Directions for using Slide Show

• Works across browsers
  • Advance to next slide with mouse click, space bar or swipe left
  • Move forward/backward between slides with Cursor Left, Cursor Right, Pg Up and Pg Dn keys, or swipe left or right
  • Home key for first slide, End key for last slide
  • The "C" key for an automatically generated table of contents, or click on "contents" on the toolbar or swipe up or down
  • Function F11 to go full screen and back
  • The "F" key toggles the display of the footer
  • The "A" key toggles display of current vs all slides
  • Font sizes automatically adapt to browser window size
    • use S and B keys for manual control (or < and >, or the - and + keys on the number pad
    • Use CSS to set a relative font size on a given slide to make the content bigger or smaller than on other slides
  • Switching off JavaScript reveals all slides

Copyright © 2005-2013 W3C ^® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved.

Mobile is more than just phones...

• phones
• tablets
• TV Remotes
• videogame controllers
• devices we don't even imagine yet

What is W3C/WAI?

WAI develops strategies, guidelines, resources to make the Web accessible:

• Accessibility support in W3C technologies
• Guidelines for implementing accessibility
• Methods for evaluating accessibility
• Developing resources for education and outreach
• Coordinating with Research and Development
• Standards Harmonization

How do W3C & WAI standards support Mobile Accessibility

Existing accessibility guidelines and standards provide extensive guidance on mobile accessibility

• WCAG 2.0 was designed to be forward-compatible, and is proving to be so
• UAAG 2.0 includes mobile in guidelines for user agent and user interface accessibility
• IndieUI Events is new work toward web apps independent of device or input method
• Many additional W3C and WAI resources that support mobile accessibility
• WAI/mobile/ — central document with links to WAI & W3C resources that apply to mobile

WAI/mobile/

• brings together many different W3C resources for mobile and accessibility
• today there are links to the resources
• in the future, we want to make it easier to use
• in process (there are opportunities to sponsor WAI work)

Business Case for Mobile Accessibility in Your Organization

Mobile and Accessibility share some similar barriers

Cost savings in developing for both, especially early in the project, because once your website is ready for mobile it is most of the way toward being accessible.

Mobile Accessibility Resources

• Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities — description of common barriers and solutions
• Table of Shared Web Experiences — chart of common barriers and the guideline or best practice that addresses them.
• Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• From MWBP to WCAG 2.0 — lists what more to do if your site already meets MWBP to conform to WCAG 2. The reverse advise is also available From WCAG 2.0 to MWBP

Mobile Resources

• Mobile Web Application Best Practices
• Mobile Web Best Practices
• mobileOK Checker

How WCAG 2.0 Applies to Mobile

WCAG at a Glance

WCAG 2.0 was designed to be flexible. It's Principles can be applied to different types of web sites, different technologies and different devices.

WCAG 2.0 Principles

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust

Examples of WCAG 2.0 Applied to Mobile

WCAG 2.0

While all the guidelines of WCAG 2.0 apply to mobile, these are some of the most relevant:

• labels for buttons and control (1.1.1, 4.1.2) - Voiceover, Talkback or other text to speech
• sufficient contrast (1.4.3, 1.4.6) - mobile's reverse video is not desktop high contrast, also needed for outdoor brightness
• captions, transcripts and sign language interpretation (1.1.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.4,1.2.6) - media players
• audio description (1.2.3, 5, 7) - media players
• adaptable layout (1.3) - one handed use
• focus visible (2.4.7) — intended for keyboard, but also needed by touch users

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Mobile Examples

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
Implementing UAAG 2.0 - latest editors' draft with mobile examples

As the web is increasingly becoming the platform for interoperable applications, the need for accessibility guidelines for the user interface is also increasing.

• Setting preferences for text display (1.4.1) Ben chooses the larger text for font size in the mobile settings dialog box so that it is easier to read with his low vision. Note: This requires that the mobile OS reveals the system font setting to the app developer, which is not yet available on all mobile platforms.
• Open on Request (1.8.9) Ray's mobile device automatically opens location links and calendar dates found on web pages in native apps available on the device. When he returns to the browser, focus on the original link is maintained so he knows his location, even though he cannot see the page.
• Multimodal keyboard operation (2.1.1) Karen cannot easily use the onscreen keyboard to navigate Web pages on her mobile phone because of muscle weakness. Instead, she uses gestures to move between elements on the page. As focus moves from one element to another, there is a visble focus indicator.
• Move viewport to focus (1.8.2) Lee typically views web content on her mobile phone at a high level of zoom, frequently positioning elements outside the viewport. When moving between focusable elements, the viewport automatically scrolls to the element currently in focus.
• Direct Navigation to Important Elements (2.3.1) Mary uses speech input with a mouseless browsing plug-in for her browser and smartphone since her repetitive strain injury. The plug-in overlays each link with a number that can then be used to directly select it (e.g. by speaking the command "link 12"). This prevents Mary from having to say "tab" numerous times to select a link.
• Present Direct Commands from Rendered Content (2.3.2) When reading email on her tablet, Mary touches a control which opens a toolbar with a setting to display the accesskeys and other direct commands that the author created. She sees that a 3-finger swipe will delete the current email.
• Document Accessibility Features (3.3.2) Neta relies on gestures and shortcuts to complete tasks because of her repetitive strain injury. Using a specialized command, she can pull up a list of all the gestures and commands available with descriptions on how they function.

More UAAG 2.0 Examples

Some examples are not currently supported on current mobile technology:

• User style sheets (1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3) Mattias prefers to read text highlighted in blue as it is being read out aloud which supports his reading disability. Both the highlight and text color are configurable and override the author stylesheets so text is readable and has sufficient color contrast.
  Tanya browses to a new website on her mobile phone and finds that the site is not optimized for mobile devices. She alters the stylesheet to provide better layout and larger fonts. The custom settings for the stylesheet are saved and applied when she returns.
• Hide background images or transparent overlays (1.1.x) Betty has difficulty reading text on her mobile device when it is displayed over a background image due to her low vision. In her settings, she can disable all background images from being rendered in her browser.
• Maintain point of regard (1.8.7) Xu is reading a page with footnotes that are too small to read on his mobile device. Xu scrolls the page until places the footnote at the top of the browser, and using the increase font-size feature, he increases the font-size of the text on the page. The footnotes stay on the top of the viewport.
• Persistent Accessibility Settings (2.7.1) Betty has low vision and customizes her mobile browser's color and font settings to make make text much easier to read. Her browser incorporates a cloud-based profile so that her settings are retained across browsing sessions, and also available on her desktop and tablet browsers.

  WAI expects that completion of the UAAG guidelines will help drive improved accessibility in the mobile devices.

Events for User Interface Independence

Events for User Interface Independence (IndieUI) First Public Working Draft

specifies a layer between device input abilities and what the user wants to do, such as

• scrolling a view
• canceling an action
• adding a value to a widget
• selecting a range, etc

so that the device can infer what action the user wants — no matter what the modality (keyboard, mouse, touch, gesture, speech) or the raw input (e.g. a 3 finger swipe custom gesture) — and send the appropriate event to the web application.

Please send comments on this Draft by 22 February 2013.

R&D WG symposium on mobile accessibility research

The W3C WAI Research and Development Working Group (RDWG) recently held a research symposium on mobile accessibility. This symposium explored some of the current challenges and issues to inform further research and development. The group is currently preparing a research report with the main results of the symposium.

Papers contributed to this symposium included:

• Paper 1: Accessible Security For Mobile
• Paper 2: Enabling Flexible User Interactions With Mobile Media
• Paper 3: Accessibility In Multi-device Web Applications
• Paper 4: Assessment Of Keyboard Interface Accessibility In Mobile Browsers
• Paper 5: Inclusive Mobile Experience: Beyond The Guidelines And Standards

HTML5 Accessibility

HTML5 is not finalized, but is becoming a stable draft. Some improvements for accessibility are:

• new markup helpful for navigation <nav>, <article>, <aside>, <header>, <footer>, <section>
• improved error reporting in forms completion
• improved integration of WAI-ARIA to allow authors to provide additional accessibility semantics when needed

HTML5 and web apps

• a single application can work cross platform - desktop, mobile, android, iOS, and others
• don't require an app store
• increasing use of APIs for communicating with the device (camera, GPS, accelerometer, etc)

W3C Report on Standards for Web Applications on Mobile

Standards for Web Applications on Mobile: current state and roadmap

Report sections of potential interest to AT developers:

1. Graphics — Web Open Font Format, Fullscreen API
2. Multimedia — analysis of audio, video and images.
3. Device Adaptation — Device Description Repository, Media Capture (cameras), CSS Media Queries and Device Adaptation (identifying the device capabilities and adapting the web app to the device)
4. Forms — Date & time, pattern, placeholder, datalist and new type= for improved error reporting
5. User interactions — Accessibility, touch, vibration, speech input, and web notifications
6. Data storage
7. Personal Information Management — Contacts API and Calendar API
8. Sensors and hardware integration — APIs for Geolocation, sensors for ambient light, proximity and humidity; device orientation and acceleration, near-field communications and USB & bluetooth.
9. Network
10. Communication_and_Discovery
11. Packaging
12. Performance & Optimization

W3C Report on Standards for Web Applications on Mobile

Each section of the report contains a written description of the standards and the changes since the last report. Each section contains a chart with the spec, working group link, maturity, stability, latest editors draft, current implementations (by major browsers), and test suite.

What's Next?

Web Accessibility Initiative's work relies on public participation to obtain the quality of results we all want.

• Comment on specifications
• Subscribe to email lists
• Join community groups or working groups
• Your organization can become a W3C member
• Your organization can become a WAI sponsor
• The Assistive Technology community is particularly critical for mobile web accessibility, please come join us in this effort.

Participating In WAI -> w3.org/WAI/participation

Thank You

Participating In WAI -> w3.org/WAI/participation

w3.org/WAI/Mobile/

This presentation w3.org/Talks/2013/0201-MobileAccessibility/

Jeanne Spellman, <jeanne@w3.org>