Title: Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future
1Web Accessibility 3.0 Learning From The Past,
Planning For The Future
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- Brian Kelly
- UKOLN
- University of Bath
- Bath, UK
- Email
- b.kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
- Blog
- http//ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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2Scenario Planning
- Let us critique the first two scenarios in order
to explore their limitations (their benefits have
been well documented) and see if a third scenario
might address such limitations
3WAI Approach
WAIs Approach
- WAI model relies on conformant Web sites,
conformant authoring tools, conformant user
agents - and conformant users!
- A common complaint of standardistas the user
needs to take responsibility - There is value in this argument but there are
practical shortcomings - And user technophobia/laziness/lethargy is only
one obstacle - How many users know they are disabled?
Also note importance of evidence-based research.
Various UK accessibility studies seem to find
that lack of evidence of accessibility of Web
sites for PWDs and conformance with WCAG
guidelines!
4WCAG In Context
WAIs Scenario
- WCAG 2.0 states that Web resources must be
- Perceivable Operable
- Understandable Robust
- But this should apply after weve decided what
our purposes our, rather than constraining what
we can or cant do - Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic Are
AtrociousNot universally understandable, now
universally accessible, culturally-specific but
witty - Adobe Flash, MS Word, Are these formats
essential to your corporate infrastructure and
workflow? - Web 2.0, Ajax, Blog, Wikis, UGC, Do these
provide useful services to your users?
Legislation take reasonable measure .. Is
bankrupting your company reasonable? Is failing
to satisfy your user community reasonable? Is
dumbing down the English language reasonable?
5Holistic Approach
Holistic Scenario
- Kelly, Phipps Swift developed a blended
approach to e-learning accessibility - This approach
- Focusses on the needs of the learner
- Requires accessible learning outcomes, not
necessarily e-learning resources
Follow-up work awarded prize for Best Research
Paper at ALT-C 2005 E-learning conference
6Universal Accessibility?
Holistic Scenario
Normal Cancer
Man against snow, Austrian Tirol 1974, reproduced
with permission of the photographer Professor
Paul Hill
The Duck-Rabbit CRAFT BREWERY
The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dali (1929)
7Articulating the Approach
Holistic Scenario
- The "Tangram Metaphor (Sloan et al, W4A 2006)
developed to avoid checklist / automated
approach - W3C model has limitations
- Jigsaw model implies single solution
- Tangram model seeks to avoid such problems
- This approach
- Encourages developers to think about a diversity
of solutions - Focus on 'pleasure' it provides to user
8Accessibility 2.0
Holistic Scenario
- Need to build on WAIs successes, whilst
articulating a more sophisticated approach.
Accessibility 2.0 - User-focussed Its about satisfying users needs
- Rich set of stakeholders More than the author
and the user - Always beta Accessibility is hard, so were
continually learning - Flexibility Theres not a single solution
- Diversity Theres also diversity in societys
views on accessibility (e.g. widening
participation, not universal accessibility) - Blended solutions Focus on accessibility and
not just Web accessibility
But do scenarios 1 and 2 scale to the size,
complexity and diversity of todays Web?
9(No Transcript)
10The Web is Agreement
11Where Are We In This View?
IT
Web
Web
WAI
WCAG
- WCAGATAGUAAGuniversal accessibility
- Motherhood and apple pie?
- Demonstrably flawed after 10 yearse.g. Lilley
99.99999 of the Web was invalid HTML. W3C
pretended that didnt exist. - So 99.9999 of Web isnt WCAG AA conformant!
- WCAGother guidelinesuser focusblended
accessibility widening participation - Not yet proven wrong, but ignores scale of Web
The Holistic Hamlet
The Pixel of Perfection
12 13Accessibility 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Accessibility 1.0
- Handcrafted resources made accessible
- Accessibility 2.0
- Institutional approaches to accessibility
- Accessibility 3.0
- Global approaches to accessibility
14A Fresh Look At Accessibility
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- We acknowledge that
- Not everything on the Web will ever be accessible
- Accessibility may not cross cultural, linguistic,
national and discipline boundaries - An individual does not need a universally
accessible resource rather s/he wants a resource
which is accessible to them - Different communities may have different needs
- Same person may have different needs at different
times and places - Lets not talk about the accessibility of a
resource - We find the term inclusive more useful than
accessible to people with disabilities
15Getting There
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Web 1.0
- Focus on resources published by institutions
- Focus on management of resources (CMSs)
- Web 2.0
- Focus on users and user-generated content
- Focus on reuse of resources (syndication,
embedding, ) - Focus on user comments and discussions
- Trust and openness
- Accessibility 1.0
- Focus on accessibility of published resources
- Focus on software to support publication
processes - Accessibility 2.0
- Focus on accessibility of use of content rather
than content - Blended accessibility cf potential of social
networks to facilitate discussions - Trust and openness orgs taking reasonable
measures involvement with users in design
processes cf Kelly et al on design for people
with learning disabilities
16Alternative Resources
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Public library example
- Presentation at national Public Library event
- And heres a Flash-based game weve developed.
Easy to do, and the kids love it - What about accessibility?
- Oh, er. Well remove it before the new
legislation becomes into force - Blended approach
- Whats the purpose of the game?
- To keep kids amused for 10 mins, while parents
get books - How about building blocks or a bouncy castle as
an alternative? This is an alternative approach
to problem, which doesnt focus on disabilities
17Library Standards on Alternatives
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Use Case
- Catalogue records for books available in multiple
formats - Book, large print book, abridged book, cassette
tape, Braille, CD, MP3, - Need for standards to facilitate retrieval of
resource which satisfies end users needs - MARC 21/RDA Developments to established library
standard - AccessForAll ISO/IMS Standard aimed at
describing alternative for learning resources - DCMI Accessibility metadata work
Recognition of challenges of the multiple
standardisation routes described in
Personalization and Accessibility Integration
of Library and Web Approaches, Chapman, Nevile,
Kelly and Heath
18Web 3.0
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Web 3.0
- Data working with data
- Direct intervention by people not always needed
- Software can make heuristic assumptions
- Can get better as more data made available
- The Semantic Web / Linked Data vision which
exploits connections on the social graph
Its not the Social Network Sites that are
interesting - it is the Social Network itself.
The Social Graph. The way I am connected, not the
way my Web pages are connected. Tim Berners-Lee
19Semantic Approach
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- From Kevin Kellys One Machine perspective
- It doesnt matter where the content is
- It doesnt matter who owns the contents
- Challenge is to exploit the connections
I express my network in a FOAF file, and that is
a start of the revolution. It is about getting
excited about connections, rather than nervous.
Tim Berners-Lee
20Accessibility 3.0
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Were already seeing computer software giving us
hints on resources which may be of interest to us - Note how improvements can be made
- By system gathering more data
- By user providing preferences and other hints
clues - By others providing data
- By author metadata
Challenge Can such developments be applied to
provide benefits to people with disabilities?
21Initial Experiments
- Project work to explore ways of enhancing
accessibility - FLUID project
- A community, a product, and a collection of tools
created by an international team - Provides an infrastructure that enables rich
customisations of an application's user interface
appearance and behaviour based on the needs of
both institutions and individual users. - Tools which can be integrated into popular
education software (Uportal, Moodle, etc.) - Iterative design and agile development process
22Semantic Web Principles
- Principles which may be required
- Persistent URIs for resources
- Metadata in RDF
- Accessibility metadata schema published on Web
- Accessibility terms published in public
ontologies - Applications to allow user tagging
- Applications to provide links to equivalent
resources - Openness of software, content and metadata
- Encouragement of vendors to support
personalisation
23Learning From The Past
Accessibility 3.0 Scenario
- Were starting to explore an Accessibility 3.0
vision - But what lessons must we learn from Accessibility
1.0 - We dont want a theoretical solution
- The dangers of standardising too soon
- The dangers of legislating too soon
- The dangers of ignoring diversity
- The need to get market acceptance for tools
- The difficulties of getting market acceptance
- Standards-based solutions may not deliver
Note that the Accessibility 3.0 vision is based
on W3C Semantic Web principles. A challenge for
W3C and user community is reconciling WAI and SW
visions and how they are interpreted.
24Conclusions
- Accessibility 1.0
- WAI model is flawed
- Evidence shows WAI approach is a political
success, but not implemented significantly - Accessibility 2.0
- Holistic approach takes pragmatic view of WCAGs
successes applies it in a user-focussed context
based on institutional framework - But neither approaches scales to the World Wide
Web - Accessibility 3.0
- Builds on Social Web and seeks to apply social
graph to enhance accessibility of user services - Very early days
But can this view be sold to organisations,
governments and individuals who have bought a the
view of WAI delivering the answer? These
conclusions are aimed at the accessibility
researchers and practitioners to persuade them
that a rethink is needed
25Another Interpretation
- Accessibility 1.0
- Based on encoding of HTML resources
- Accessibility 2.0
- Based on mix of the HTML (and other) resources,
the services, the context, - Accessibility 3.0
- Based on mix of above plus 'intelligence' of the
Web in its behind-the-scenes applications e.g. - Semantic Web applications
- Use and sharing of tags etc across applications
- More atomic resource components so easier to
mix-and-match - Microformats and lots of tags
- ...
26Conclusions
- Theres a need
- For accessibility researchers to gather evidence
on proposed solutions to accessibility - To explore ways in which changes in our
understandings can be adopted and deployed - This paper
- Explores limitations of current approaches
- Suggests alternative approaches
- Future work
- Need to critique the critique
- Need to develop better models for change control
- Need to learn from the past
27Questions