WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative

DE4105 WAI - TIDE

The emergence of the World Wide Web has made it possible for individuals with appropriate computer and telecommunications equipment to interact as never before. The Web is the stepping stone, the infrastructure, which will pave the way for next generation interfaces. Part of the W3C's commitment to realize the full potential of the Web is to promote a high degree of usability for people with disabilities.

The current situation in that area is not very good and is getting worse everyday as more and more people rush into the Web business without any awareness of the new limitations and frontiers they may create. No single disability population is unaffected.

For example:

• People who are deaf cannot hear multimedia or audio events that do not contain captioning or audio descriptions.
• People who are blind struggle with the Web's inherent graphical interface, it's graphic-based content, and any Web protocol or application that cannot easily be rendered or accessed using audio, braille, large text or synthetic voice.
• People who are physically challenged have difficulty using certain hardware devices or web controls, including Web kiosks and WebTV.
• People who are cognitive and visually impaired have difficulties interpreting most web pages because they have not been designed with this population in mind.

Worldwide, there are more than 750 million people with disabilities. A significant percentage of that population is affected by the emergence of the Web, directly or indirectly. For those without disabilities, the Web is a new technology that can help unify geographically dispersed groups. But these barriers put the Web in danger of disenfranchising people with disabilities in this emerging infrastructure.

Furthermore, even those without disabilities would benefit from many changes motivated by the needs of people with disabilities. When driving a car, for example, the driver may wish to browse the Web for information (movie schedules, etc.) using a voice-based interface similar to that used by the blind.

This proposal, called "Web Accessibility Initiative" (WAI), is a support action whose goal is to make the Internet, aka the Web, more accessible to all users with disabilities.

It is lead by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international vendor-neutral organization which fosters the evolution of the major Web protocol and format specifications, and whose goal is to realise the full potential of the Web (a long description is provided later on in the proposal).

W3C is currently starting a new major activity in this area, funded on its own, that includes a strong technological group working on the accessibility of the core Web formats such as HTML, HTTP, and CSS and also incorporates work on a set of guidelines accompanying the technologies and the tools that are using them (Web browsing tools, HTML authoring tools, etc).

This TIDE proposal would complement this technical work by addressing the content providers, the people that create and distribute the information, and in order to do that, we need to raise the awareness, and educate them in as many ways as we can (including rating campaign).

This European TIDE proposal, if funded, will focus on the European Web content providers and market. As global as the Internet and the Web are, there is still a clear need for "local" actions when content providers are the target. A similar fund raising activity for education and dissemination is being persued by W3C for the Americas and the Pacific rim. We think all these actions are required for the Web as a whole to become more accessible.

Working on evolving the Web technologies in the most interoperable and accessible way has always been and still is W3C's mission. Solving the technical issues is necessary but is not sufficient if we want to really succeed in making the Web and the Internet accessible universally. We have to address the content providers, the people that create and distribute the information, and in order to do that, we need to raise the awareness, and educate them in as many ways as we can (including rating campaign).

The Web is rapidly becoming the interface of choice to get access to information worldwide. There are millions of pages of data available today on the Internet and Electronic commerce widespread adoption is

the next step.

One important thing to mention is that the Internet and the Web are becoming more and more critical as a social resource: job posting or university course descriptions are good examples of things that some organizations are starting to only distribute via the Web.

Over the next few years, accessing the web to do shopping or get the weather forecast is going to be as natural as doing shopping in the supermarket or watching/hearing TV/radio.

The impact of this project on the users with disabilities is to give them the same access to information as users without a disability.

In addition, if we succeed making web accessibility the norm rather than the exception, this will benefit not only the disability community but the entire population. For instance, people wanting to browse the web through a telephone or in a car, with no screen feedback, are in a sense temporary blind and the development of voice-based interface will benefit them as well. Another example is web users using very slow link to the Internet (an economic problem likely), and for which heavy graphical images are a too expensive: widespread adoption of descriptive text added to images would allow them to get access to the same pages with no or little loss of information.

In terms of data formats the state of the art is HTML4 (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheet), which are both controlled by W3C and which are evolving in parallel to this project and in close contact with the developers (in fact the technical manager for the evolution of these formats regarding accessibility at W3C is going to be active as well in this TIDE proposal).

The clear message that we want to convey is the following: content on the web must be separated in the structure and the text on one side (what is a TITLE, a bullet LIST) and the presentation made out of it (rendered on a graphical screen, a dumb terminal, using a voice synthesizer, or a Braille device).

Not only this is good for accessibility, but this is good for the management of information itself: by virtue of this separation content/style, one can evolve the two sides separately: change the text without touching the style (the color used, the fonts, etc) and more importantly change the style without changing the content and

sharing one style for multiple different content.

There are very good economic reasons for separating the style out of the web content and HTML, as an SGML application, is perfectly suited to achieve this goal.

On other words, we really want to convince information providers that if they just do their job well, then in addition it will be accessible to all.

Of course, information on the Web is not just text and HTML: there are images, video, audio clip, or programs (like Java applet being downloaded by users).

The strategy here is called Alternative description: for instance for image, there is HTML attribute that allows content providers to describe the image in words, that can in turn be spoken or rendered on a one line telephone screen.

One goal of the W3C is to make sure all formats used on the Web, and that include multi-media formats such as video and audio, allow room for accessibility hooks and alternative delivery. For instance, the OBJECT tag being added to HTML should allow for descriptive text to be used as a replacement of any given data format being presented to the user.

This, and much more, will have to be taught to the people creating content.

In terms of browsing and authoring tools, there are products available from several software companies available on the market and one of the first action this project will conduct is a study of the existing base. The goal here is to educate tool providers regarding the style-guide that the users are expecting.

In terms of certification and rating, it's a very novel area where a couple of HTML validator exists but where most of the work (especially regarding rating system and labelling) is going to be innovative.

One important aspect of this project is that of education and awareness.

We do not seek to only enhance the format used on the Web (HTML, CSS, etc) but to go after the content providers, either directly or indirectly (through the tool and service providers they use) so that design of accessible web pages become the default case and the format extensions are put at use.

Therefore, we can say that the intended size of the application population and area if that of the Web.

In addition to the education and dissemination actions targeted at the largest content providers in Europe, we will also develop specific application domain site to illustrate good design.

Our market is the online market, aka the Internet or the Web, and it is still in rapid expansion. We think that with a very focused action over 18 months, we can succeed in making the Information Society accessible for the years to come.

Web related projects are common nowadays in Europe and worldwide, and we expect that the result of our action will impact them in a way to make their sites more accessible.

One of the thing we will promote and suggest as an awareness action during the project that a certain level of accessibility be made a requirement for EC projects generating web content. This will act as a good incentive for widespread adoption of accessibility design on the web.

The Web is global by nature and the players in the field of accessibility comes not only from all across Europe but worldwide. Through W3C, we expect to leverage that worldwide expertise and cooperate closely with non-European players. From W3C point of view, this proposal comes as complement of a wider scale initiative gathering experts worldwide in the field of Web Accessibility.

But of course, there are individual persons and organizations behind any web pages, whether authored by hand or automatically generated, and these human beings live in a given nation, not in a virtual world. With this TIDE proposal, we want to give our focus on the Europe's Information society.

In terms of economic impact, it's clear that giving access to the web to an entire section of the population (people with disability) will help the development of the information society just by bringing in more users.

In terms of social policies, this is basic non-discrimination, that some countries have already made into legislation, which is providing additional motivation to build accessibility into the Web's infrastructure. These legal standards and requirements (current and proposed) already exist in the US and other national laws. There is work in Europe to extend the national laws into a pan-European framework that would, presumably, also be considered for adoption worldwide.

Part of our education/awareness effort will aim at raising the visibility of these European legislation to the disabled users of the technologies (by hosting a web site with reference information).

There are several projects, European and worldwide, that already have expertise in the field of Web access to people with disabilities (TEDIS, ACTS Avanti, University Leuven, Industrial - COST 219, Trace, CAST, DOIT, ICADD, etc).

The partners in this proposal have very good links to these past or current efforts and one of our first activity will be to gather as much input as possible for the education aspect and to create a technical forum where existing team can participate in the elaboration of the specific awareness planning and materials.

As mentioned in the introduction, W3C is starting a separate major new technical activity in this area and this is obviously a project with which coordination is going to be critical. Thru the W3C own forum, we expect to gather input from its European and worldwide industrial membership, as well as from the US organizations that are active in this area.

This TIDE proposal complements this technical work and includes three workpackages and a cross-workpackage activity (in addition to the Project Management WP01).

• WP02: an education/dissemination/awareness workpackage whose goal is to promote the realization of accessible content.
• WP03: a certification/rating workpackage that will use the PICS technology to create a classification system assessing the level of accessibility of Web pages.
• WP04: a standardization workpackage to ensure that the Web related access technologies move forward in the official standard bodies such as ISO or EEC.
• WP05: the creation of online User forum to be used across workpackages where the disabilities community will be involved in the elaboration of the materials issued in the above workpackages.

The objective of the management workpackage is to ensure that the workplan, targets, milestones and deliverables are met within the agreed time and cost schedules.

The co-ordinating partner who will provide the project management will also provide the technical management of the project. No distinction is made in this package. Consequently, in addition to overall management tools, two other issues are addressed : the definition of common methodologies across the project, and quality control & assurance. Most of the management will be done using day-to-day electronic means between the partners, using a mailing list set up by the co-ordinating contractor.In addition, conference calls and face-to-face meeting will be scheduled on a regular basis to ensure the proper advance of the work.

A Project Steering Committee will be set-up that consists of the two main contractor managers, together with one representative of each associated contractor and a Quality Panel representative. It is responsible for the overall strategy. It also has specific responsibility for ensuring that recommendations of the Quality Panel are adhered to by the Workpackage managers doing the technical and awareness developments and dissemination.

Meetings will review progress, accept and sign off deliverables, reports and demonstrators, and identify and carry out any replanning of the project. These meetings will normally be a minimum of one-day duration. At technical meetings, each package that is ongoing will present its findings to date together with plans for future work. The aim of these technical meetings will be to bring the project together at regular intervals to allow partners to benefit from the progress being made in different areas of the project.

The goal of this work-package is to promote the realization of accessible content throughout the Web.

This need to be done using education means (teach the content providers how to create accessible content), dissemination of information (guidelines helping the authoring phases) and awareness (constantly remind new players of the issues involved). In order to reach our goal, we need to target different audiences.

The content providers are of course our first target, and "in fine" our only target, since they will eventually decide what to put on the pages.

But for doing so, they use, listen, and are influenced by, several other actors: authoring tool vendors, web site designers, web-design educators, the press and the users base.

In order to reach all these communities, we have to target our effort along a series of events: presentations/talks in major Web related conferences, organizations of free seminars at these conferences or isolated, direct contact and awareness action with major European web site providers, addition of accessibility "modules" in the curriculum of the major authoring tools educational process, direct contact and lobby with the major authoring tool providers, submission of papers in specialized and regular press.

D1: Report on presentation/talks/seminar made.

D2: Accessibility modules for authoring tools.

D3: Education guideline materials (Markup, Browser).

This work package deals with a novel idea which will use the result of the latest development in the area of Web information access: the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS).

It's about creating a new descriptive rating vocabulary to assess the level of accessibility of Web pages and putting it at work with users in a small pilot phase involving a community of people with disabilities.

PICS is an infrastructure for associating labels (meta-data) with Internet content. It was originally designed to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, but it also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing, privacy, or intellectual property rights management. We want to create another use for PICS: Level of Accessibility of Web Content.

As the PICS syntax and architecture evolves under the auspice of W3C, the system developed by this work package will be adapted to meet the new requirements.

D1: PICS compliant Rating System to assess Accessibility level of Web pages (month 6)

D2: Integration in PC platforms. (month 12)

D3: Pilot Label database on the Internet (month 12)

D4: Operational Label Bureau (month 18)

For the last three deliverables, an online demonstration will be available to test the system.

To identify and assess the international state of the art with regards to current (on-going) and future standardisation, identify requirements for accessibility and develop recommendations, disseminate the results to the relevant national, European and International standardisation bodies.

In order to determine precisely what could be the scope of any future standardisation activities regarding accessibility of Web-based interactive applications and services, a thorough investigation will be undertaken covering the broad international state of the art.

This task will also be concerned with the identification of unified interaction requirements in Web-based applications and services. Based on such requirements, we will then derive recommendations and guidelines towards unified interaction in the Web; facilitation of accessible and high quality interfaces for user with different requirements, abilities and preferences, including disabled and elderly (i.e. following the concept of design for all).

D.1 : Report on data collection methods and data analysis (Month 12)

D.2 : Draft report on standardisation guidelines for the accessibility of Web-based applications and services by people with disabilities. (Month 15)

D.3 : Report on standardisation guidelines for the accessibility of Web-based applications and services by people with disabilities. (Month 18)

This activity will focus on the creation and the maintenance of an online user forum to be used by the project workpackages to gather user needs and requirements.

Both BrailleNet/INSERM, RNIB and EBU will participate in the elaboration of this forum, which will take place using a regular electronic mailing list and a set of web pages.

The responsibilities of the user organizations in this activity is to make sure the end-users are represented and actively participate in all the phase of the projects.

W3C will also participate in managing this forum and keeping consistent and synchronize it with its existing set of forum.

Additional users organizations (gathering disabillities other than visually impaired) will be asked to join this forum as the project moved forward.

D1, D2, D3: Report on User forum setup and activity (Month 6, 12, 18). Access will be given to the archives and the forum itself to the commission reviewers.

A Project Steering Committee will be set-up that consists of the two main contractor managers, together with one representative of each associated contractor and a Quality Panel representative. It is responsible for the overall strategy. It also has specific responsibility for ensuring that recommendations of the Quality Panel are adhered to by the Workpackage managers doing the technical and awareness developments and dissemination.

Meetings will review progress, accept and sign off deliverables, reports and demonstrators, and identify and carry out any replanning of the project. These meetings will normally be a minimum of one-day duration.

At technical meetings, each package that is ongoing will present its findings to date together with plans for future work. The aim of these technical meetings will be to bring the project together at regular intervals to allow partners to benefit from the progress being made in different areas of the project.

This proposal is made in partnership by six non-for-profit organizations.

The roles and responsibilities of the participants are as follow:

• W3C (hosted in France, but really a European and Worldwide consortium), as coordinator, mostly responsible for the education/awareness the certification work, and overall management.
• ICS/FORTH (Greece) and CNR (Italy), to work on technology usage guidelines and their evolution in the standard bodies
• BrailleNet/INSERM (France), EBU (Europe) and RNIB (GB) as an associate contractors with W3C representing the user community and participating in the elaboration of the online user forum, the education materials, and

as input on the technology requirements.

World Wide Web Consortium [W3C] Backgrounder

W3C's mission: Realizing the Full Potential of the Web

The W3C was founded to develop common protocols to enhance the interoperability and lead the evolution of the World Wide Web.

Uniquely Positioned to Lead the Evolution of the World Wide Web

Leading the World Wide Web's evolution means staying ahead of a significant wave of applications, services, and social changes. For W3C to effectively lead such dramatic growth -- at a time when a "Web Year" has shortened to a mere three months -- it must demonstrate exceptional agility, focus and diplomacy. To this end, the Consortium fulfills a unique combination of roles traditionally ascribed to quite different organizations.

Like its partner standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF], W3C is committed to developing open, technically sound specifications backed by running sample code. Like other information technology consortia, W3C represents the power and authority of hundreds of developers, researchers, and users. Hosted by research organizations, the Consortium is able to leverage the most recent advances in information technology.

Host Institutions

The W3C was formally launched in October 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT LCS]. Moving beyond the Americas, the Consortium established a European presence in partnership with France's National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control [INRIA] in April 1995. As the Web's influence continued to broaden internationally, the resulting growth in W3C Membership created the need for an Asian host. In Sept 1996, Keio University in Japan became the Consortium's third host institution.

Members

The Consortium's real strength lies in the broad technical expertise of its Membership. W3C currently has now close to 200 commercial and academic Members worldwide, including hardware and software vendors, telecommunications companies, content providers, corporate users, and government and academic entities.

W3C provides a vendor-neutral forum for its Members to address Web-related issues. Working together with its staff and the global Web community, the Consortium aims to produce free, interoperable specifications and sample code. Funding from Membership dues, public research funds, and external contracts underwrite these efforts.

The Consortium's Advisory Committee [AC] is comprised of one official representative from each Member organization who serves as the primary liaison between the organization and W3C. The Advisory Committee's role is to offer advice on the overall progress and direction of the Consortium.

Staff

W3C is led by Director Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web; and Chairman Jean-François Abramatic. With more than 30 years' combined expertise in a wide array of computer-related fields, including real-time communications, graphics, and text and image processing. Berners-Lee and Abramatic are well prepared to lead the Consortium's efforts in spearheading the global evolution of the Web.

The Consortium's technical staff includes full- and part-time employees, visiting engineers from Member organizations, consultants, and students from more than 13 countries worldwide. W3C staff works with the Advisory Committee, the press, and the broader Web community to promote W3C's agenda.

Recommendation Process

Specifications developed within the Consortium must be formally approved by the Membership. Consensus is reached after a specification has proceeded through the review stages of Working Draft, Proposed Recommendation, and Recommendation. As new issues arise from Members, resources are reallocated to new areas to ensure that W3C remains focused on topics most critical to the Web's interoperability and growth.

Domains

Leading the evolution of technology as dramatically in flux as the World Wide Web is a challenging task indeed. W3C is a unique organization, well adapted to today's fast-paced environment. Its mission is to realize the full potential of the Web: as an elegant machine-to-machine system, as a compelling human-to-human interface, and as an efficient human-human communications medium. In order to achieve these goals, W3C's Team of experts works with its Members to advance the state of the art in each of the three Domains: User Interface, Technology & Society, and Architecture. Each Domain is responsible for investigating and leading development in several Activity Areas which are critical to the Web's global evolution and interoperability.

EBU is a non-governmental and non-profit making European organisation, founded in 1984. It is the principal organisation representing the interests of blind and partially sighted people in Europe with membership made up or organisations of and for visually impaired (VI) people in 43 European countries. EBU has formal consultative status as the co-ordinating NGO for the visual impairment sector on the European Disability Forum in Brussels.

RNIB is the largest organisation in the UK looking after the needs of visually impaired people, with over 60 services. Current reappraisal of its work has led to services being increasingly considered in terms of supplying the needs of visually-impaired people at every stage of their lives and in various aspects. The organisation employs around 2500 people based throughout the UK, of whom 7% are visually-impaired. RNIB has already been involved as a partner in the CAPS (136/218) and Harmony (1226) projects.

This work will be greatly enhanced by the recent approval of the TIDE ARTNet (3006) project which will build an international digital network for assistive and rehabilitation technology.

Apart from CAPS, Harmony and ARTNet, RNIB has also been involved with a number of other TIDE and Telematics projects: ASHORED (101), AUDETEL (169/212), GUIB (103/215), CORE(126/213), ACCESS(1001), SATURN(1040), MOBIC(1148) and OPEN(1182). These have shown the technical knowledge which can be accessed by the organisation and have developed an understanding of how to assess user needs and wants."

Objectives:

• Improve Internet access for visually impaired people
• Development of pilot web site, containing specific services
• Explore tele-working and education thru Internet
• Disseminate result of work to end-users.

The BrailleNet/INSERM consortium regroups:

• INSERM (French National Institure on Medical Research)
• EUROBRAILLE (first maker of Braille terminals)
• AFEI (specialized in the formation of visually impaired people)
• CNEFEI (specialized in the formation of teachers)
• ANPEA (National Association of Parents of Visually Impaired Children)
• FAF (Federation of Blind and Visually Impaires in France)

BrailleNet/INSERM web site is http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/BrailleNet/consbrn.html

The National Research Council (CNR, Italy) is a government research organisation (staff of about 7000), which is involved in activities addressing most disciplinary sectors (physics, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, etc), in cooperation with universities and industry (one of its tasks being the transfer of innovations to production and services).

CNR will participate in this project proposal with two Institutes: IROE (Firenze) and CNUCE (Pisa). IROE, with a staff of about 100 (half of whom are researchers) has a broad range of activities in pure physics (solid state, cosmology, optics) and applied physics (electromagnetic wave propagation, communications, integrated optics, optical fibre, remote sensing, etc). The Department on Information Theory and Processing is involved in research on the theory and applications of signal and image processing and information technology. It has a extensive experience in accessibility and usability. CNUCE, with a staff of 107, conducts research on Methods and Models for the Design and Analysis of Systems, Multimedia Technology, Geographical Information Systems, Mechanics of Materials, and Flight Dynamics of Spacecrafts. In relation to the project proposal, CNUCE is conducting research in 3D virtual environments and modelling, knowledge integration, agent architectures and user modelling.

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH, Greece), is a centre for research and development monitored by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Technology (General Secretariat of Research and Technology) of the Greek Government. The Institute of Computer Science, one of the seven institutes of FORTH, conducts applied research, develops applications and products, and provides services. Current R&D activities focus on information systems, software engineering, parallel architectures and distributed systems, computer vision and robotics, digital communications, network management, machine learning, decision support systems, formal methods in concurrent systems, computer architectures and VLSI design, computer aided design, medical information systems, human-computer interaction, and rehabilitation tele-informatics. ICS-FORTH has a long research and development tradition in the design and development of user interfaces that are accessible and usable by a wide range of people, including disabled and elderly people. It has recently proposed the concept, and provided the technical framework for the development of unified user interfaces, that are adaptable to the abilities, requirements and preferences of the end user groups.

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(2) For allowable costs see Article 19.6 of Annex II