Techniques for User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

16 October 2002

6 Resources

Note: W3C does not guarantee the stability of any of the following references outside of its control. These references are included for convenience. References to products are not endorsements of those products by W3C.

6.1 Operating system and programming guidelines

[ACCESSIBILITY-DEV-HOWTO]
"How to Develop Accessible Linux Applications", S. Snider, ed.
[ACCESSIBILITY-HOWTO]
"Linux Accessibility HOWTO", M. de la Rue, S. Snider, eds.
[APPLE-HI]
Refer to the following guidelines from Apple:
[ATK]
The ATK library provides a set of interfaces for accessibility in the GNOME environment.
[BHO]
Browser Helper Objects: The Browser the Way You Want It, D. Esposito, January 1999. Refer also to http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q179/2/30.asp.
[ED-DEPT]
"Requirements for Accessible Software Design", US Department of Education, version 1.1 March 6, 1997.
[EITAAC]
"EITAAC Desktop Software standards", Electronic Information Technology Access Advisory (EITAAC) Committee.
[GECKO-API]
The Mozilla developers offer a FAQ that explains how to communicate with Gecko, the rendering engine in the Windows platform.
[GNOME-ACCESS]
The GNOME Accessibility Project. See in particular [Draft] How to make GNOME 2.0 Applications Accessible.
[IBM-ACCESS]
"Software Accessibility", IBM Special Needs Systems.. Refer to the IBM guidelines for software accessibility, IBM guidelines for Java accessibility.
[ICCCM]
"The Inter-Client communication conventions manual". A protocol for communication between clients in the X Window system.
[ICE-RAP]
"An ICE Rendezvous Mechanism for X Window System Clients", W. Walker. A description of how to use the ICE and RAP protocols for X Window clients.
[JAVA-ACCESS]
"IBM Guidelines for Writing Accessible Applications Using 100% Pure Java", R. Schwerdtfeger, IBM Special Needs Systems.
[JAVA-CHECKLIST]
"Java Accessibility Guidelines and Checklist". IBM Special Needs Systems.
[JAVA-TUT]
"The Java Tutorial. Trail: Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing". An online tutorial that describes how to use the Swing Java Foundation Class to build an accessible user interface. Refer also to information on the Java Foundation Classes.
[JAVA13]
Refer to information about character encodings required by Java version 1.3.
[JAVAAPI]
Information on Java Accessibility API can be found at Java Accessibility Utilities.
[MAC-ACCESS]
Accessibility features of the MacIntosh
[MOTIF]
The OSF/Motif Style Guide.
[MS-ENABLE]
Software accessibility guidelines for Windows applications. Refer also to Built-in accessibility features.
[MS-KEYBOARD]
Information on keyboard assistance for Internet Explorer and MS Windows.
[MS-SOFTWARE]
"The Microsoft Windows Guidelines for Accessible Software Design". Note: This page summarizes the guidelines and includes links to the full guidelines in various formats (including plain text).
[MSAA]
Information on active accessibility can be found at the Microsoft Active Accessibility home page. See also About Active Accessibility Support for information about Active Accessibility SDK support provided by the MSHTML component of Internet Explorer (for HTML documents).
[NOTES-ACCESS]
"Lotus Notes Accessibility" IBM Special Needs Systems.
[PHOTO-RDF]
"Describing and retrieving photos using RDF and HTTP", Y. Lafon and B. Bos. The 3 May 2000 version of the W3C Note is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-photo-rdf-20000503/.
[SAMI]
Information on Synchronized Accessible Multimedia Interchange (SAMI) accessibility.
[SUN-DESIGN]
Articles, Talks, and Papers from Sun Microsystems about accessibility.
[SUN-HCI]
"Towards Accessible Human-Computer Interaction", Eric Bergman, Earl Johnson, Sun Microsytems 1995. A substantial paper, with a valuable print bibliography.
[TALKINGBOOKS]
(USA) National Information Standards Organization. One activity pursued by this organization concerns Digital Talking Books. Refer to the "Digital Talking Book Features List" and "Digital Talking Book Standards Committee Document Navigation Features List" drafts for more information.
[TRACE-EZ]
"EZ ACCESS(tm) for electronic devices V 2.0 implementation guide", C. M. Law, G. C. Vanderheiden, 23 February 2000. This guide, developed by the Trace Research and Development Center, describes a simple set of interface enhancements that can be applied to electronic devices so that they can be used by people with disabilities, or anyone who experiences difficulty using a device in the standard method of operation.
[TRACE-REF]
"Application Software Design Guidelines" compiled by G. Vanderheiden. A thorough reference work.
[WHAT-IS]
"What is Accessible Software", James W. Thatcher, Ph.D., IBM, 1997. This paper, available at the IBM Accessibility Center, gives a short example-based introduction to the difference between software that is accessible, and software that can be used by some assistive technologies.
[XGUIDELINES]
Information on accessibility guidelines for Unix and X Window applications. The Open Group has various guides that explain the Motif and Common Desktop Environment (CDE) with topics like how users interact with Motif/CDE applications and how to customize these environments. Note: In X, the terms client and server are used differently from their use when discussing the Web.

6.2 User agents and other tools

A list of alternative Web browsers (assistive technologies and other user agents designed for accessibility) is maintained at the WAI Web site.

[ADOBE]
access.adobe.com. Tools and information about Adobe PDF and accessibility. In particular, see the how to access PDF documents through MSAA; this is a PDF document.
[ALTIFIER]
The Altifier Tool generates "alt" text intelligently.
[AMAYA]
Amaya is W3C's test-bed browser and editor.
[AWB]
The Accessible Web Browser, senior project at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
[CSSVALIDATOR]
W3C's CSS Validator service.
[DIRECTDOM]
DirectDom technology, available from alphaWorks, allows a Java developer to manipulate the live Document Object Model of a browser or Scalable Vector Graphics plug-in to build rich graphical user interfaces.
[G2]
The G2 player version 7 for Windows.
[HELPDB]
HelpDB is a test tool for Web table navigation.
[HPR]
Home Page Reader.
[IE-WIN]
Internet Explorer 5.0 for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. Refer also to information on using COM with IE. Refer also to information about monitoring HTML events in the IE document object model.
[JFW]
JAWS for Windows.
[LYNX]
The Lynx Browser.
[MOZILLA]
The Mozilla browser.
[NAVIGATOR]
Netscape Navigator.
[ODP-DOM]
Open Directory Project information on the W3C DOM.
[OPERA]
The Opera Browser.
[QUICKTIME]
The QuickTime player.
[TABLENAV]
A table navigation script from the Trace Research Center.
[VALIDATOR]
W3C's HTML/XML Validator service.
[VIAVOICE]
ViaVoice voice recognition software.
[WINDOWEYES]
Window-Eyes.
[WINVISION]
Winvision.

6.3 Accessibility resources

[BRAILLEFORMATS]
"Braille Formats: Principles of Print to Braille Transcription 1997" .
[NBA]
The (USA) National Braille Association.
[NBP]
The (USA) National Braille Press.
[RFBD]
Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.
[SAPI]
Microsoft's Speech Application Programming Interface.
[SPEAK2WRITE]
Speak to Write is a site about using voice recognition to promote accessibility.

6.4 Standards resources

[ISO639]
"Codes for the representation of names of languages", ISO 639:1988. For more information, consult http://www.iso.ch/cate/d4766.html. Refer also to http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/iso639a.html.