Forum OpenACS Q&A: ADA (disabilities, not the language)

Posted by Cathy Sarisky on 04/12/03 09:31 PM

I was going to comment over on the Copenhagen blog, but no permissions. This is a better place anyway.

The question about what do we do about accomodating users with disabilities comes at a good time, since I'm trying to get a site up to something resembling speech-reader friendly.

Leaving it to the browser probably isn't really good enough.

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/browsereport.jsp has some info, and there's a page validator too. I'm in the process of tweaking ad_form, then template builder, and at least the standard template to do this: http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/gls/g41.html

Will be happy to share if anyone's interested.

There are also some resources at http://uaweb.arizona.edu/styleguide/accessible.shtml

2: Re: ADA (disabilities, not the language) (response to 1)

Posted by Frank N. on 04/14/03 08:42 AM

Cathy, could you provide a link to the blog in question, please? I only see the dotLRN one on collaboraid.biz, and I suspect that is not the one you are referring to.

I quickly read some of the contents in your reference to UoA, and it seems even they have missed at least one thing (the "Skip Navigation" link should be visible). I will comment further on this in the near future, but right now I think we'd better have a bit of patience. Most people had not even left Copenhagen when I departed for home, so I expect things to be fairly quiet around here for the next few days.

3: Re: ADA (disabilities, not the language) (response to 1)

Posted by Steve Manning on 04/14/03 11:11 PM

Here in the UK the Royal National Institue for the Blind (RNIB) publish some useful stuff on web accessibility (http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/)

They have a hints page at http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/hints.htm and recommend the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) which is part of the W3C I believe.

Interestingly, the RNIB quote the UK's Disability Discrimination Act and I think they are looking for a high profile site to tackle with a legal case. It may be that in the near future disability access may be a legal requirement, at least in the UK.

Steve

4: Re: ADA (disabilities, not the language) (response to 2)

Posted by C Sarisky on 04/14/03 11:23 PM

Frank,

The Copenhagen blog was mentioned in a previous thread: https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=92017

I know many people are still at the conference (lucky them!) - ultimately, I need these changes in the site I'm working on, whether or not they're of general interest or end up being incorporated.

My feeling is that it would nice for the html cranked out of ad_form to have accessibility features (at least the easy ones) included by default.

5: Re: ADA (disabilities, not the language) (response to 1)

Posted by Frank N. on 04/15/03 09:29 PM

Cathy, I was wondering if there was a blog somewhere for Friday, seems there are mostly photo collections from that day.

My vote would definitely go for putting in any accesibility patches that could be done easily.