Date: August 99 -- Version number: 1.0
This file: http://www.w3.org/WAI/DE4105/FinalReport (readers are encouraged to access this document online, since many supporting documents mentioned here are only available as hyperlink)
The World Wide Web has become a vital resource for information and
interaction. Close to 20% of the population experiences some form of
disability; many of these conditions can present barriers to accessing
information technology. It is essential to ensure the accessibility of the
Web in order to provide access to educational, employment, commerce and
civic opportunity.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is hosted by the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C - http:/www.w3.org), an international
vendor-neutral consortium which develops technologies to promote the
interoperability and evolution of the Web. W3C provides a setting
where WAI can bring together industry, disability organizations,
accessibility researchers and government to explore accessibility
requirements and develop accessibility solutions. For the past 18
months, WAI-DE has provided an opportunity to promote coordination
with European organizations focusing on Web accessibility, and to
develop materials and activities to support outreach to European
organizations.
Approach
Global problems require global approaches. In the case of Web
accessibility, WAI-DE has aligned itself with the W3C's Web Accessibility
Initiative, and focused on ensuring a strong European component to the
guidelines, tools, and educational work going on at WAI. WAI-DE has
developed a variety of European-specific materials for outreach, and
continues to expand its partnerships with industry, disability
organizations, research centers, and governments in Europe around issues of
Web accessibility. WAI addresses accessibility of the Web at the design
table, in broadly-based consensus forums, operating under W3C process.
Results and Achievements
The WAI DE 4105 four work-packages (education, tools,
standards, user forum, plus one for project management) have all
delivered as expected: more than 25 presentation were made in European
public conferences; Outreach materials such as Quick Tips cards,
leaflets, video, demonstration sites, and translations in several
European languages were made; Tools were specified and written;
Standard studies made and a very active User Forum launched and
actively maintained.
Conclusions and Plans for the Future
We consider the project to a success wrt outreach and
tools development goals, however there's still more work to be
done. Some of this work involves increasing awareness of the needs for
accessibility for users of Web technologies, some involves the
development of advanced tools. We are therefore proposing to continue
this WAI European project in the fifth framework (IST) and focus the
advanced education and tools aspects of Web accessibility in
Europe.
Contact Details
Project Name: WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative
Research Area: Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities
Millions of people use the Web daily for services related to their
professional and personal interests. The Web provides information on every
topic; it provides a vehicle for civic participation, commercial
transactions, and education. It gives people access to world news,
employment opportunities, and each other. Yet for many people with
disabilities, it is currently difficult or impossible to access the Web.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is hosted by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), an international vendor-neutral consortium which develops
technologies to promote the interoperability and evolution of the Web. The
W3C coordinates the development of core Web protocols and data formats:
HTML, XML, CSS, SMIL, etc. W3C provides a setting where WAI can bring
together industry, disability organizations, accessibility researchers and
government representatives to explore accessibility requirements and
develop accessibility solutions.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) focuses on making the Web accessible to existing and potential Web
users who have disabilities. W3C's credibility further assists in ensuring
the successful promotion of WAI guidelines, tools, and educational
materials to a variety of audiences, including browser and authoring tool
manufacturers and site developers.
For the past 18 months, WAI-DE has provided an opportunity to promote
coordination with European organizations focusing on Web accessibility, and
to develop materials and activities to support outreach to European
organizations.
As the Web rapidly displaces existing media, there is an increasing
social expectation for its accessibility, and also a growing trend to
require accessibility. This, combined with the realization of the benefits
that a Design for All approach can bring to the Web at large (for instance,
to mobile phone users with limited display screens), led the W3C to take on
a leadership role and launch the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) program
in 1997.
Current Situation
The accessibility of the Web is worsening, due to increasing use of
multimedia and advanced Web technologies, while awareness of the need for
Web accessibility is only gradually increasing. Web accessibility barriers
exist for many kinds of disabilities:
People who are deaf do not have access to multimedia or audio events
that do not contain captioning.
People who are blind or who have low vision encounter barriers due to
the Web's predominantly graphical interface, its 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 with physical disabilities have difficulty using browsers and
authoring tools without full keyboard support, and may have difficulty
using forms or frames that are not marked-up properly.
People with cognitive or neurological disabilities may have difficulty
interpreting Web pages that lack a consistent navigation structure or that
lack visual signposts.
Over the past two years, WAI has developed guidelines and technical
reference documents which have achieved international recognition.
Awareness of WAI guidelines is spreading in both the public and private
sectors. Emerging policy requirements for Web accessibility in various
countries, combined with education and outreach efforts of WAI and
collaborating organizations, should spur this awareness onward.
In addition to policy requirements for Web accessibility, many
organizations have expressed interest in the carry-over benefits of
accessibility for other users. Even those without disabilities benefit from
many changes motivated by the needs of people with disabilities. When
driving a car, for example, a driver may wish to browse the Web for
information using a voice-based interface similar to that used by someone
who is blind. This is sometimes referred to as "Design for All," or the
curb-cut effect, where an accessibility-driven design such as a mini-ramp
in a sidewalk curb allows easier passage for wheelchair users but is also
favored by people pushing baby strollers, riding bikes, pulling luggage on
wheels, etc. In particular, the mobile phone industry has expressed
interest in the contributions of Web accessibility to greater usability for
all.
WAI's workplan has capitalized on the unique host environment of the W3C to
provide access to the earliest design stages of Web technologies. WAI has
successfully used the formal W3C process for review and approval of
specifications to ensure consensus-based accessibility guidelines; and both
WAI and WAI-DE continue to benefit from the W3C setting in developing
high-quality support and reference materials to assist in promoting these
guidelines.
WAI's approach to improving accessibility of the Web is based on the
realization that many things have to be done to reach the goal of Web
accessibility, and that while a limited European
action like this can only address some aspects of the problem, it can
greatly benefit from association with a broader initiative.
W3C has an activity in the area of Web Accessibility, called WAI. We use
"WAI-DE 4105" in this report to indicate the Telematics project. WAI
primarily focuses on technology groups working on the accessibility of the
core Web formats such as HTML, XML, and CSS; and also on a set of
guidelines accompanying the technologies, that address accessibility of Web
content, and of browsers and authoring tools. WAI is organized to pursue
accessibility of the Web through five areas of work:
Technology review and development: centered on protocols and data
formats, especially HTML, CSS, XML, SMIL, DOM.
Guidelines for use of the technology: targeted to user agent and
authoring tool developers, and to Web content developers.
Education and outreach: raising awareness of the content creation
community around the concept of Design for All;
Tools for evaluation and repair of Web pages.
Coordination with research and advanced development.
From among these work areas, the WAI-DE 4105 project concentrated on
education and outreach in Europe, specification and prototyping of tools,
standardization, and the hosting of an umbrella User Forum Interest Group.
Approaches for each of these work-packages are detailed below.
In order to meet the requirement of "globality" of Web Accessibility, W3C
combined its own membership funds plus those of various industries and
governments with funding from the European Commission. In so doing, it
helped ensure that W3C staff developing Web protocols will participate with
this European action to ensure that the evolution of the Web removes,
rather than reinforces, barriers to the Web.
It is important to note that this grant is hosted by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), an international non-for-profit, vendor-neutral
organization which
fosters the evolution of the major Web protocol and format specifications,
and whose goal is to lead the Web to its full potential (a long description of W3C is
provided in the contact section). Being located at the heart of Web
technology design allows WAI to address accessibility issues very early in
the development cycle, and also to sensitize technologists world-wide to
Design for All principles.
The WAI-DE 4105 Telematics proposal complements W3C WAI technical work by
addressing content providers -- the people that create and distribute the
information -- and end-users, through its user forum and tool workpackage.
WAI-DE 4105 focuses on the European Web content providers and market. This
approach enables different "stakeholders" in accessibility to work together
at the design table. Over a hundred organizations from around the world
participate in some part of WAI work, including: industry, disability
organizations, access research centers, and governments. An increasing
number of these organizations are European, due to WAI-DE 4105's activity.
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 pursued 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.
Integration of WAI-DE 4105 with W3C WAI
It is important that the integration between W3C WAI and WAI-DE 4105 has
been tight in order to maximise the leveraging of W3C actions in the DE
project. WAI has therefore extended and improved the overall W3C WAI
deliverables and charters, and cross-linked them with the WAI-DE
deliverables.
W3C has a very formal framework for organizing its activities, under a
structure of Working and Interest Groups which must first have defined
charters, that first must define their charters. This is know as the W3C
Process. Most WAI DE work-packages have been brought under this structure.
To ensure that this integration is well managed, the W3C WAI International
Program Office itself has a Steering Committee, composed of members chosen
by the U.S. National Science Foundation; the European Commission (specified
by the DE Program Director); disability organizations; and private sponsors
most of which are W3C Members.
This approach has led us to a very synergistic project, involving
cooperation from disability organizations, researchers and engineers
world-wide, not just limited to Europe.
Education & Outreach workplan
In order to reach improve Web accessibility, it is important to target a
variety of audiences. Content providers are one of WAI's primary targets
since they determine much of the content on Web sites.
However, content providers are also influenced by other players: authoring
tool vendors, Web site designers, Web-design educators, the press, and the
user base. In order to reach all these communities, WAI must direct its
efforts through a variety of activities -- presentations in major Web
industry conferences; direct contact and awareness action with major
European Web site providers; addition of accessibility "modules" in Web
design curricula; direct contact with major authoring tool providers;
submission of articles to the press, etc.
Another educational aspect also needs to be explored: the education of the
disability community itself regarding their rights with respect to
accessing information like everyone else. This is particularly true and
important in the context of the Intranet, where some countries are already
subject to existing legislation regarding access (see the US Americans with
Disabilities Act or the UK Disability Discrimination Act). WAI has compiled
a reference list of polices related to Web accessibility, which has become
a key resource for the disability community.
While education and outreach are crucial aspects of WAI's work overall,
these are not something that has traditionally fallen within W3C's role.
Clearly, part of the raising of awareness should take place as part of the
training that is packaged with any Web authoring tool. But part of this
work also goes beyond individual tools, and is part of the traditional role
of government: helping sensitize key players, including content providers,
to the needs of an important minority population.
Approach on Tools
To complement work on improving Web technologies and producing guidelines,
WAI has been developing tools to evaluate Web Content accessibility and
repair inaccessible pages, and coordinating with organizations that develop
such tools.
WAI-DE decided to depart from its original tools goal to develop a PICS
accessibility implementation, and decided to expand the scope of this
workpackage beyond the study and prototyping of PICS in the context of
accessibility but to work on the more general problem of implementing tools
that provide evaluation, transformation and repair of Web sites. One reason
was that PICS was becoming a dated technology without convincing uptake by
industry; another was the pressing need for other types of tools.
Since a lot of people and organizations are working on such tools
within and outside W3C, and in order to converge on the measurement
criteria for Web accessibility, we first needed to put some effort into
coordination in the area of accessibility validation and tool
prototypes. There is also a need to develop novel tools that end-users have
expressed a need for.
WAI-DE's approach here has been to create and closely integrate with a
new W3C WAI activity focused on tools and supplement it with specific
resources as needed.
This was organized around a W3C working group called WAI-ER (for
Evaluation and Repair), with a charter to examine:
What features are needed for an evaluation tool? This includes
the question of "rating", e.g. what if any weighting factors should
be given to problems the evaluation tools detect?
What features are needed for a repair tool?
What features are needed for "filtering tools" used by end users
to help make sites accessible to them.
How should features be packaged?
How should tools be made most usable?
Once tools are completed (e.g. in beta) what improvement may be made?
We found our early work on PICS Rating System to be usable in this
context (see result section) but we have now allocated more time in
the framework of this ER group on collecting and analyzing input from
users who benefit from these tools, including users with disabilities,
Web authors and administrators, content owners, and tool vendors.
Standards
In order to determine precisely what could be the scope of any
future standardisation activities regarding accessibility of Web-based
interactive applications and services, an investigation has been
undertaken by our partner FORTH covering the broad international state
of the art.
This activity aimed at: (a) identifyng and assessing the
international state of the art with regards to current, on-going and
anticipated future standardisation activities related to Web
accessibility; (b) identifying the requirements for Web accessibility
and develop recommendations for meeting these requirements; and, (c)
disseminating the results to the relevant national, European and
International standardisation bodies. A four-phase approach has been
adopted by the project towards achieving the above objectives,
comprising:
data collection, data analysis, consolidation &
recommendations, and dissemination phases.
The data collection and data analysis phases provided valuable
insight into what is currently missing from on-going activities
related to accessibility guidelines, recommendations and
standardisation work, as well as into existing and future results
can be propagated towards the relevant communities. Moreover, the
analysis of the collected data enabled the derivation of several
conclusions regarding the present coverage of the work on guidelines
and recommendations, the current standardisation activities in the
area of Web accessibility, and the existing policies and laws at
national and European levels.
This task also addressed identification of unified interaction
requirements in Web-based applications and services, facilitation of
accessible and high quality interfaces for user with different
requirements, and abilities and preferences, including disabled and
elderly, following the concept of design for all.
It should be clarified that the standardization workpackage study
is not at the same level as existing W3C WAI guidelines on Web
accessibility. The latter are of immense practical value, as they
offer Web developers immediate and concrete guidance as to how to
render the Web content they produce accessible by people with
different types of special requirements. The work in WP04 introduces a
somewhat different perspective to the accessibility of Web
technologies, with the aim to: (a) take a further step towards
addressing the fullest possible range of user requirements, across the
broad range of existing and forthcoming / future technologies; and (b)
to overcome the difficulty that current accessibility guidelines and
recommendations face in reaching standardisation bodies.
The WAI DE 4105 four work-packages (education, tools,
standards, user forum, plus one for Project Management) have all
delivered as expected: more than 25 presentation were made in European
public conferences; Outreach materials such as Quick Tips cards,
leaflets, video, demonstration sites, and translations in several
European languages were made; Tools were specified and written;
Standard studies made and a very active User Forum launched and
actively maintained.
WP02: Education and outreach
The goal of this dissemination/awareness workpackage was to promote
the realization of accessible Web content throughout Europe.
It does so by developing strategies and materials to increase
awareness in the Web community of the need for Web accessibility, and
to educate the Web community regarding solutions to Web
accessibility. The end-result shown here is primarily a list of public
presentations where WAI specific materials are distributed or shown.
Because of the initial ramping up process to create a formal W3C
working groups on Education, this workpackage did not really start its
activity until the end of March 1998, so as a result, the beginning
and end dates (same duration) were shifted three months ahead (with
approval from the Commission office).
During this period, a number of events/talks/presentations
promoting WAI were made in Europe by WAI-DE paid staff (this
constitutes Deliverable D2.1 of the project proposal):
Mar 30 1998: Presentation at launch of W3C Office symposium in
Stockholm (Sweden) - audience was around hundred industrial
representative of the Scandinavian countries.
Apr 1 1998: Keynote at Electronic Publishing - EP98 Conference in
St-Malo (France)
Apr 2 1998: Presentation at launch of W3C Office symposium in
Utrecht (Holland) - about fifty industrial representatives.
May 16 1998: Panel session at Teleform Salon in Marseille (France)
Jun 2 1998: Presentation at INSERM workshop on visual disabilities
in Paris (France)
Jun 3 1998: WAI Session at Autonomic conference and exhibition in
Paris (France)
Jun 23 1998: Presentation at TIDE Conference in Helsinki (Finland)
Jul 23 1998: Seminar at Sight Village in Birmingham (UK)
Jul 24-25 1998: WAI Meeting in Peterborough (UK) with BBC interview
September 26-28 1998: Presentation at Global Regional Leadership Conference,
Conference of World Regions, two workshops Brussels, Belgium
October 19 1998: WAI presentation at 4th ERCIM WORKSHOP on
"USER INTERFACES FOR ALL" in Stockholm.
October 1998: Start of conference tour on Web Accessibility in French
Universities nation-wide (Le Havre, Orleans, etc).
October 1998: Demonstration day on the Internet in French schools.
November 19 1998: WAI Highlight talk on Web authoring tools
Accessibility at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting in front of many
European industrial representatives.
December 2 1998: Participation in User Friendly panel at the IST'98
Conference in Vienna, presented WAI-DE activities.
December 8 1998: WAI & CSS presentation at technical symposium in
London at Royal Society for Art.
January 11 1999: Internet and Web Accessibility Seminar, ESSI
engineering school Sophia-Antipolis, France
February 9 1999: Telematics in the education of the visually handicapped
Paris, France
March 15 1999: Participation in European Regional Information Society Initiative
via teleconference
March 19-21 1999: Invitation by the French Parliament to show
Internet access issues to staff.
April 1 1999: WAI Seminar at Internetworld Prague, Czechoslovakia
April 22 1999: WAI session at W3C Office launching event Pisa, Italy
April 29 1999: Presentation in front of members of ANEC (European Association for Consumers Representation in Standardisation)
June 8 1999: WAI presentation W3C symposium Bad-Honnef, Germany
June 8 1999: Information Day at IRCAM for librarians.
June 9 1999: WAI seminar Webmaster conference INRA Montpellier, France
July 2 1999: Presentation at Websites and Cyberkiosques meeting Lisbon, Portugal
In addition, various European press and radio interviews and press
releases were made during the period and we also submitted and
included of a complete chapter (20 pages) on WAI in the "User
Interfaces for All" book to be published in 1999 by Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Due to its participation in the project, EBU's 44 member
organisations have been widely informed about WAI and the
Guidelines. In particular, a simplified version of the WAI FAQ page
was reproduced in issue No 23 of the EBU Newsletter. Some
organisations which are in the process of starting their own sites
have come back to us for more detailed information.
As some the presentation locations show, WAI-DE has been leveraging
the new W3C Office presence (Germany, UK, Italy, Sweden, the
Netherlands, etc) to do outreach in Europe about Web
accessibility. These offices are W3C points of contact in various
countries were the impact of W3C industry outreach coming from MIT,
INRIA or Keio is less important.
Materials developed by WAI-DE
The first three items constitute deliverable D2.2 of the
project proposal (Accessibility modules and materials).
RNIB WAI Film: A 16 minute video entitled "Websites
that Work" on how people with disabilities access the Web was
developed by our RNIB partner and launched at the "Global Cafe" in
London in front of about 150 persons. The screening was aimed at
Commissioners of Websites (e.g., from banking associations). This
launch received good media interest and from disability organizations.
An awards ceremony was conducted at the same time.
The draft script of the film was provided in the December 1998
WAI-DE report and excerpts of the film will be shown at the final review in
September 1999 in Brussels.
We have already shown this movie in several settings and are
planning continue in other parts of Europe. Several thousands copies
of the video are planned to be produced and we are also looking at
converting it into two Web formats: SMIL and Quicktime. We're
currently planning a number of other promotional activities around the
film.
See also the section below on the ERCIM CDRom.
ERCIM CD: At the occasion of the 10th anniversary of ERCIM
in 1999 (European Research Consortium for Informatics and
Mathematics), the ERCIM asked each member organizations (all 14
Computer Science National Labs in Europe) to participate in a CDRom
highlighting two important activities per institute.
For INRIA (host of W3C in Europe), WAI was chosen and a multimedia
presentation was designed and incorporated into the anniversary
CD. This presentation incorporates short clips of the WAI Film within
a nice page setup suited for the CD layout. An additional filming
session occurred to complete the series of clips presenting WAI.
The CDRom will be briefly demonstrated at final review time. It is
available online at http://www.w3.org/WAI/DE4105/CDErcim/19_wai/index.htm,
but please note that it may not suitable for online use given the size
of the video clips to download.
Demonstration site: In order to demonstrate the effect of
accessible design on Web sites, an online demonstration was
designed and implemented by WAI-DE participants.
The demo features a common frame-based Web site layout. This was
initially a real Web site fetched off the Web in its inaccessible
state, but text was changed to respect privacy. A simulation of
browsing using an assistive technology browser (text-only) such as
Lynx is then performed and then the demo goes in a tutorial mode on
how to repair the site. The same site is then presented in its
accessible form with and without Lynx.
This example is of great value as a simple tutorial and our past
presentations using it have shown that the audience is very receptive
of the problems of accessibility one they've observed the issues themselves.
The next three items constitutes the deliverable D2.3 of the
project proposal (education guideline material).
BrailletNet leaflet: the WAI-DE French partner produced a leaflet
on Web accessibility. This falls between guidelines (long) and
Quick Tips (very short) in detail and complexity.
A French, English and Spanish version are available on hard copy
paper (glossy) ready to be distributed. The launch of this
promotional material received national press attention in France.
Although this first version focused on visual impairment, a second
version putting the emphasis on cross-disability is already under
development. This is an important step forward for an organization
such as BrailleNet to include not only just blindness issues, and this
commitment is a direct result of coordination with WAI.
Samples of the leaflet will be attached to the final report hard-copies.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) translations: In
May 1999, the W3C released Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) which is foundation document for Web
Accessibility. The normative document is in English only, however
several translations in European languages have been initiated by the
WAI-DE project.
Alternative browsers: this is a collection of
pointers to information, and where possible, to demonstration
versions of alternative browsing methods, different from traditional
mouse-and-screen-based browsers. We include the latest version of this
resource at time report was sent as Appendix F.
Quick Tips business cards translation: the W3C WAI EO
activity has produced a 2-side business
card summarizing the WAI Web Content Guidelines. These are meant
to be distributed at conferences and events world-wide. This work was
only partially funded by WAI-DE: the design of the card was done
mostly my WAI-DE paid participants but the mass production (75000
copies) was paid for by other WAI funding (in the US).
The primary version is in English so we also started a translation
process into several European languages. The French version is already
available.
Copies of the real card are provided with the final report on paper.
Supporting documents (with help from WAI-DE)
Unlike the above list, which can be completely counted as part of
scheduled WAI-DE deliverables, the following resources were not
primarily WAI-DE funded but some percentage of Commission funds was
spent to develop each of them. This was through participation in W3C's
WAI EO working group by paid WAI-DE participants.
Events calendar: we maintain a global events page listing world-wide
outreach events, used by participants in the project to coordinate
their presence in these events, including events in Europe.
Policy references resource: this is a Policy References resource
consisting of a review
of current legislation applicable in the field of online and
telecommunication accessibility international, which our European
partners have actively participated in developing.
This helped us realized that Europe is lagging behind in terms of
disability policy. As a result of coordination meetings, actions
have been taken notably in Italy, Denmark, France, and Portugal.
For instance, in the case of Portugal, a recent major achievement
was for the Portuguese Parliament to approve the Petition for the
Accessibility of the Portuguese Internet as recommendation to the
Government. This happened 30th of June 1999 and the Web Accessibility
Initiate was mentioned in this parliament report.
Other deliverables, such as the WAI slide set for seminars or the
WAI logos for compliance with the guidelines, were also produced with
help from personnel paid by WAI-DE, acting as participants in the W3C
WAI working groups.
WP03: Tools
The original Project Proposal defined 4 deliverables in this workpackage:
D3.1: PICS compliant Rating System to assess Accessibility level of
Web pages
D3.2: Integration in PC platforms.
D3.3: Pilot Label database on the Internet
D3.4: Operational Label Bureau
As explained in the approach section and in interim reports, we
departed from this original plan after realizing that developing a
PICS rating system and running a PICS label bureau server was not very
useful in itself and that we needed to work on broader aspects of
evaluation criteria and repair tools as well.
Our set of deliverables now comprises:
A tool for Reporting Accessibility problems online, which has
integrated the PICS rating system developed in the first semester of
the project into a system used by end-users on the Web to report and
store ratings of Web pages (this corresponds to D3.1 to D3.4
deliverables).
This reporting tool forms the basis of all our current Review
campaign actions. You see a presentation of in the User Forum section
below.
A table linearizer tool, written in Java, that can be used to
transform a non-accessible HTML pages into a version that can be
accessed by blind users or cognitive impaired people.
This is a
new deliverable not counted at the beginning but introduced in the
Annual report last year.
A specification for rules used to replace rich media, such as
images, applets, etc, with their textual equivalents. This is being
used by external teams coordinated with this WAI-DE workpackage, in
their proxy and gateway implementations.
We provide in Appendix C the layout of the
reporting tool pages and template messages sent to Webmasters.
WP04: Standards
As indicated in the approach section, this workpackage, handled by
our FORTH partner, followed a four-phase plan towards achieving its
objectives, comprising data collection, data analysis, consolidation &
recommendations, and dissemination phases.
The data collection and data analysis phases (presented in
earlier report) provided a valuable insight towards
what is currently missing from on-going activities related to
accessibility guidelines, recommendations and standardisation work, as
well as to how existing and future results can be propagated towards
the relevant communities. Moreover, the analysis of the collected data
enabled the derivation of several conclusions regarding the present
coverage of the work on guidelines and recommendations, the current
standardisation activities in the area of Web accessibility, and the
existing policies and laws at national and European levels.
The final deliverable 4.3 (Appendix D) presents a summary
account of the activities carried out in the context of the last two
phases of the project, namely the consolidation & recommendations
and dissemination phases, and focuses on the development of
standardisation recommendations that cover issues not addressed by the
existing sets of accessibility guidelines and recommendations.
More specifically, this final deliverable reports on:
The development of process-oriented guidelines and software
technology requirements aiming, respectively, to: extend human-centred
design practices to better account for accessibility; and, to guide
the evolution of existing, or the introduction of new Web
technologies, so that they are inherently accessible by the broadest
possible range of end users, under a multitude of usage contexts.
The dissemination of the resulting recommendations in appropriate
standardisation bodies; alternative target organisations, committees
and actual standards have been considered, and a tentative
recommendation and action plan has been formulated.
In particular, the development of standardisation recommendations
in the present context aims to: (i) provide process-oriented guidance,
through guidelines, on accessibility and universal design in HCI in
general, and the development of Web-based applications and services in
particular; and, (ii) translate the resulting guidelines into
requirements that need to be met by the interaction platforms and the
development tools, in order for them to provide the required support
for building interactive applications and services accessible by the
broadest possible end user population, including people with
disabilities. The scope of the process-oriented design guidelines and
the corresponding software technology requirements is deliberately
broad in an attempt to provide a conceptual framework, independent of
a particular technology / interaction platform, whereby universal
accessibility is integrated in the development life-cycle of
interactive applications and services. Specifically, the software
technology requirements approach accessibility on the Web as an issue
pertaining to interactive software with particular characteristics
(e.g., presence of structural and presentational languages), so as to
anticipate future developments and provide generic guidance that will
be applicable beyond the current generation of relevant technologies.
Following the review of the current situation regarding
standardisation work on Web accessibility and the consolidation of the
collected data, alternative paths were examined and evaluated with the
aim to define a specific dissemination strategy to be followed in the
project. Three dissemination channels were identified as potential
candidates for Web accessibility standards, namely: (a) standards on
user-centred design; (b) standards on accessible design; and, (c)
quality standards. The final action plan proposes two alternative
dissemination strategies, taking into account the following criteria:
the scope and coverage of particular standard organisations;
the existing committees and the current standardisation
activities that would be willing to accept new items in the specific
field;
the processes followed in proposing new standardisation activities
and the time required for the development of a standard.
The first of the aforementioned strategies, which would involve the
addition of new recommendations to existing standards, was found to be
difficult or, in some cases, unfeasible. The second, recommended
strategy, involves the introduction of new parts in on-going
standardisation activities.
Please refer to the Appendix on deliverable 4.3 for details on this
work.
WP05: User Forum
This section constitutes deliverables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the project
proposal.
W3C's WAI maintains a User Forum as an online mailing list which
meets face-to-face three or four times per year and that is also used
by the WAI-DE project workpackages to gather user needs and
requirements.
The forum is active under the alias
w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
which is also the formal name of the W3C WAI overall Interest
Group.
More than 330 persons are registered in this online forum, with an
average traffic of more than 200 messages per month.
It is the best way to stay informed of overall WAI activities, and
to participate in general WAI discussions.
A public archive of the most recent messages sent to this list is
available at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/
In parallel to this generic end-user activity, a direct campaigning
action involving European end-users was conducted by WAI-DE.
The next section reports on some of the campaign action findings.
Review campaign and promotion
Between October 1998 and February 1999, EBU (European Blind Users)
and BrailleNet users conducted an experiment with direct reviewing and
reporting of Web site accessibility problems, mostly in France.
A study on the accessibility of 111 Web sites has been conducted. The
results of this study will be in a paper presented at the AAATE
Conference which will take place in Düsseldorf, Germany, next
November.
This study can be summarised as follow:
The Web sites belonged to several categories : newspapers, radio
and television channels, national and international institutions,
public services, culture, education, Web sites related to impairment,
leisure and so on.
The accessibility of those 111 Web sites was evaluated according to
the WAI recommendations. An evaluation with the help of the tool Bobby
was not possible because each page should have been tested separately,
and some accessibility problems cannot be evaluated automatically.
Two different browsers were used for the evaluation: Internet
Explorer 3 with a Braille display and a screen reader, and
BrailleSurf, the specific browser developed by INSERM, with a Braille
display and a speech synthesiser.
In summary, over the 111 sites, about 20% are completely
accessible, 20% rather accessible, 40% are not very accessible, and
20% are not accessible at all. The accessibility of the Web sites did
not depend on the category they belong to. It only depends on the way
the Web site designer has developed his site.
The evaluation of these sites shows that on the one hand, many Web
site designers favour visual design of the site to attract as many
visitors as possible. On the other hand, other designers favour access
to information and the site accessibility, for instance most of the
sites at international institutions.
The reviewer encountered two categories of problems: technical and
conceptual problems. Some problems must be solved by screen readers
themselves, according to the evolution of Web technology. Since, for
example, image maps are more frequently used and some screen readers
cannot handled them, developers of access software should better
improve their software, instead of forbidding Web site designers to
use image maps for their sites.
However, other problems must be solved by the Web site author when
he or she follows the WAI recommendations. The technical problems can
be more or less easily solved, since it is often necessary to add an
HTML element or attribute, or to change a text formulation to make the
site accessible. On the other hand, the conceptual problems are more
difficult to solve, as it is easier to make a site accessible before
its creation, than to make the site accessible once it already exists.
The analysis of those 111 Web sites shows a constant need to inform
Web site designers so that the WAI recommendations can be better taken
into account. As a result, letters have been sent to Webmasters of
interesting Web sites to inform them about the accessibility problems
encountered on their Web sites. Some design improvements were
suggested with pointers to the WAI Web site so that then can check the
accessibility of their site and understand what to change to improve
this accessibility. The table in Appendix E shows
the results of the letter actions.
Summarizing the results of this review campaign, it
appears that many of the owners of these sites are not yet aware of how
accessibility may benefit their commercial interest. Nevertheless we
had some good results with some of them, which led to a co-operation
with Webmasters to improve the site accessibility.
The value of this kind of letter campaign lies not so much in the
breadth of sites involved (only French sites) but in the analysis of
the kind of responses received from Webmasters and in their willingness
to communicate with us about the accessibility problems of their
documents.
We consider the project to a success wrt outreach and
tools development goals, however there's still more work to be
done. Some of this work involves increasing awareness of the needs for
accessibility for users of Web technologies. In addition, new Web
technologies are still coming out on the market at a rapid pace that
potentially creates new challenges for people with disabilities. We
are therefore proposing to continue this WAI European project in the
fifth framework (IST) and focus the advanced education and tools
aspects of Web accessibility in Europe.
In particular, we believe a systematic review process needs to be
organized under the auspices of WAI, involving country-specific
evaluation teams, with international coordination, and the creation of
a showcase gallery of accessible sites.
The needs for additional work on advanced tools comes from the
recognition that some of the Web today is not yet accessible so we
need to account for practical measures to provide access to those
pages that cannot or will not improve.
Finally, we think that a close coordination between the Web
technology developers and providers (the W3C and its membership), and
the promotion and tool development activities outline in our proposal
for future work, is required in order to achieve these objectives and
help meet the needs of people with disabilities in Europe toward a
user-friendly information society for all.
In addition to INRIA/W3C as the main contractor, ICS/FORTH is an associated contractor (responsible for
the Standardization workpackage), and there are 4
sub-contractors: INSERM/BrailleNet, EBU and RNIB (for W3C/INRIA) and CNR (for FORTH). All the partners are non-for-profit
organizations.
The project started in January 1998, ran for 18 months and had 5
Work Packages:
The Overall cost of the project was 672000 ECU and the European
Commission contribution was 100% of these costs (support/accompanying
action). The original project proposal is available online at the URL
http://www.w3.org/WAI/DE4105/pp.
The following sections provide a description of the partners and
contractors in the project.
The W3C was founded in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full
potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure
its interoperability.
Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users; reference
code implementations to embody and promote standards; and various prototype
and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology.
The Consortium is led by Tim
Berners-Lee, Director and creator of the World Wide Web, and
Jean-François
Abramatic, Chairman. W3C is funded by
Member organizations (around
280 in August 1998), and is vendor
neutral, working with the global community to produce specifications and
reference software that is made freely available throughout the world.
W3C produces Recommendations, documents often called "W3C
standards", that define and evolve the core languages and protocols of
the Web: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer
Protocol), CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), etc.
BrailleNet is a French consortium whose mission is to promote the
Internet for social, professional, and school integration of visually
impaired people. Its objectives are to improve Internet access for
visually impaired people, to develop pilot Web site containing
specific services, to explore tele-working and education thru Internet
and disseminate result of work to end-users.
The BrailleNet consortium regroups INSERM (French National Institute
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 Impaired in France).
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.
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.
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).
The Telematics DE head office has empowered the W3C as the single entity who
distributes the results from the project, provided that no commercial
use is made.
W3C's WAI therefore makes these documents available consistent with
W3C copyright and documents use policy, which ensure that all the
deliverables (Education material, Guidelines, Tools, etc) are for
general Public access, delivered via the W3C WAI site.
The text of the agreement, signed by W3C, FORTH and TAP DE in
February 1998, is:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) through INRIA, as prime contractor for
project DE4205-WAI, requests the permission of the Disabled & Elderly Sector of
the TELEMATICS Applications Programme DGXIII to become the sole entity
authorised to publicly distribute the results of the project. We certify that no
commercial exploitation is intended and the results will be available free of
charge on the W3C's WWW page. This request is made also on behalf of FORTH,
partner in the DE4205-WAI project.
WAI-DE had a Project Steering Committee that consisted of the two
main contractor managers, together with least one representative of
each associated contractor and a Quality Panel representative. It was
responsible for the overall strategy. It also had 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.
Besides face-to-face meetings, WAI-DE Project Steering Committee
meets electronically under the alias: wai-tide@w3.org
The following people were members of this committee:
This electronic mailing list and a Web site, hosted at W3C, are
used as the day-to-day management vehicle.
W3C acts as the overall project management contact and is responsible to communicating
the reports and deliverables to the Commission.
Reports and deliverables were made available to the Commission
using electronic mail and Web downloading site.
The Steering Committee or a subset of it (just the W3C
sub-contractors for instance) also met using phone conference
facilities provided by INRIA W3C office.
This Report tool is a step-by-step form filling session where
end-users reviewing Web sites are guided for their reporting of
accessibility issues. It is available online at http://www.w3.org/WAI/report
and a copy is provided here for illustration (not the active version).
The first page asks the person to enter the address of a Web site
or page to be reviewed:
Web Accessibility Report Tool
Welcome to the WAI Accessibility Report Tool. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
has set up this step by step form to track and provide solutions for
commonly encountered accessibility
problems, such as pages that don't work when images, scripts, or
style sheets are unusable, turned off, or not supported.
By taking the
time to review pages for accessibility and filling out this form, you
will help authors correct accessibility problems in their pages - your
messages are sent directly to authors. At the same time you will help
WAI understand patterns of inaccessible pages, useful for additions to
the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines.
The second step checks for validity and duplicate report for that
page and then the main page is presented as a third step:
Web Accessibility Report Tool
Step 3: Identify Problems On http://www.site.com
The person is then asked for confirmation of the text of the
message that is going to be sent to the presumed author of the page:
Web Accessibility Report Tool
Step 4 (Final step): Confirm Your Report
The WAI Report Tool has generated the following message
based on your input. Please review and correct if necessary
(by using your browser's back button to return to previous
steps). When you're satisfied, send it by using
the "Send Message" button at the bottom of the page.
If you want to make comments on this report tool, please send a
message to w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org.
From: wai-report@w3.org
To: webmaster@site.com Cc: wai-report-db@w3.org, wai-report@w3.org
Subject: WAI Report on http://www.site.com --------------
Hello,
This message comes to you from the World Wide Web
Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C WAI) report tool at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/report.
Your Web site has been found to have to one or more
accessibility problems. This is not an automatic evaluation.
This message is the result of an individual's review of your
page or site (refer to the cc: field). This person experienced
difficulty accessing your page either due to a disability
(visual, auditory, physical, or cognitive) or due to device
limitations (poor connection bandwidth, no support for
graphics or support turned off, a voice interface such as
a webphone, etc.). Please consider their comments below.
with: Netscape Navigator 4.5
The reviewer found the following accessibility problems with your page or site. Each item is followed by a link to relevant information in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
Missing text links for a server-side Image Map
(Refer to Checkpoint 1.2)
Unexpected auto-redirect to another page
(Refer to Checkpoint 7.4)
Your name, the URL of your page, and the URLs of other
pages reviewed using this tool have been entered in a W3C WAI database
that we maintain (currently implemented as an archived mailing list
visible at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-report-db).
Please take the time to review this report and take action on the problems
reported. If you have questions, please notify us at wai-report@w3.org, so that we can
re-evaluate your page.
Note.
These comments were made by someone who visited your Web
site who may not be affiliated with W3C or the WAI. For this reason,
WAI does not take responsibility for the accuracy of this report nor
the comments made in the report. For more information about the W3C
Web Accessibility Initiative please visit http://www.w3.org/WAI.
Regards,
From mang@www.org using the W3C WAI Accessibility Initiative
Report Tool