CSCI1406

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Lecture 27
CSCI1406 Introduction to Programming with Visual
Basic
Dr Peter Yardley
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• The Disability Discrimination Act.
• Guidance on conforming to the DDA.
• Colour
• Fonts
• Images

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Designed for Web site design, but also applicable
to local system design. The Disability Discrimi
nation Act (DDA) 1995 Act has been implemented in
stages, and the crucial date for any organisation
with a web site was 1 October 1999,
. it is unlawful for a provider of services to
discriminate against a disabled person.
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The 1995 Sction III.regarding compliance of
websites Excerpt from the Disability Discriminat
ion Act (DDA) 1995, Section III
19. - (1) It is unlawful for a provider of
services to discriminate against a disabled
person- (a) in refusing to provide, or deliberat
ely not providing, to the disabled person any
service which he provides, or is prepared to
provide, to members of the public
(b) in failing to comply with any duty imposed on
him by section 21 in circumstances in which the
effect of that failure is to make it impossible
or unreasonably difficult for the disabled person
to make use of any such service
(c) in the standard of service which he provides
to the disabled person or the manner in which he
provides it to him or (d) in the terms on which
he provides a service to the disabled person.
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Excerpt from the Code of Practice (revised) -
Rights of Access Goods, Facilities, Services and
premises 2.17 - It is important to remember that
it is the provision of the service which is
affected by Part III of the Act and not the
nature of the service or business or the type of
establishment from which it is provided.
In many cases a service provider is providing a
service by a number of different means. In some
cases, however, each of those means of service
might be regarded as a service in itself and
subject to the Act. Example An airline company
provides a flight reservation and booking
service to the public on its website. This is a
provision of a service and is subject to the Act.
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Who is responsible under the terms of the Act?
Every individual, from the managing director to
the most junior employee is liable under the Act.
In addition, it does not matter whether the
employee is in full or part-time work, and
whether they are in a permanent or temporary
post. Sole traders, firms, companies and partners
hips are all liable, as are the self-employed,
employees, volunteers, contractors and agents.
Who has rights under the Act? Both adults and chi
ldren are protected by the provisions of the
Act .provides that disabled person is a pe
rson that has a physical or mental impairment
which has a substantial and long-term adverse
effect on his ability to carry out day-to-day
activities.
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• What is meant by reasonable steps?
• .the reasonable steps to be taken by a
  particular service provider will depend on
  
• the type of services being provided
• the nature of the service provider and its
  resources
  
• the effect of the disability on the individual
  disabled person.

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• ..a non-exhaustive list of factors to be taken
  into account when considering what is
  reasonable
  
• whether taking any particular steps would be
  effective in overcoming the difficulty that
  disabled people face in gaining access to the
  service in question
• the extent to which it is practicable for the
  service provider to take the steps
  
• the financial and other costs of making the
  adjustment
  
• the extent of any disruption which taking the
  steps would cause
  
• the extent of the service providers financial
  and other resources
  
• the amount of any resources already spent on
  making adjustments
  
• the availability of financial or other
  assistance.
  
• ..it is difficult to believe that any provider
  of services could argue poverty as an excuse for
  not ensuring their second or third generation web
  site should not be designed for the use of both
  disabled and able people.

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• No legal action has been taken in the UK to date
  in relation to the poor design of web sites
  
• When challenged, companies have tended to alter
  their web site to make it accessible, rather than
  resists legal action.
  
• The Disability Rights Commission can also fund
  representation for individuals, where it believes
  discrimination has occurred.
  
• It has the power to instigate formal
  investigations into sectors, such as the world
  wide web, where it believes that discrimination
  is taking place

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• RNIB August 2000 - testing 17 web sites of high
  street stores and banks against the following
  criteria
  
• Was the text legible. Important factors to
  consider were the text and background colours and
  whether they contrasted well. Patterned
  backgrounds are particularly difficult to read
  against.
• Was alternative text to provide a verbal
  description of the image for those visiting the
  site who use speech synthesis software.

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• If frames were used, whether a noframes tag is
  offered to provide a link to a frames-free
  version of the web site. It is possible that some
  blind people use software that cannot read
  frames. In addition, if frames were used, whether
  they had titles.
• Ease of navigation. Graphical navigation links
  need to be supported by alternative text, and the
  destination of the link should be obvious. For
  instance, if a link reads click here, where the
  link is pointing is not obvious to a blind
  visitor.
• Did all the web pages pass the Bobby test? The
  Centre for Applied Special Technology
  (http//www.cast.org/bobby) has created an
  automated checking package, with the name
  Bobby. Although this software does not consider
  every aspect of a web site, nevertheless it will
  test most web sites for basic design features
  that may cause problems for disabled visitors.

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• Financial institutions visited (Abbey National,
  Alliance and Leicester, Nat West and HSBC), all
  failed the assessment.
  
• The supermarkets (Asda, Marks and Spencer,
  Safeway, Sainsburys, Somerfield, Tesco) failed,
  although Marks and Spencer and Somerfield passed
  the Bobby test.
• The two fast food sites (Pizza Hut and Pizza
  Express) were particularly poor and failed all
  the tests.
  
• The clothing and retail stores (Debenhams,
  Dorothy Perkins and Evans) all failed the tests.
  
• W H Smith and the Post Office, both failed the
  tests.

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• Web site designers should take responsibility to
  ensure everyone, regardless of their ability or
  disability, can read their designs.
  
• Companies who have web sites, plan to produce a
  web site or intend to develop second and third
  generation web sites should recognise the needs
  of blind and partially sighted visitors.
• Blind and partially sighted people were urged to
  get in touch with organisations direct to raise
  the issues if web sites were poorly designed.
  
• Companies featured in the Report were encouraged
  to acknowledge the needs of disabled people and
  take steps to improve the design of their web
  sites. Since this research was published.

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• Colours good use of colour and contrast
• Text font sizes, ASCII art, language, acronyms
  and abbreviations, site maps, text-based
  websites.
  
• Layout and structure layout and data tables,
  structural mark up, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets),
  Frames, DOCTYPES and metadata
  
• Images alt text, image maps and animated
  images.
  
• Multimedia Flash, audio and video and Adobe
  PDFs.
  
• Navigation link text, new windows, access keys,
  hidden navigation and page titles.
  
• Java and JavaScript.
• Linearisation the order of web page content

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• Relying on colour alone to convey information.
  For example, a statement, which reads Stocks
  and shares highlighted in green have increased in
  value relies solely on someones ability to
  perceive colour. Another example may be colour
  used on its own to highlight where in a
  navigation menu the page is.
• Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to set colours
  that cannot be overridden by someones personal
  preferences. Also bear in mind that not everyone
  uses Style Sheets in their browser.
• Using low contrast colour schemes. For example,
  text should always stand out clearly from a
  background, whether the background is colour or
  an image.

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• Use other methods and indicators to distinguish
  information, as well as colour. For example, the
  statement use above could now read Stocks and
  shares highlighted in green (bold) have increased
  in value.
• As colour coding, consider using structural
  headings, grouping information and using
  different font weights. However avoid using
  italics or capitalisation as this can be
  difficult to read.
• Make sure that people can override the colours
  you specify. By using flexible CSS you can allow
  people to customise your pages to suit their
  needs. An example of this would be to use
  relative rather than fixed settings and sizes.
  This will allow someone to make the text bigger
  or change the background colour for example.

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• Use colour to enhance accessibility. For example,
  using coloured icons can increase the ability of
  people with dyslexia or learning problems to
  navigate and recognise information. Care must be
  taken to ensure that the icons have clear and
  succinct alt text reflecting the meaning of the
  icon. Other examples may be to use coloured
  borders to create visual separation, or text
  colour used with a change of font weight.
• Use alternate row colouring in tables that are
  used to display colour.
  
• Use high contrast colours for text and
  backgrounds wherever possible.

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• Use relative font sizes easier to size text as
  you wish.
  
• Avoid using text characters to simulate graphics
  ASCII art often visually means something
  different to what it is as text.
  
• Use clearest, simplest language possible.
• Explain acronyms and abbreviations always
  ensure you explain the full acronym or
  abbreviation.
  
• Language indicate the main language of the site
  and changes in language so that speech and
  braille output know what it is reading.
  
• Provide a text based site map.

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• Only use tables if CSS layout is impractical.
• Use CSS to format tables and their contents.
• Wherever possible use percentage () values for
  the sizes of a table and its elements.
  
• Keep the structure of the table as simple as
  possible.
  
• Provide a table summary attribute that explains
  the relationships between cells, such as those
  with nested content or those span columns. The
  summary can be used to explain how the table
  fits into the context of the page. It is
  important that if you do provide such
  information, that it should be kept brief and
  that use of a summary is optional.
• Frames naming frames and providing HTML links
  within frames allows everybody to navigate pages
  even if they do not have frames supported.

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Alt text adding alt text allows users of speech
and braille output to access images.
Detailed alt text alt text for spacers, icons,
bullets and arrows. Images of text can caus
e problems for screen magnification users but not
if an alternative is offered.
Animated images can be difficult to read, dist
racting and dangerous for people with epilepsy.
Image maps these are a great visual aid as lo
ng as they have alt text and information is also
accessible by text.
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Macromedia Flash Flash MX now has some features
in it that have improved its accessibility.
Audio and video audio and video can act as an
excellent means of conveying information as long
as alternatives are provided such as transcripts
to audio or descriptions. Adobe Acrobat PDFs
Adobe has done much work towards making PDFs
accessible. As with HTML and Flash etc it is the
designer's responsibility to make content
accessible.
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• Not underlining text links.
• Not providing space between text links.
• Using characters such as and together
  with links.
  
• Relying on people having a mouse to activate your
  navigation.

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• Provide navigation that is as simple and as
  intuitive as possible.
  
• Underline text links.
• Make sure your navigation can be activated by the
  keyboard as well as by the mouse as not everybody
  can use a mouse.
  
• Provide a text based site map where possible.
  Using ordered and unordered lists for this
  purpose is considered the best way to present
  information.

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• Creating timed events with no controls for people
  to stop or pause the event.
  
• Creating scripts or applets that rely solely on
  mouse-only events, such as onMouseOver.
  
• Creating scripts which do not have accessible
  alternatives.
  
• Creating scripts which cause screen flicker,
  movement or blinking.
  
• Creating scripts which change the focus to a
  different window or element on the page without
  warning the person using it or providing an HTML
  alternative. For example, links designed to open
  in pop-up windows which can't be activated when
  scripting is not supported
• Providing important content or functionality
  solely in a format that relies on the
  availability of java of scripting.

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• Ensure the page will make sense and can still be
  used when scripts, applets and objects are turned
  off.
  
• Minimise the use of client-side scripting as far
  as possible. Where it is not essential, rely on
  HTML content instead.
  
• Include alternatives to client-side
  scripts. These should be inserted where the
  script itself would be active in the web page.
  This means that if scripting is not available,
  the content will be presented in its
  place.
• Include a text description alternative for Java
  Applets and other objects.
  
• Ensure that you provide keyboard controls for
  your scripts and applets. For example, use the
  onKeyPress event handler as well as the onClick
  one.
• If your script provides animation, page
  refreshes, or timed events, provide controls that
  allow people to stop, pause or switch it off.

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Avoid separating associated information in layout
tables.
The browser will read the first row of the table
cell by cell, then the second row.
Ensure information that relates to other pieces
of information can be followed on logically
Nested tables are a particular problem.