairments, environmental constraints or technological barriers. To make a site accessible is to make it barrier free.

Simply making information available on the web does not mean it is accessible to everyone. For example if a site is dependent on images without descriptive supporting text, then those who are blind are shut out. Images in this context do not just mean photos and graphics, but also file formats like PDFs. Accessibility means that everyone, regardless of impairment, can effectively use the information on the web.

An accessible web site enables disabled people and others who face barriers to know the site is there and what it contains understand it, navigate around and interact with the site. Applications such as web browsers and media players can be used effectively by disabled people, and they work well with assistive technologies.

Others can benefit from accessibility features
Various kinds of technology or situations also impose limits on the ability of users to easily access web technology: older technology (hardware, browsers, operating systems etc,) people working in rural areas or with low bandwidth and people who may need to use newer technology (such as mobile phones or PDAs) to access their workplace from remote locations.

Universal design
Designing to the average is exclusionary. The North Carolina University Centre for Universal Design describes universal design as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design.”

The inflexibility of average design was highlighted recently during a US Air Force exercise involving 680 cadets. On a courtyard, the cadets were read the average clothing sizes of Americans — their shoe and pant sizes, among other things — and told to leave the group if they did not fall within one size of the average. After five sizes were read out, just two cadets remained on the courtyard.

The exercise illustrates that relying on the average not only excludes those who are traditionally thought of as having a disability, but also anyone else without perfect eyesight, hearing and physical abilities. This includes the majority of people over the age of 55.

Practical designing for universal access
Examples of design requirements for people with different kinds of disabilities include:
Visual:

graphics or videos with descriptions in html
having information in an accessible format such as html, not just in PDF
well marked-up tables that enable technology to link the table text to the appropriate heading.
avoiding the use of frames for lay up as they cause problems for assistive technologies
keyboard support (access keys that comply with e-government standards),
screen reader compatibility

Hearing:

captioning for audio
supplemental illustration for text

Physical, speech:

keyboard or single-switch support for menu commands
alternatives for speech input on voice portals
links of a size that enables a user with mobility problems, such as Parkinson syndrome, to activate them

Cognitive, neurological:

consistent navigation
well-structured presentation
appropriate language level
illustrations
no flickering or strobing designs.

Multi-modality supports visual, auditory, tactile access. This simply means presenting the same information in a variety of ways which can be used by a variety of users. Multi-modality also increases the usability of websites in different situations:

low bandwidth (images are slow to download)
noisy environments (difficult to hear the audio)
screen-glare (difficult to see the screen)

Redundant text/audio/video (that is, same material presented in different ways) can support:

different learning styles
low literacy levels
second-language access.