Extend your reach - making your website accessible to everyone

Extend your reach
Mike Osborne - AccEase Ltd
www.AccEase.com

©Copyright AccEase Ltd. 2011 All Rights Reserved www.AccEase.com

Where are we going today?
1. What’s the problem
2. Get the mindset right
3. Some simple things that make a
big difference


What’s the problem?


What’s the problem?

20%
may be struggling with your website

And the other 80%
could be having a better experience


Will you have a
WCAG 2.0 AAA
compliant website
after this
webinar?


No.


But, you will be able
to remove a number
of common barriers.


Get the right mindset


Universal Design

A universal approach
to improving accessibility.


Multiplicity


UD Principles
• Equitable use
• Flexibility in use
• Simple and intuitive
• Perceptible information
• Tolerance for error
• Low physical effort
• Size and space for approach and use


Rich Information
Information is available in different formats
and can be delivered by different technologies
Plain English
Magnifiers
Sign language
Captions
Audio description Voice Recognition

Easy Read Internet
Web / email
Readers
Regular Print E-,screen, human, talking book
Large Print Braille
hard copy – braille display


Limited approaches
Deaf Blind Low vision Mobility Reading
4 million careful owners    
Beehive     
Bioethics Council   
Community Net    
Companies Office   
Department of Labour    
Embassies    
Employment Relations Service   
Ministry for the Environment    
GCSB    
Good Practice Funding  
Government Jobs  

How should we get started?
• Use a broad ranging group
• Accessible communication starts at the beginning
• you can’t add it in later
• Accessible design is about everyone
• 80% get it for free
• Go for the low-hanging fruit – start easy
• we’ll pick some today
• Pick your experts carefully
• they really need to know the area
• Accessible communication is as much about attitude as
expertise
• It’s not about techies who get hung up on methodologies instead of
results


Important factors
• Accessible web platform
• Visual designer who “gets it”
• Structured approach
• Early and frequent testing & validation
• User/customer-centred focus
• Think “task completion”


Action to task completion
• It’s about action – helping people to get
things done faster and easier
– When completing tasks on websites, the
longer they take the less satisfied they are
• Hence, usability is a near relative of
accessibility


Accessibility
does not mean making
your website equally
unusable for everyone.


What gets in the way?
• Lack of knowledge
• Lack of will


• Branding & Visual Designers


• Internal Focus
– It’s all about us
• Narrow focus
– make the site accessible for screen readers

Customers don’t care about your website
or you organisation
they care about themselves.


• Belief that it’s too hard
– more expensive, take longer, little return

If you do it at the start,
the difference is negligible.

• Poor platform choices
– You will never adequately overcome a platform
that delivers inaccessible HTML


Make a difference


When is best time
to make your site accessible?
• Now
• But – the easiest time is
when you’re designing and
building it


Hyperlinks
What is the rule/convention?
• Blue underlined
• Whatever colour this site chooses, may or
may not be underlined.
(capture by branding/designers)

Must you do blue underlined? No.
Would it make it easier for your site visitors?

Size does matter
• Make your hypertext links longer.
– Better meaning & larger target size

Find out more about the Building Act.
Find out more about the Building Code.

This scheme was introduced in November 2007.
This revised qualifications scheme was introduced in
November 2007.

PDFs
• Think of PDF as an alternative format
– That facilitates nice print quality
• HTML is always your first choice
• Don’t put text in images
– Don’t scan text and make PDF
• Check if Reflow works
– View | Zoom | 150%
– View | Zoom | Reflow


Accessible PDF example
SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY
http://www.mediaaccess.org.au
/online-media/social-media
http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/sites/default/fil
es/files/MAA2657-%20Report-
OnlineVersion.pdf


Horizontal scrolling


Linking to Documents
• No Surprises
• When linking, include the size and type inside

es
the link

pris
– Annual Report (PDF 250kB)

S ur
– Membership Survey Analysis (MS Excel 150kB)

N o

Images
• Use images
- they break up text,
- give visual cues,
- help people with reading difficulties.
• Don’t put text in images
• But do add text that describes the image
- as alt text,
- captions, or
- long descriptions.


Highlight links for tab key
• Keyboard only users tab their way round
– But it’s really hard to see where they are

• a:link {border:2px solid white}
• a:focus {border: 2px solid blue}


Adequate contrast
• Also avoid red/green contrast
Red text on green background Red text on green background
• Download the contrast
analyser
Vision Australia

www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=628


Screen Readers - Fangs


Plain English
• Use simple plain English
• Assess it here
http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php


Plain English
• Or here
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults


Questions - Discussion

Mike Osborne AccEase Ltd
Ph: 64 4 974 5235 Web: www.AccEase.com
Mob: 64 21 675 010 Blog: www.LowVisionary.com


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