Amaya - Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 sample implementation

Abstract

This document lists all of the techniques employed by Amaya [AMAYA] that are listed in Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [ATAG10-TECHS]. The guidelines and checkpoints are included as well for convenience.

Status of this document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C.

This document is a W3C Note, published as an informative appendix to "Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0". This document has been approved by the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG). The Working Group expects to update this document in response to queries raised by implementors of the Guidelines, for example, to cover new technologies. Suggestions for additional techniques are welcome.

Publication of a W3C Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership.

This document has been produced by the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The goals of the Working Group are discussed in the AUWG charter.

Please send general comments about this document to the public mailing list: w3c-wai-au@w3.org (public archives).

Introduction

This document lists the techniques used by Amaya (or in development for Amaya) to satisfy the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [ATAG10]. It is intended to assist developers seeking to implement the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Note: The techniques in this document are merely suggestions; they are not required for conformance to the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. These techniques are not necessarily the only way of satisfying the checkpoint, nor are they necessarily a definitive set of requirements for satisfying a checkpoint.

This document has the same structure as the Authoring Tool Guidelines 1.0 [ATAG10]. Each guideline and checkpoint from that document is listed, in the same order, with an explanation of Amaya's techniques for implementing them, or techniques that the development team plans to implement.

Amaya Support for the Guidelines

Checkpoints:

1.1 Ensure that the author can produce accessible content in the markup language(s) supported by the tool. [Priority 1]

• Amaya implements all of the accessibility features of HTML. The CSS cascade order, an accessibility feature of CSS2, has not yet been completely implemented in Amaya.

1.2 Ensure that the tool preserves all accessibility information during authoring, transformations, and conversions. [Priority 1]

• The predefined transformations shipped with Amaya preserve all element content. The transformation language allows the preservation of attribute values, but this is not done by all the supplied transformations.

1.3 Ensure that when the tool automatically generates markup it conforms to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]

• Amaya generates markup that conforms to level-A, and allows the author to generate markup that is triple-A through the user interface.

1.4 Ensure that templates provided by the tool conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]

• Amaya has templates, which have not yet been checked for conformance to WCAG 1.0 [WCAG10].

Checkpoints:

2.1 Use the latest versions of W3C Recommendations when they are available and appropriate for a task. [Priority 2]

2.2 Ensure that the tool automatically generates valid markup. [Priority 1]

• Amaya implements each language according to the published specifications.

2.3 If markup produced by the tool does not conform to W3C specifications, inform the author. [Priority 3]

• If Amaya imports or generates markup that does not conform to W3C specifications it is highlighted in the structure view. This occurs when Amaya tries to repair invalid markup and cannot successfully do so.

Checkpoints:

3.1 Prompt the author to provide equivalent alternative information (e.g., captions, auditory descriptions, and collated text transcripts for video). [Relative Priority]

• Amaya prompts the author to provide equivalent text for IMG and AREA elements, and CAPTION for the TABLE element.

3.2 Help the author create structured content and separate information from its presentation. [Relative Priority]

• In future releases Amaya is expected to prompt the author for "title" for ABBR, acronym, object, and IMG elements, and label for form controls. The user interface of Amaya was developed to guide authors to produce structured documents. Style in Amaya is created as a stylesheet.

3.3 Ensure that prepackaged content conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]

• Amaya does not provide any clip art or other prepackaged content.

3.4 Do not automatically generate equivalent alternatives. Do not reuse previously authored alternatives without author confirmation, except when the function is known with certainty. [Priority 1]

3.5 Provide functionality for managing, editing, and reusing alternative equivalents for multimedia objects. [Priority 3]

Checkpoints:

4.1 Check for and inform the author of accessibility problems. [Relative Priority]

• Amaya currently checks for validity, but the only warning of invalid markup appears in the structure view. The Amaya developers are investigating automating an accessibility check and author notification. Where Amaya detects an error, it identifies and highlights the incorrect code in the structure view, allowing the author to delete it.

4.2 Assist authors in correcting accessibility problems. [Relative Priority]

4.3 Allow the author to preserve markup not recognized by the tool. [Priority 2]

4.4 Provide the author with a summary of the document's accessibility status. [Priority 3]

4.5 Allow the author to transform presentation markup that is misused to convey structure into structural markup, and to transform presentation markup used for style into style sheets. [Priority 3]

• Amaya provides a language for specifying structure transformations, and a large number of predefined transformations are included.

Checkpoints:

5.1 Ensure that functionality related to accessible authoring practices is naturally integrated into the overall look and feel of the tool. [Priority 2]

• In Amaya some accessibility features are part of relevant dialogs. Others, such as longdesc and title attributes must be separately generated by the author. The development team will integrate these into the relevant dialogues in future releases.

5.2 Ensure that accessible authoring practices supporting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10] Priority 1 checkpoints are among the most obvious and easily initiated by the author. [Priority 2]

• Amaya's user interface guides the author to produce structured content, with presentation elements separated into style sheets. Providing an equivalent alternative is mandatory at the time of inserting some elements.

Checkpoints:

6.1 Document all features that promote the production of accessible content. [Priority 1]

• Amaya help pages for images and image maps [AMAYA-HELP-IMG] include providing text alternatives as part of the process. There is a help page on configuring Amaya, that documents how to change the default keyboard bindings.

6.2 Ensure that creating accessible content is a naturally integrated part of the documentation, including examples. [Priority 2]

• Accessible authoring features are added to the documentation as they are incorporated into Amaya, as part of the normal documentation of the relevant feature.

6.3 In a dedicated section, document all features of the tool that promote the production of accessible content. [Priority 3]

• Amaya documentation has a basic accessibility section, which is an option in Amaya's help menu.

Checkpoints:

7.1 Use all applicable operating system and accessibility standards and conventions (Priority 1 for standards and conventions that are essential to accessibility; Priority 2 for those that are important to accessibility; Priority 3 for those that are beneficial to accessibility).

• Amaya is currently available for two platforms: Unix and Windows. There is some work required on both platforms to bring it into line with conventions, in particular to provide conformance with the User Agent Guidelines [UAAG10], and to implement Microsoft Active Accessibility [MSAA] in the Windows version. It is being re-written to take advantage of the improved accessibility support possible in Gnome (it currently uses Motif) in the Unix version. The Documentation is all available online as HTML and has been reviewed to ensure it conforms to WCAG 1.0 [WCAG10].

7.2 Allow the author to change the presentation within editing views without affecting the document markup. [Priority 1]

• Amaya allows the author to create local style sheets, and to enable or disable each style sheet that is linked to a document.

7.3 Allow the author to edit all properties of each element and object in an accessible fashion. [Priority 1]

• Amaya allows each attribute to be edited through the menu or through the structure view. Element types can be assigned through the menu system.

7.4 Ensure that the editing view allows navigation via the structure of the document in an accessible fashion. [Priority 1]

• Amaya provides a structure view, that can be navigated element by element, a Table of Contents view, that allows navigation via the headings, and a links view, that allows sequential navigation via the links in the document. It also provides configurable keyboard navigation of the HTML structure - parent, child, next and previous sibling elements.

7.5 Enable editing of the structure of the document in an accessible fashion. [Priority 2]

• Amaya allows the author to select elements (including containers) and cut, copy and paste them with their attributes and properties in any of the formatted, structure and alternate views.

7.6 Allow the author to search within editing views. [Priority 2]

• Amaya provides a search function. Because all editing views are synchronized, any search text found will be selected in each of the available views.

References

For the latest version of any W3C specification please consult the list of W3C Technical Reports.

[ATAG10]

"Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0," J. Treviranus, C. McCathieNevile, I. Jacobs, and J. Richards, eds. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/ATAG10-TECHS/sample-amaya.

[ATAG10-TECHS]

"Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0," J. Treviranus, J. Richards, I. Jacobs, and C. McCathieNevile eds. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/ATAG10-TECHS.

[UAAG10]

"User Agent Accessibility Guidelines," J. Gunderson and I. Jacobs, eds. The latest version of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/UAAG10.

[WCAG10]

"Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0," W. Chisholm, G. Vanderheiden, and I. Jacobs, eds., 5 May 1999. This Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505. The latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/.

Resources

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

Operating system and programming guidelines

[MSAA]

"Information for Developers About Microsoft Active Accessibility," Microsoft Corporation.

Authoring tools and other services

[AMAYA]

Amaya, developed at W3C, is both an authoring tool and browser with a WYSIWYG-style user interface. Amaya serves as a testbed for W3C specifications. Source code, binaries, and further information are available at http://www.w3.org/Amaya/. The techniques in this document are based on Amaya version 2.4.

[AMAYA-HELP-IMG]

"Images and Client-side Image Maps," Amaya's Help page for images and image maps.