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We write about Digital Accessibility. This includes topics related accessibility news, accessibility events, accessibility techniques, reviews of websites and applications, tips related to accessibility and in simple words all possible things about digital accessibility.

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April

2018

WCAG 2.1 is now a proposed recommendation

April 24, 2018 Srinivasu Chakravarthula 1 comment Accessibility News , , , ,

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 has become a proposed recommendation a while ago. This is possibly a last step before a standard becomes W3C recommendation. In short, this process is to confirm if required corrections are made. Here is what it means in the words of W3C.

7.6.4 Call for Review of Proposed Corrections

Document maturity level: A Recommendation, plus a list of proposed corrections. The Working Group should also include a detailed description of how the Working Group plans to change the text of the Recommendation for each proposed correction.

Announcement: The Working Group must announce the Call for Review to other W3C groups, the public, and the Advisory Committee. This is not a formal Advisory Committee review. However, the announcement must clearly indicate that this is a proposal to make normative corrections to the Recommendation and must:

  1. specify the deadline for review comments;
  2. identify known dependencies and solicit review from all dependent Working Groups;
  3. solicit public review.

Purpose: At this step, W3C seeks confirmation of proposed corrections to a Recommendation.

Entrance criteria: The Working Group calls for review when, with respect to changes to the document, the group has fulfilled the same entrance criteria as for a Call for Review of a Proposed Recommendation.

Duration of the review: The announcement begins a review period that must last at least four weeks.

Ongoing work: Same as for a Proposed Edited Recommendation.

If there are no formal objections to the proposed corrections, W3C considers them normative. The Working Group must report formal objections to the Director, who assesses whether there is sufficient consensus to declare the proposed corrections to be normative.

So this should be final and final chance to have any say and contribute to WCAG 2.1. As I see it, there have been a lot of great efforts and WCAG 2.1 looks awesome. Why not we just start implementing it?

Gratitude to all those who have closely involved in putting these standards together.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day: beyond digital accessibility

April 22, 2018 Srinivasu Chakravarthula Leave a Comment GAAD , ,

It’s true that most of the events being planned to observe Global Accessibility Awareness Day are focused on digital accessibility. This is not because someone doesn’t like about other aspects. It is happening just due to most people who are involved or hosting GAAD are from technology background. There is no restriction to observe GAAD only in the area of digital space.

Here are a few ideas as to how GAAD can be observed in many other ways:

  1. Get your neighbours together and do analysis to see if your apartment / house / township is usable and accessible to people with disabilities and elderly. Is your elevator accessible to users with blindness? Is your common areas accessible to users with wheelchair? If you invite a guest with disability, can they stay with comfort at your house? Would you be able to help them using toilet?
  2. Go to nearby schools and have a conversation around how education is important and so is true for people with disabilities too. Most schools are reluctant to admit children with disabilities. Help them understand how technologies are evolved and come as aid to people with disabilities to learn science, maths, etc.,
  3. Visit nearby hospitals and do a talk about advancement life and technology and how they should advice when something cannot be cured with medical efforts.
  4. Talk to disability organizations around you and if needed, mentor them to understand real means of rehabilitation. I have seen scenarios where people at mid-age develops disability, they were asked to enrol for courses like chair caning, candle making etc., instead working towards putting them back into the area where client have worked for a long time. This needs to be changed.
  5. Talk to restaurants around you and help them to make their hotels and services accessible.

There would be many more ideas that one can look at.

Let’s think through!

Using WAVE – an Accessibility Evaluation tool by WebAIM – #GAADSeries

April 20, 2018 Srinivasu Chakravarthula 1 comment GAAD 2018 , , ,

This is a guest post by Kameshwari Devi Kiran Kumar

This article briefly explanes how to use the WAVE tool to test accessibility for a website. There are primarily two methods of using the tool:

  1. Entering the URL of the website you would like to test into the ‘Webpage address’ textbox given for the purpose at

https://wave.webaim.org/

and hitting the ‘Wave’ button to see the results.

  1. Downloading the extension from the ‘Webaim’ site from the below URLs:

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-tool/jbbplnpkjmmeebjpijfedlgcdilocofh

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessibility-tool/

 

Steps to download and use the tool:

  1. Go to the above URLs.
  2. Activate the ‘add to Chrome’ or ‘Add to Firefox’ button depending on the browser you are working with.
  3. Activate the ‘add to extensions’ button.
  4. Once the extension is added to Chrome / Firefox, open the webpage you would like to test and activate the ‘Wave’ button next to the browser address bar or press ‘Control+Shift+U(Command+Shift+U in case of MAC)’ to fetch the report.

Wave report and features:

The tool runs an accessibility check and displays icons representing the search results.

  1. The default results page shows you a summary in the sidebar. It lists errors (red icons), alerts (yellow icons), features (green icons), structural elements

(blue icons), HTML5 and ARIA elements (lavender icons), and contrast errors (which don’t show up as icons).

  1. Above the summary results are buttons to let you look at the page with no styles, or to view only the contrast errors.
  2. To the left of the summary panel, you can opt to see details, documentation,

or an outline of the page structure. On the right, where your web site is pictured, you can click on any icon to get a brief explanation and a link to more information.

  1. You can look at the code for the icons mention by clicking the ‘code’ tab at the bottom. The code panel shows you the code related to any icon you click on the page of WAVE tool results