Accessibility
Accessibility
Via DataGridGirl: Microsoft has come up with a hotfix for datagrids to make them 508 compliant. The fix addsUseAccessibleHeader, Caption, and CaptionAlign attributes to the datagrid control. The default setting for UseAccessibleHeader is False. If you set it to true the grid will render with TH tags with scope="col" set.
This is GREAT NEWS for those of us who develop .gov or .mil websites!!!
Now the BAD NEWS! You have to call Microsoft in order to get the patch. GRRRRR! This should be a free download.
It does for government
sites. The law mandates it. But what about commercial sites? There's
an interesting debate going on centering around the wording of the ADA and the
critical word 'place.' Is a web site a place?
Article
from the Section 508 site
Position Paper
from the National Council on Disability
Paschal posted a list of articles on Web Site Accessibility that I'll have to dig into.
Unfortunately most of them are blocked here at work so I'll have to wait until I get home to read them.
Pascal L
adds:
Jim let me add
also to your list some resources:
Other screen readers you can try with a
downloadable demo:
Window-Eyes
MAGic screen magnification software
Read also this article on Screen-Reader Accessibility
And also Accessify with an
almost complete list of resources
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative has a checklist to help you make sure your sites are accessible. The checklist is divided up into three priority levels. Priority 1 being the most serious problems and Priority 3 being the least serious.
From the checklist:
Each checkpoint has a priority level assigned by the Working Group based on the checkpoint's impact on accessibility.
- [Priority 1]
- A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
- [Priority 2]
- A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
- [Priority 3]
- A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.
Some checkpoints specify a priority level that may change under certain (indicated) conditions.
Another great way to at least understand the challenges involved is to run your site through a screen reader. JAWS is one of the popular screen readers and they have a free demo that you can download. It has a short time limit (40 minutes) but at least it gives you an idea of what the visually impaired have to work with.
Paschal L had some comments on accessibility today. To those of us in government service this is a very important subject since Section 508 makes it mandatory to make all government web sites accessible to the disabled.
Bobby is a good tool to begin checking your site for accessibility, but it doesn't guarantee compliance with Section 508. It doesn't check everything that 508 mandates. Nothing beats the good old human eye and and knowing the law when checking your code for compliance.
One problem that I come across frequently is forgetting about color-blind users. If you're using color to indicate something on your site and you use red or green then color blind people will see that as gray. To get around this you should use some other method to indicate this also. You dont have to get rid of the coloring but you should include another method for color-blind user.
There are a number of other issues. The Section 508 site covers most of them in depth.