Tag: accessibility

FSOSS 2012: Accessible Applications

Attending FSOSS (Free Software and Open Source Symposium) 2012 this morning. One session in particular caught my eye since I’ve been looking into how to make our web services more accessible, but just writing about making anything we might offer students more accessible. So here are my notes:

Accessibility: Importance, Challenges, Technology, and Implementation

Chad Pilkey & Justin Robinson

A lot of people (10-20% of population) have a functional disability. Not just an ethical issues, but also a legal one.

Software student is working on is using Adobe Flex 4 with its own Accessibility Framework using API.

Need to plan ahead of time and can make it much more user friendly.

HTML5 ARIA

  • accessible rich internet applications
  • allows for dynamic content compatible with screen readers
  • assist HTML5 with flex-like accessibility features
  • useful to those who need it; invisible to those who don’t

Limitations

  • flex: uncooperative components, potential obsolescence e.g label components will not be read (have to use built-in labels)
  • HTML5: not yet standardized, may remain that way for the next 2 years

Combined both in order to make up some of the limitations.

Need to test!

Considerations

  • metadata
  • hot keys or way to skip past chunks of content
  • ability to change colours & fonts
  • larger buttons (don’t require very high precision)
  • a/v: transcripts, captions, volume control

There are definitely more considerations, but they didn’t list them all.

I didn’t include many notes on importance, types of disabilities, and screenreaders, etc., so more general information since I’m familiar with much of it and have blogged about it (which I’ll repost shortly).

OLITA Digital Odyssey 2012: Outside-In – Approach to Inclusiveness

The presenter spoke quite quickly,and there was a lot of points on the slides, so I didn’t catch everything. I also focused more on design aspects than anything else.

Defining Inclusive Design

  • design that is inclusive of the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference
  • designing for diversity

Digital Exclusion

  • access to online systems no longer an option
  • estimated social and economic cost of digital exclusion
  • required for government, commerce, education ,etc.

Bridging the Gap

  • developers design for the typical or average user
  • Assistive technology (AT) is intended to bridge the gap to reach anyone that requires alternative access systems
  • this bridge is inadequate: only some disabilities and only reaches a few countries

Specialized Assistive Technology

  • 28% of the world
  • rising in cost
  • decreasing in availability

Accessibility Legislation

  • necessary foundation for systematic change
  • AODA groundbreaking approach to legislating accessibility
  • but currently
    • hard to update
    • hard to keep current
    • accessibility requirements seen to constrain innovation
    • fear of implementing new technologies
    • one-size-fits-all solution

Global Consensus

  • need new approach
  • especially with an aging population, which needs more alternatives as they grow older

True Accessibility

Need New Approach

  • more inclusive of full diversity of learners
  • more relevant to educational demands
  • more timely and continuously renewable
  • contextualized or embedded in learner’s context

ARLIS/NA 2012: Designing for Diversity

This morning, I attended the ARLIS/NA 2012 Conference workshop on designing for diversity presented/facilitated by the OCAD Inclusive Design Research Centre. There was a lot of discussion on barriers and challenges with some discussions on solutions. Honestly, I’m not sure I learnt anything new, but there were some interesting discussions that happened.

IDRC

Goal: digital inclusion

All their projects are open source, and include:

  • Engage: museum vistor experiences
  • CollectionSpace: collections management system, primarily by museum
  • Decapod: document digitization
  • Floe: inclusion in open education resources
  • Fluid: inclusive user experiences, umbrella project
  • Tecla via Komodo

User Experience Examples

We started with a discussion of general examples of good and bad user experience elements in our own personal experiences.

Bad

  • cord tangle
  • lack of browser interoperability
  • inconvenient touch keyboard layout
  • lack of flexibility in filling out forms e.g. 2 last names, accents
  • downtime
  • having to relearn interface of new version
  • can’t link direct to article
  • lack of search features
  • locked font sizes on email
  • meaningless error messages

Good

  • responsive design
  • transparency
  • alternative interactions i.e. touch
  • augmented reality layer
  • switch languages
  • filter searching
  • free wifi
  • autologin
  • RSS
  • cloud sync e.g. dropbox
  • social bookmarking
  • bibliographic managers
  • citation linking
  • security
  • consistency

Barriers

With respect to inclusion, what are some of the challenges or barriers at visual-based libraries/collections, image management, or other related products, services, organizations?

  • facilities concerns (i.e. older buildings)
  • alternative formats e.g. descriptions for image collections
  • cost/resources
  • expertise
  • attitude/awareness
  • vocabulary, translation
  • non-standardized vocabulary, but standardized doesn’t work as one size fits all
  • arranging physical collections to make sense
  • equipment/software inflexible

User Focus

Think about the user’s

  • goals
  • abilities and needs
  • expectations
  • pain points/frustrations
  • physical/environmental context
  • workflow context
  • current solution (if it exists)

User Modelling

While no linear or checklist, there are some important steps including working out scope (hunting and gathering of what are the possible problems), and behaviours (what happens when you interact, what want to achieve). Always a constant iterative work.

Personas

  • fictional, archetypal profiling of groups of users
  • humanizes abstract users

User states & contexts

  • enumeration of the various states and contexts users might be in
  • much more granular understanding of users
  • e.g. sensory, dexterity, cognitive, communication

One Solution Fits All

No one solution fits all, but if you’re restricted to one solution, then the key is to make a:

flexible, configurable environment.

Case Example

One of the situations we discussed is the physical reference desk. While the goal is for the desk to be a welcoming place where people know that’s where they can get help, the desk is frequently a place where there is a big standing only desk, which can be uncomfortable, tiring, and inaccessible.

Solution? Possibly, separate desks for different types of questions, with double monitors and possibly double keyboards for more in-depth or look up questions.

Do we need the desk? Particularly for directional questions, perhaps a desk isn’t even needed. For in-depth reference, the suggestion is to have two chairs on the same side of a table.

Media Access & Media Accessibility

Captioning is important to compensate to audio (poor, noisy background, not allowed), to quickly browse a video, catch details, show correct spelling, support for ESL, accessible, and it’s compliant. Description is important for similar reasons.

Captions and transcripts could greatly help with searching of media as well.

Few Media Players & Internet Plug-ins

  • Flash (DFXP, QTText)
  • Quicktime (QTText, SMIL, tx3g subtitles, CC tracks/Line 21 braodcast captions)
  • Windows Media Player
  • Silverlight
  • VLC
  • Flow Player – fallback to non-flash video
  • NCAM Player – find feature
  • JW Player – fallback to non-flash video
  • Magpie – Windows Captioning
  • Capcat (s?) -MAC Captioning

Information & Resources: Inclusivemedia.ca

Future Tools

  • HTML5 video with track tag once built into browsers