Open Web Education Alliance

W3C, the people who do web standards, have set up an Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, to foster education about web standards. See: News, Deliverables, Meetings. and Charter:

The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues around the topic of Web development education. This Incubator Group will detail the options for establishing a group dedicated to bringing Web standards and best practices to the process of educating future professionals in Web professions, no matter where this training and education might be provided, and will define the goals, activities, and a clear mission for such an organization, and will seek to establish this organization's viability and role.

Audit of Online Government Documents in Parliament

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) issued "Online Availability of Government Entities' Documents Tabled in the Australian Parliament" 25 May 2009 (Report Number: 37). Government agencies are required to keep online, and publicly available, the documents they present to Parliament. The Audit office found that 90% of documents were online, but 95% of these were in PDF format and did not meet guidelines for accessibility to the disabled. Somewhat paradoxically, the ANAO's own report is in PDF and so appears not to conform with the guidelines which the report recommends be used. The Auditor thought AGIMO’s web publishing guidelines were not at fault.

You can download the Audit_Report_37 in PDF, or view a web summary as a
Audit Brochure. Below are the key findings:

Key Government entities’ compliance with online publishing policy (Chapter 2)

The ANAO undertook a desktop review of a sample of papers tabled from 2000 to 2008 to assess their online existence, ease of discovery online, online accessibility, and consistency between the online and printed versions.

Overall, our testing indicated that the proportion of the tabled papers examined found online has improved from 54 per cent in 2000 to 89 per cent in 2008. This improvement is due to a number of factors, including an increased focus on the delivery of online services by government entities.

However, no more than 90 per cent of the tabled papers examined in any one year were available online. The main reasons that this level has not increased is that either some individual government entities still do not have a web presence or that they are not fully aware of the requirements to publish tabled papers online. Further, MOG changes have caused restructures of entities and their websites. In essence, the merger or creation of a government entity and the subsequent new website can result in documents or links to such documents being inadvertently removed. In either case, web users are hindered or prevented from finding documents online.

The ease of discovery of an online document was quite high, having increased from 89 per cent of documents examined in 2000 to 100 per cent in 2006, although it declined slightly in each of 2007 and 2008. The tabled papers we found online were generally able to be discovered through publicly available search practices. Where discovery was difficult, the cause was usually poor website design that hindered navigation by web users.

Online accessibility was examined in two parts: providing access to web users without the need to use proprietary software and providing access to web users with a disability. In the first part, the recommended formats are HTML which any web browser can view; and plain text or RTF which any text reader or open source word processing software can view. The use of these formats to publish documents online has varied considerably since 2000. In particular, of the documents we examined in 2008, about 25 per cent were in HTML and less than five per cent were in RTF.

In contrast, over 95 per cent of the documents we examined in 2008 were in PDF, being a proprietary software format. Although PDF can have a free reader associated with it, a link to a reader was only supplied for about 65 per cent of documents.

The second part of online accessibility pertains to the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 that requires government bodies to provide equitable access to people with disabilities, where it can reasonably be provided. To give effect to the requirements of the Act, the AHRC endorsed a standard¹⁵ on web accessibility. This standard recommends the use of HTML or text based formats. As mentioned, our testing has indicated that the use of HTML and text based formats is low. In addition, a number of government entities only publish documents online in PDF, which does not comply with this standard.

The authorised version of a tabled paper is the printed (hardcopy) version that is tabled in Parliament. It is important to ensure consistency between the printed and online versions. Our testing of online Parliamentary Papers for 2007 found over 90 percent of documents were consistent with the printed version. Based on our analysis, the ANAO considers that there are a number of useful practices to ensure consistency between the online and printed versions of a document. They include, but are not limited to: maintaining communication between the print and online publishing functions; ensuring that the document author verifies the online version prior to web publishing; and placing the final PDF version provided to the printer online.

Although the level of results achieved indicated an improvement in online availability of tabled papers, the ANAO considers that further improvement can be realised. Government entities should review the level and nature of their online publishing activity and assess the risks of them not complying with the online publishing requirements related to tabled papers. Specifically, entities with a high risk of not complying with the requirements, such as those having no web presence, those producing multiple documents for tabling in Parliament each year, or which have been subject to a MOG change, should address any shortcomings in a cost effective way.

Overall, increased government entity compliance in the above matters would benefit from further cooperation between the Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance), the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) and the Departments of the Parliament to confirm respective roles and responsibilities.

Government entities’ online publishing practices (Chapter 3)

Based on the results of our desktop review, we selected entities for detailed fieldwork that exhibited a medium to high level of compliance with the Government’s online publishing requirements to allow this audit report to convey practices that would lead to better reporting by all government entities.

Each of the audited entities had sound online publishing practices. In particular, each entity had:

• a range of informative policy and guidance material to support staff performing online publishing functions;
• well-defined processes for publishing documents online, including controls to restrict access to online publishing functions to authorised staff; and
• processes and practices to help manage and provide assurance about online content, including obtaining advice as to the timing of the tabling of documents in Parliament.

In addition, each of the audited entities had controls in place to assist in managing the validity of their online content. In particular, all but one of the entities had a formal content management system (CMS). The ANAO’s audit report on Government Agencies’ Management of their Websites discusses entities use of specialist software to manage content.¹⁶

Only one of the audited entities specifically referred to the requirements for publishing tabled papers in its online publishing policy and procedural documentation. The ANAO considers that those government entities that have multiple documents tabled in Parliament would benefit from emphasising this requirement in their online publishing policy and procedural material. Further, in some entities the monitoring and reporting of web-related statistics was ad-hoc.

Overall, we considered that AGIMO’s WPG (which informs entities of the Government’s web publishing requirements) was relevant, accessible and easy to use. However, the following opportunities were identified to improve the level of guidance in the WPG about the online publishing of tabled papers and improve entities’ awareness and understanding of the requirements:

• specify the requirements relating to tabled papers with greater clarity;
• provide advice on the period of time that government entities must maintain documents online; and
• provide advice on whether an entity can archive electronically its Parliamentary documents after a number of years.

Further, the ANAO considers that stronger alignment between AGIMO’s online publishing requirements and PM&C’s guidance for presenting documents to the Parliament could improve the effectiveness of entities’ online publishing practices for tabled papers.

¹⁵ The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is a series of documents that explains how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities.

¹⁶ ANAO Audit Report No.13 2008–09, Government Agencies’ Management of their Websites, available from <http://www.anao.gov.au/>.

Summary of entities' responses

Each of the audited entities, including AGIMO, agreed with, noted or supported the three recommendations. In addition to the audited entities, we sought comments on the draft report from four other entities mentioned in the audit, the Department of the Senate, the Department of Parliamentary Services, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Human Rights Commission. Where provided, entities’ responses to a recommendation are included in the body of this report, and entities’ general comments are in Appendix 1. ...

From: "Online Availability of Government Entities' Documents Tabled in the Australian Parliament", Report Number: 37, Australian National Audit Office, 25 May 2009

Making local government accessible

Leichhardt Council have made their Draft Management Plan and Budget 2009/2013 available online. Unfortunately, as Annandale on the Web says, this 1.5 Mbyte 298 page PDF document is not particularly public friendly. The council might like to consider making the plan available as a set of web pages which meet accessibility standards, in accordance with the Australian Disability Discrimination Act. An automated test appears to indicate that at present the Council's web site does not comply with the Act.

While not a legal necessity, it would be useful to have the web pages follow mobile web guidelines. The Council page which describes the plan scores 62/100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker, which is not a good result. The council should aim for at least 90/100. This would make for a much easier to handle document, in small easy to download and read segments. As well as working on devices such as iPhones and Blackberries, this would make the plan easier to read on older computers with slow Internet connections.

But apart from the poor formatting, there is much to be positive about in the plan, including support for light rail.

ABC Mobile Web Site Failed Accessibility Test

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched "ABC Mobile" yesterday. Unfortunately the home page does not appear to have been designed in accordance with guidelines for web accessibility for the disabled and may be unlawful. The ABC advertises for staff who have a knowledge of web accessibility and web standards and so would know its its obligations. The site also fails several mobile phone and other web guidelines. As well as the mobile phone compatible web site, there are Apple iPhone and Gooogle Android applications offered. However, the ABC should have put its resources into the basic site, rather than building nice to have, but non-essential features.

A test using the Test Accessibility Web tool (TAW 3.0 3/16/09 10:15 PM) against the WAI guidelines (W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999) reported: 1 Priority 1, 14 Priority 2 and 1 Priority 3 problems with the page. The Priority 1 problem is the most serious. The ABC has not included usable alternative text for the main navigation menu of the site. As an example, "Weather" is displayed as an image with no text saying "Weather" for those who cannot see the image. Instead the word "image" has been used for all the menu items, making the web site substantially inaccessible to those with vision impairment.

The W3C mobileOK Checker gave the home page of the new site 79/100 on mobile compatible tests. This would be a good result for an ordinary web site but is poor for a site specifically designed for mobile phones. The web page is designed for smart phones with large screens (about 3 inches and QVGA resolution) and would be difficult to use on an ordinary mobile phone. The page is 38KB: 9KB for the text and 29KB of images, which is too "heavy" for a mobile (W3C recommend 20 kbytes). There are 15 files required to be downloaded (the HTML and 14 images), whereas W3C recommends a maximum of 10. There are numerous errors reported with the HTML coding of the web site.

With its mobile service the ABC had the opportunity to not only provide a general news and entertainment service but one which would be of use in emergencies, such as bushfire and floods. However by not correctly designing the service the ABC has limited its usefulness.

Currently I am teaching mobile and accessible web design to second year and postgraduate students at The Australian National University in the course "Networked Information Systems" (COMP2410). The ABC home page would not be of an acceptable standard for student work on this course.

Government Funded Broadband for Seniors Web Site Fails Accessibility Test

The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) is funding 2,000 Internet kiosks via the "Broadband for Seniors" initiative. This is an excellent idea. But unfortunately, "NEC Seniors" the web site provided by NEC to help deliver the service, failed a basic accessibility test. Given that the kiosks are intended for senior citizens who are likely to have poor eyesight and other accessibility problems, it is unfortunate (and most likely unlawful) that the web site to deliver the service is not built to cater to these citizens.

Target.com to be accessible and $6M damages

US retailer, Target Corporation has agreed to make its web site fully accessible to blind customers by February 2009 and pay $6M in damages to Californian vision impaired customers. The case is similar to the 1999 one concerning the 2000 Olympics Web site, which I was an expert witness for, but on a larger scale. Note that the Target Australia Pty Ltd web site is not necessary covered by the US legal decision.

For those interested in how to create accessible web sites (and which also work for mobile phones) see the notes for the course I teach on this at the Australian National University: Website Design, For Information Technology Professionals, for "Internet, Intranet, and Document Systems" (COMP3400/COMP6340).

By the way the Target Australia Pty Ltd home page passed an automated accessibility test at Level A. It had four Priority 2 and one Prioritise 3 issues. This is a relatively good result for a commercial web site. I was unable to get the test system to work with the USA Target site.

Making web sites for a mobile devices and people with disabilities

The World Wide Web Consortium has released the final version of "Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities". This is intended to help those designing web sites for both mobile and disabled users. It catalogues the overlap between the W3C's mobile and accessibility standards. This is useful, but is is disappointing that W3C have failed to get their standards writers to agree on one common standard. Instead of having on standard, the W3C has two standards which say much the same thing, and leave it to each web designer to try to reconcile the differences themselves.

Contents

• Perceivable
  • Information conveyed solely with color
  • Large pages or large images
  • Multimedia with no captions
  • Audio-only prompts (beeps) for important information (warnings, errors)
  • Embedded non-text objects (images, sound, video) with no text alternative
  • Important information in non-text content (images, multimedia)
  • Free-text entry (for example, alphabetical characters allowed in numeric fields)
  • Content formatted using tables or CSS, and reading order not correct when linearized (for example when CSS or tables not rendered)
  • Information conveyed only using CSS (visual formatting)
• Operable
  • Mouse required for interaction and navigation
  • Scripting required to operate or generate content
  • Special plugin required
  • Missing or inappropriate page title
  • Inconsistency between focus (tab) order and logical document content sequence
  • Non descriptive link label
• Understandable
  • Long words, long and complex sentences, jargon
  • Content spawning new windows without warning user
  • Blinking, moving, scrolling or auto-updating content
• Robust
  • Invalid or unsupported markup
    

Pictograms, Icons and Signs

The book Pictograms, Icons and Signs by Rayan Abdullah and Roger Hubner provides a detailed, entertaining and educational look at the use of simple visual symbols. They begin by briefly introducing Semiotics, the study of symbols for communication, and describing the differecnes between pictograms (symbols representing a concept) and icons (pictograms on computer screens) and other signs and sign languages. However, most people can skip this part, which takes up only the first 27 pages of the book and get on to how to build pictograms and then get on to the examples from the last hundred years.

The bulk of the book consists of carefully rendered pictograms, starting with international traffic signs, first standardised in 1909.

Then the role of pictograms in the modern Olympic games is covered. I know a little of this having proposed that the Olympic pictograms as icons for Olympic web sites. However, I had not realised that the use of sport signs is as old as the 1936 Olympics. Apart from the Olympics, the early adopters of pictograms were transport and the book goes on to cover those for airports and railways.

One trend I noticed was back to pictograms with softer edges. The early signs, such as those for the 1936 Olympics used shades of grey. Later pictograms, and most in current use, use only two colours and no shading. However, systems such as that used for domaine national de Chambord by Ruedi Baur use a blurry outline similar to anti-aliasing text.

A copiously illustrated and practical guide to informational graphics.

Pictograms and icons are a keystone of nonverbal and multicultural communication. But what precisely are pictograms, and when is it appropriate to use them? What are their advantages? What rules must be followed, and what are the pitfalls that designers of pictograms and icons must take care to avoid?

Drawing on a multitude of examples from around the world, the authors outline the history of the pictogram and show how it has been used in commercial and creative fields over the past century, as well as offering invaluable hints and advice to designers.

The book features:

• over 2,000 illustrations organized by theme, including pictograms from all the Olympic Games from 1964 to 2004;
• tips from successful pictogram designers, with real-life examples to instruct and inspire;
• a detailed discussion of icons, the "silent servants" of online communities;
• a chapter by designer Jochen Gros on his quest to create a visual language that crosses all grammatical, semantic, and semiotic boundaries—in effect, to create a "language without words." 2000+ illustrations.

About the Author
Rayan Abdullah teaches design and typography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Roger Hübner does consulting and design for webjuice.de and teaches graphic design in Berlin.
Product Details

* Paperback: 244 pages
* Publisher: Thames & Hudson (November 13, 2006)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0500286353

From: Amazon page for: Pictograms, Icons and Signs

Testing a Government Sustainability Website

The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment has issued a Request for Proposal to do content relevance and usability testing of the sustainability.govt.nz website. There is a 17 page, 253kb MS-Word document with the requirements. This provides a useful overview of what is required in such evaluations. Curiously, the RFT does not ask for an accessibility testing of the web site.

GETS Reference: 23497
Title New Zealand based opportunity Content relevance and usability testing of sustainability.govt.nz website

Request for Proposal
...
General Information The nature of the project is to conduct target audience testing of the sustainability.govt.nz website, including relevance of content and usability that will inform the proposed refresh of the site scheduled for early 2009 (refer to schedule 1).

...

Additional Documentation to Download
File Name Description File Type File Size
RFP Content relevance and usability testing of sustainability.govt.nz.DOC RFP Content relevance and usability testing of sustainability.govt.nz WORD 253kb


Relates to the following TenderWatch Categories
864 Market research and public opinion polling services
846 Web development services

From: Content relevance and usability testing of sustainability.govt.nz website, NZ Government, 2008

SCHEDULE 1: THE PROJECT

BACKGROUND
The Ministry for the Environment’s Household Sustainability Team launched the sustainability.govt.nz website in December 2007. The website was developed to raise awareness and help inform people about the sustainable choices they can take in their homes, in the areas of waste reduction, building, renovating, energy, water efficiency and transport.
A series of user personas was developed during the initial design phase of the sustainability.govt.nz website. Since sustainability.govt.nz was developed, the Household Sustainability Team has commissioned market research to allow segmentation of the population and appropriate targeting of interventions to the segments based on what motivates particular groups of people. This research has allowed further refinement of the sustainability.govt.nz target audience (see below).

Since its development, sustainability.govt.nz underwent a minor refresh in June 2008. This refresh included changes to the visual design and usability of the site. An online survey of the site’s current users has also been conducted. This survey will help gain a greater understanding of who the users are, why they are using the site, and their expectations for the site. It is expected that this survey will contribute to the project to test content relevance and usability for the site’s target audience.

The long-term direction of sustainability.govt.nz is to further develop its ability to bring about behaviour change in the target audience in the areas of waste reduction, building, renovating, energy, water efficiency and transport. Testing the relevance of existing content and usability of sustainability.govt.nz for the site’s target audience is part of the wider development of the site. A larger refresh of sustainability.govt.nz is scheduled for early 2009, and will be informed by the findings of this testing project.

TARGET AUDIENCE
The Household Sustainability Programme is designed to deliberately target sections of the population who are aware of sustainability issues and are interested in changing their patterns of behaviour.

By accelerating changes of behaviour in our target audience it is expected that they will influence others, who will be “pulled along” with their peer group. Over time, the aim is to influence an increasingly wide section of the population until the majority of households support more sustainable patterns of consumption and behaviour.

Note: further information on the target audience is available on request.

SCOPE
This RFP seeks responses from agencies which are able to provide the following services:

1.Ability to identify and recruit target audience members
2.Website usability testing (based on the target audience’s ability to use the website)
3.Content relevance testing (based on relevance to target audience - may involve a social marketing approach)
4.Evaluation of the findings from this testing project to inform the proposed sustainability.govt.nz refresh

SERVICES REQUIRED
In order to provide a website that meets the needs of our target audience to make sustainable choices in the areas of waste reduction, building, renovating, energy, water efficiency and transport, the Ministry is seeking proposals for carrying out the following services:

1.Design and draft a content relevance and usability testing plan for sustainability.govt.nz (note: a summary of findings from the online user survey is available on request. The full report of results from the online survey will be available to the successful proposal once a contract has been awarded).
2.Contact, recruit and confirm members of the site’s target audience as participants for the testing.
3.Test the content relevance and usability of sustainbiltiy.govt.nz for the target audience.
4.Prepare a summary report of findings from the content relevance and usability testing of sustainbiltiy.govt.nz for the target audience that will inform the proposed refresh scheduled for early 2009.

From: Request for Proposals, For Content relevance and usability testing of sustainability.govt.nz website, NZ Ministry for the Environment

24 September 2008

ABC Mobile Web design

ABC's Media Watch program ("ABC Designs For The Future",15 September 2008), had a detailed discussion of the possibility of advertising on new ABC mobile web sites. Contrary to what the program said, the ABC could simply and cheaply provide a mobile option for its existing site. Examples were show of prototype ABC Weather, ABC Grandstand Sport and news pages. Most of the analysis was about the appropriateness of having advertisements on an ABC web site. What didn't seem to get discussed was why have separate mobile sites at all. The ABC's web site, including media watch already work on mobile devices and just need some minor improvements to make all the ABC web pages available on mobiles.

Presenter Jonathan Holmes said: "Try to view ordinary websites on one of the flash new 3G mobile devices like Blackberry and iPhone, and they're very clunky. And they'll also quickly bust your download cap. So everyone's racing to develop new, mobile friendly, websites - the ABC included...". That is certainly the case for Media Watch's own web site, which when viewed on a mobile device (I used Opera's "Small Screen" open to emulate a mobile device) has too much content and too much animation. However, this can be fixed by simplifying the standard web site and then using the options built into web standards to have it adapt when viewed on Mobile devices.

By making the main web site mobile compatible, this will also improve the quality of the web site for all users. Web designers have a tendency to clutter web pages with too much content. Mobile devices have small screens and limited bandwidth, providing a useful curb on the designer's enthusiasm. Where high bandwidth is required, the web server can automatically adjust the content to suit the device.

There have been several past attempts by the mobile phone and web industries to make mobile web sites a viable business. These attempts have mostly failed. The ABC should make a small investment in making all its web content mobile compatible. This can be done with a small project and mostly using automated tools. It would be a minimal expense and effort compared to creating and maintaining multiple new web sites. After it has done that the ABC can see who actually wants to view what content on which mobile devices. The popular services can then be improved.

Billions of dollars have been lost over the last ten years by companies attempting to create a profitable business from mobile web sites. If more companies wish to risk more money in the attempt, they are free to do so, with the consent of their investors. However, the ABC is a government owned enterprise funded by the public and so not be investing heavily in speculative ventures with minimal chance of success. The ABC is required by law to make its services widely available. There are ways for the ABC to provide mobile web access at minimal expense with little risk using available technology. I suggest the ABC take that approach and leave risky DOT.COM style web speculation to others.

Beijing 2008 Olympics Website Accessibility Problems

The E-Access Bulletin reports that Henny Swan from UK Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) says the web site for the Beijing Olympics website has several problems making it difficult for people with a disability.It will be interesting to see how the London 2012 Olympics does.

The item mentions the accessibility case for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. My expert witness statement assessing the accessibility of the Sydney Olympic Web Site for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission hearing is available online (8 August 2000). A decision was delivered 24 August 2000 and $20,000 damages were awarded. BOCOG invited me to Bejing to talk about that case and what was needed for Making an Accessible and Functional Website for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The website for the Beijing Olympics is not accessible to people with disabilities, a leading accessibility expert has told E-Access Bulletin.

With the games in full swing this month, their official website which include a full results service could be among the most visited sites in the world (http://en.beijing2008.cn/). But Henny Swan, senior web accessibility consultant at the RNIB, said the service is inaccessible in a number of key ways.

"There are.no text alternatives for multimedia which means many people, including mobile users, will be locked out of content. New windows also seem to open from within Flash movies, which is not only an accessibility but also a usability issue." Other findings include instances of animation that fails to stop moving after three seconds, she
said. "This can be a distraction for people with reading problems or people with low vision.

Last year Swan undertook an initial advance study of the accessibility of the Beijing Olympics site, then still under development. While the findings of her work were not all negative, the indications at that time were that various improvements were needed before the website would meet even the basic level of compliance with international Web Content Accessibility Guideline.

Returning to the site this month, she said there had been some improvements, although "where one issue may have been fixed, others have taken its place." Overall her findings indicate that the organising committee for the Beijing games seem not to have developed a clear accessibility plan for the website.

Olympic websites have a mixed history in terms of accessibility. The site for the 2004 games in Athens raised few complaints, but the organisers of the 2000 Sydney Olympics were successfully sued for failure to make their website comply with accessibility standards.

NOTE: For our full report on the accessibility of the Beijing 2008 Olympics website see section three, this issue.

From: Beijing Games Website Inaccessible On Multiple Counts, E-Access Bulletin, ISSUE 104, Headstar, August 2008

I ran a quick automated TAW Test which reported:

Test summary outcome

	Automatic	Human review
Priority 1	2	75
Priority 2	7	182
Priority 3	0	19

The two Priority 1 issues were:

Found issues:

[WAI] Priority 1 accessibility issues. A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents. 2 automatically detected problems and 75 problems that require human review have been found.

6.2 Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.

• Missing accessible alternative content in the body of IFRAME (1)
• • Line 222 ...
    

Relationship Mobile Web and Web Accessibility

The W3C have issued a very odd document "Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)", which which brings new meaning to the term "nothing". It is not so much about the relationship between WCAG and MWBP, but the failure of the W3C to produce one. This document is the technical equivalent of Beckett's play: Waiting for Godot.

The working draft of 3 July 2008 tries to explain the relationships, overlaps and differences between the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP). But it seems to be a by-product of rivalry between W3C working groups, which will be largely unintelligible to outsiders.

The WCAG were primarily intended to make web pages accessible to people with disabilities (such as the blind). But they also had mobile devices in mind, taking into account small screens, slow Internet connections, limited keyboards and pointing devices. I have been teaching the use of the accessibility guidelines for mobile devices to students since 2001.

The Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) are the latest of many attempts to get web pages on mobile phones. Previous attempts failed, largely due to the extreme limitations of mobile devices and partly due to the mobile phone industry's different business models. Mobile devices now have bigger screens and more advanced web browsers, so making web pages is easier. But the MWBP's work is still needed to help designers take account of mobile limitations.

This relationship document is very strangely worded. It is not so much a technical report, as a political one. It asks the reader to first read Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices and Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and by People Using Mobile Devices. Then it asks the reader to either read MWBP to WCAG 2.0 or MWBP to WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 to MWBP or WCAG 1.0 to MWBP. There is the a table which apparently tries to make this clear:

Done	Doing next	Then read
MWBP	WCAG 2.0	MWBP to WCAG 2.0
MWBP	WCAG 1.0	MWBP to WCAG 1.0
WCAG 1.0	MWBP	WCAG 1.0 to MWBP
WCAG 2.0	MWBP	WCAG 2.0 to MWBP
None	Both WCAG 2.0 and MWBP	WCAG 2.0 and MWBP Together

If that is not enough for the reader, it then refers them to the to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Mobile Web Best Practices. Then referring to yet another document: "Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and by People Using Mobile Devices [Editors' Draft, January 2008]".

At this point the document finally gets around to telling the reader something useful about the topic:

"The Mobile Web Best Practices (BP) are not assigned levels. MWBP relates to checkpoints of all the WCAG 1.0 priorities (1, 2 and 3) and to all the WCAG 2.0 level A, AA and AAA success criteria."

However, we are now almost at the end of the document. So far there has been only one sentence containing useful information on the topic.

What then follows is a paragraph explaining why there is no mapping table detailing differences between WCAG and MWBP, and so attempting to explain why this technical report fails in what it set out to do. Then there is an appendix attempting to redefine common English words to be "Special Terms": everything, nothing, partially, possibly, and something. The document then ends.

This reminds me of many public service ICT documents written by people who did not want to do something and who used a lot of words to obscure the fact that they had not done it. W3C should decide if they genuinely want to relate Mobile Web and Web Accessibility (which would be a good idea), or if it is too hard to do. If it is too hard, then this document should be rewritten to honestly say that, rather than trying to obscure the fact that two of the working groups do not want to cooperate.

As it is, the document "Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)", is like Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, where the characters wait for someone named Godot, who never arrives. In the case of the W3C's report we wait for a relationship which never arrives.

Report on electronic voting trials

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has provided a brief report on the two trials of electronically voting at the 2007 federal election. 1511 Defence personnel in Iraq, Solomon Islands, East Timor and Afghanistan voted electronically using
the Defence Restricted Network to communicate with a specially developed AEC system. 850 people used a separate system in Australia for those who are blind
or have low vision. Reports on the trials are being written for the Parliamentary committee which recommended the trials.

I used the low vision system and found it worked well. The system was similar to that used for the ACT elections and was developed by the same company. While e-voting has been controversial in the UK and the USA, the Australian trials appear to haven been uncontroversial. Neither trial involved use of the public Internet, with the defence system being a classified military network and the low vision system printing paper ballots to be scanned.

The ACT Electoral Commissioner talked 9 April 2008 about e-voting in Canberra to the ACT Society for Technology and the Law in a presentation entitled "E-voting; casting votes or casting doubt?".

In its review of the 2004 election, the Joint Standing
Committee on Electoral Matters recommended that
electronically assisted voting be trialled at the next federal
election. The Government supported these recommendations
and the trials went ahead at the 2007 election.

Defence e-voting trial

A total of 1511 Defence personnel on deployment in Iraq,
Solomon Islands, East Timor and Afghanistan cast their vote
electronically in the 2007 federal election.
The Defence e-voting trial saw cooperation between the AEC
and Defence in all matters of implementation. While the AEC
developed the software and housed the voting database,
the Defence Restricted Network was the medium used to
transport the encrypted votes.

E-voting trial for people who are blind
or have low vision

The AEC worked closely with a reference group, which
consisted of representatives of the major service providers
and peak bodies in the disability sector as well as Human
Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes. In developing the trial,
the AEC also looked at electronic voting systems in Victoria
and the ACT.

Nationally there were 850 votes cast using this system
in 29 sites.

Evaluations of the two trials are now being conducted for
Parliament’s consideration. ...

From: The Tally Board, No. 4, Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), June 2008

ps: Thanks to Sylvano for pointing this item out.

UK Government fails own web accessibility guidelines

The UK Government's Central Office of Information (COI) has set a minimum standard of accessibility for public sector websites. Unfortunately their web site detailing the policy fails to meet the standard set, makes misleading claims of conformance with the standard and does not comply with their own guidelines.

The COI has set a minimum standard of accessibility for new UK public sector websites at Level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines . This is required as of December 2009 for central government departments and March 2011 for central government executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies.

The COI suggests using free and commercially available automated testing tools as part of measuring accessibility. However, applying one such test, the Web Accessibility Test (TAW), the COI's page failed with eight level 2 problems (excerpt of the report appended). This indicates that the page does not meet at Level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The problems with the page are minor and easily corrected.

The COI's help page, states that the "... website's objective are to conform to the Guidelines for UK government websites, which support the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Level AA, to ensure a Web accessibility standard have been achieved and are maintained." The statement is misleading, as it suggests the web site meets Level Double-A, when it does not. Also the statement does not use the wording suggested in COI's own policy document.

In contrast the Australian Government accessibility policy requires a lower level of compliance, to Level A of the W3C guidelines. The web page from the Australian Government Information Management Office (Australian equivalent to UK COI) stating this requirement not only meets this requirement, but exceeds it, passing the more stringent automated Level Double-A test (excerpt appended), which the UK COI failed.

UK Government Web Page Test

TAW 3.0 (6/24/08 1:11 AM) Validation conform to WAI guidelines, W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999

Testing outcome: http://www.coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=131

Test summary outcome

	Automatic	Human review
Priority 1	0	49
Priority 2	8	37
Priority 3	Not analysed

---

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Delivering inclusive websites

Minimum standard of accessibility

1. The minimum standard of accessibility for all public sector websites is Level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. All new websites must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication.
2. Websites owned by central government departments must be Double-A conformant by December 2009. This includes websites due to converge on Directgov or BusinessLink, unless convergence is scheduled before this date.
3. Websites owned by central government executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies must conform by March 2011.
4. Government websites owners are reminded to follow the conditions of use for a .gov.uk name (Registering .gov.uk domain names (TG114)). Websites which fail to meet the .gov.uk accessibility requirements may be at risk of having their domain name withdrawn.
5. At the time of writing, version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is the current standard for web accessibility. At such time that version 2.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation, this policy will be reviewed within six months. Consideration will be given to the adoption of version 2.0 as the minimum standard for public sector websites.

Content formats not covered by WCAG 1.0

6. Content formats not covered by version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (e.g. Flash, PDF, JavaScript etc) should only be used if it is determined that they are the most appropriate for the intended purpose. For example, this could be where the proposed content enhances the functionality or understanding for the intended audience.
7. Every attempt should be made to ensure that the accessibility features of the relevant authoring tool are used.
8. In all cases, web content must always be developed according to the process set out in your website accessibility policy.

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• © Crown Copyright 2004-2007

This page was printed from the COI website at 00:11 on Tuesday, 24 Jun 2008. It is subject to © Crown Copyright.

Found issues: ...

[WAI] Priority 2 accessibility issues. A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents. 8 automatically detected problems and 37 problems that require human review have been found.

3.5 Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification.

• Verify that all headers are properly marked up ("h1"-"h6" elements).
• Improper header nesting: Header levels must not increase by more than one level per heading. Do not use headings to create font effects; use style sheets to change font styles (1)
• • Line 32:

11.2 Avoid deprecated features of W3C technologies.

• This HTML element uses deprecated attributes. (7)
• • Line 19:
  • Line 38:
  • Line 38:
  • Line 38:
  • Line 49:
    6. Line 54:
    7. Line 55:

...

From: TAW 3.0 Validation Testing outcome for http://www.coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=131, to WAI guidelines, W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999, as at 6/24/08

Australian Government Web Page Test

TAW 3.0 (6/24/08 1:25 AM) Validation conform to WAI guidelines, W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999

Testing outcome: http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/Accessibility

Test summary outcome

	Automatic	Human review
Priority 1	0	30
Priority 2	0	37
Priority 3	Not analysed

---

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Location: Home > Accessibility and Equity > Accessibility

Accessibility

Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a system is usable by as many people as possible without modification. Web pages often have access issues for people with disabilities or with technological constraints.

Australian Government departments and agencies are also required to maximise their use of new technologies by ensuring that their websites address access and equity issues for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Tell Me About?

The Australian Government aims to achieve fairer and more accessible government services and programs through its Access and Equity Strategy. The strategy seeks to promote fairness and responsiveness in the design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of government services in a culturally diverse society.

The Government's Access and Equity Strategy is guided by the Access and Equity Framework (Department of Immigration and Citizenship) formerly known as the Accessible Government Services for All Framework. It was developed in 2006 in consultation with Australian Government agencies, taking into account their ability to contribute both as separate portfolios and to whole-of government responses to the challenges faced by our culturally diverse nation.

Its four principles, and the corresponding performance indicators, address key responsibilities of government:

• Responsiveness – Extent to which programs and services are accessible, fair and responsive to the individual needs of clients
• Communication – Open and effective channels of communication with all stakeholders
• Accountability – Effective and transparent reporting and review mechanisms
• Leadership – A whole of government approach to management of issues arising from Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse society.

The framework suggests strategies for the implementation of these principles. It aims to assist agencies to analyse their performance and better share good practice responses to challenges and opportunities.

Progress in implementing the Access and Equity Strategy is published in the Access and Equity Annual Reports (Department of Immigration and Citizenship).

Why Must I?

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 agencies must ensure that people with disabilities have the same fundamental rights to access information as the rest of the community.

• World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission)

Under the Commonwealth Disability Strategy, (Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Australian Government agencies are obligated to remove barriers which prevent people with disabilities from having access to their policies, programs and services.

Under the 2000 Government Online Strategy departments and agencies are required to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (World Wide Web Consortium).

Agencies must achieve level "A" conformance (all Priority 1 checkpoints are satisfied), and it is recommended that agencies achieve level "AA" conformance (all Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints are satisfied).

The W3C guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. However, following them will also make web content more available to all users. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, video, etc., but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The W3C guidelines provide a series of checkpoints that can be used to ensure that websites are accessible. Each checkpoint has a priority level assigned by the Working Group based on the checkpoint's impact on accessibility.

Priority 1

W3C states that a web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.

Level of Compliance: The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's view is that compliance with the W3C WCAG 1.0 guidelines to the Single-A level is a minimum rather than a desirable outcome. Websites that demonstrate such compliance may still be difficult or impossible to access for many users with a disability.

Priority 2

W3C states that a web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.

Priority 3

W3C states that a web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.

How Do I?

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission provides information on World Wide Web Accessibility standards, guidelines, tools and techniques.

Government resources

• Access and Equity Issues for Websites (AGIMO, Better Practice Checklist)
• Better Information and Communication Practices (Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs)
• Good Practice Guide for Culturally Responsive Government Services [PDF, 146KB] (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs)

Other resources

• Core Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (World Wide Web Consortium)
• Web Accessibility Initiative (World Wide Web Consortium)
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (World Wide Web Consortium)

Who Can Help?

A list of workshops and training is available from HREOC - World Wide Web Accessibility.

For queries and assistance contact Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission - disabdis@humanrights.gov.au.

For further details regarding access and equity requirements, contact:

Multicultural Affairs Branch
Department of Immigration and Citizenship
access&equity@immi.gov.au

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• Alternative Formats and Media

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...

From: TAW 3.0 Validation

Testing outcome for http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/Accessibility
conform to WAI guidelines, W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999, 6/24/08 1:25 AM

---

London 2012 Olympics Website Accessiblity

In contrast to the Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010, the organizers of the London 2012 Olympics seem to have put some thought into the accessibility of their web site. The site passes a basic automated test. It has some interesting features, such as three versions of the color scheme and layout:

1. Normal
2. Dyslexia: Limited graphics and only one column of text.
3. Highvis: The high visibility version has yellow text on a black background.

Unfortunately these are accessed via three icons of increasingly large images of the letter "A". These are usually used to access versions of a web site with larger text. The reader is going to get confused when instead they get a different layout.

The London team made some unfortunate choices with their visual materials, with some animated footage reported to trigger photosensitive epilepsy seizures. This is covered by W3C web accessibility checkpoint "Verify that there is no blinking content in the page".

2010 Commonwealth Games Website Problems

The next Commonwealth Games in 2010, are to be held in Delhi, India. Unfortunately the official web site for the games, is not easy to use. It first has a Flash multimedia presentation which takes about 20 seconds to load on the average Internet connection and then displays a web page which fails a web accessibility test, with dozens of errors.

As a result the games web site will be difficult to use on old web browsers, on slow Internet connections, on hand-held devices and by people for whom English is not their first language. The games committee needs to get some of the excellent web designers India has to fix the site. Much of what applies to the Beijing Olympic Web site design, would be applicable to India.

Here are some of the errors reported by TAW (Web Accessibility Test), based on the W3C - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0):

Found issues:

[WAI] Priority 1 accessibility issues. A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents. 34 automatically detected problems and 99 problems that require human review have been found.

1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video.

• Verify that text equivalent for image is useful
• Missing text equivalent for image (30)
• • Line 249: <img src="images/Home_Banner_01.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 250: <img src="images/Home_Banner_02.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 251: <img src="images/Home_Banner_03.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 252: <img src="images/Home_Banner_04.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 253: <img src="images/Home_Banner_05.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 254: <img src="images/Home_Banner_06.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 255: <img src="images/Home_Banner_07.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 256: <img src="images/Home_Banner_08.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 257: <img src="images/Home_Banner_09.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 258: <img src="images/Home_Banner_10.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_1.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_2.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_3.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_4.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_5.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_6.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_7.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_8.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_9.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_10.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_11.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_12.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_13.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_14.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_15.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_16.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_17.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 276: <img src="images/cwgindia.gif" width="100" height="100" border="0" usemap="#Map">
  • Line 280: <img src="images/ioa.gif" width="100" height="103" border="0" usemap="#Map3">
  • Line 284: <img src="images/cwg2008.gif" width="100" height="114" border="0" usemap="#Map4">



• If describing the image will add information, you need to provide a description of the image with a valid longdesc attribute (34)
• • Line 249: <img src="images/Home_Banner_01.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 250: <img src="images/Home_Banner_02.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 251: <img src="images/Home_Banner_03.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 252: <img src="images/Home_Banner_04.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 253: <img src="images/Home_Banner_05.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 254: <img src="images/Home_Banner_06.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 255: <img src="images/Home_Banner_07.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 256: <img src="images/Home_Banner_08.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 257: <img src="images/Home_Banner_09.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 258: <img src="images/Home_Banner_10.jpg" width="100" height="147">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_1.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_2.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_3.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_4.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_5.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_6.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_7.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_8.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_9.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_10.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_11.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_12.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_13.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_14.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_15.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_16.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 268: <img src="images/ico_17.gif" width="59" height="63">
  • Line 275: <img src="images/logos/cwgnew.jpg" alt="CWG New Logo">
  • Line 276: <img src="images/cwgindia.gif" width="100" height="100" border="0" usemap="#Map">
  • Line 280: <img src="images/ioa.gif" width="100" height="103" border="0" usemap="#Map3">
  • Line 284: <img src="images/cwg2008.gif" width="100" height="114" border="0" usemap="#Map4">
  • Line 290: <img src="images/sheroonew1.jpg" alt="Sheru" width="89" height="150">
  • Line 344: <img src="images/News/1000daystogo.gif" alt="1000 Days Celebration" width="660" height="150">
  • Line 386: <img src="http://www.findlocalweather.net/forecast.php?forecast=hourly&pands=VIDP&place=New Delhi / Palam&state=In&config=png&alt=hwiccmet" border="0" alt="Click for the latest New Delhi / Palam weather forecast.">



• Missing text equivalent for this image map area (3)
• • Line 278: <area shape="rect" coords="2,0,99,99" href="http://thecgf.com">
  • Line 282: <area shape="rect" coords="1,1,99,102" href="http://www.olympic.ind.in">
  • Line 286: <area shape="rect" coords="2,2,99,114" href="http://www.cygpune2008.com">

6.2 Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.

• Missing accessible alternative content in the body of IFRAME (1)
• • Line 289: <iframe src="clock.htm" height="150" width="150" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">



• Verify that equivalents of dynamic content are updated and avaliable as often as the dynamic content. (9)
• • Line 6: <script language="javascript">
  • Line 198: <script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
  • Line 241: <script src="Scripts/AC_RunActiveContent.js" type="text/javascript">
  • Line 347: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 351: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 358: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 360: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 374: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 376: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="200" height="300" title="News of CWG">

2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.

• Check it through the whole document

4.1 Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text and any text equivalents (e.g., captions).

• Check it through the whole document

5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers.

• if this is a data table identify column and row headers (6)
• • Line 247: <table width="1000" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  • Line 269: <table width="1000" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  • Line 302: <table width="125" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="Menu" >
  • Line 340: <table width="660" height="452" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" >
  • Line 384: <table width="185" height="180" border="0">
  • Line 394: <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="Menu1">

5.2 For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.

• If this is a multilevel table, should identify structural groups of rows and groups of columns (7)
• • Line 247: <table width="1000" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  • Line 269: <table width="1000" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  • Line 295: <table width="772" border="0">
  • Line 302: <table width="125" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="Menu" >
  • Line 340: <table width="660" height="452" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" >
  • Line 384: <table width="185" height="180" border="0">
  • Line 394: <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="Menu1">

6.1 Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document.

• Ensure this document can be read without style sheets (7)
• • Line 16: <style type="text/css">
  • Line 245: <table width="1000" height="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px; " bgcolor="#ffffff" >
  • Line 264: <a href="business_tenders.html" style="text-decoration:none; color:Blue">
  • Line 268: <div id="Layer1" style="position:absolute; width:1003px; height:60px; z-index:2; left: 0px; top: 84px;">
  • Line 383: <div id="apDiv6" style=" background-color:#ffe4b3" align="center" >
  • Line 412: <DIV style="position: absolute; top: 67px; left: 375px; width: 341px; height: 24px; font-size: 12pt; font-family:Arial; color:808080">
  • Line 413: <DIV style="position: absolute; top: 66px; left: 374px; width: 341px; height: 23px; font-size:12pt; font-family:Arial; color:white">

6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.

• Verify that dynamic content is accessible or provide an alternative. (12)
• • Line 6: <script language="javascript">
  • Line 198: <script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
  • Line 241: <script src="Scripts/AC_RunActiveContent.js" type="text/javascript">
  • Line 347: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 351: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 354: <embed src="videos/newanimlogo.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 358: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 360: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 363: <embed src="videos/f2.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 374: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 376: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="200" height="300" title="News of CWG">
  • Line 379: <embed src="images/Theme_of_CWG.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200" height="300">



• Missing accessible alternative content in the body of OBJECT (3)
• • Line 351: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 360: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 376: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="200" height="300" title="News of CWG">



• Missing NOEMBED element with accessible alternative content for EMBED in this page (3)
• • Line 354: <embed src="videos/newanimlogo.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 363: <embed src="videos/f2.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="225">
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7.1 Until user agents allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker.

• Check it through the whole document

8.1a Make programmatic elements such as scripts and applets directly accessible or compatible with assistive technologies, if functionality is important and not presented elsewhere.

• This element may not be accesible to all users. Please ensure there is an accesible interface to this object (12)
• • Line 6: <script language="javascript">
  • Line 198: <script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
  • Line 241: <script src="Scripts/AC_RunActiveContent.js" type="text/javascript">
  • Line 347: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 351: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 354: <embed src="videos/newanimlogo.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="220" height="310">
  • Line 358: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 360: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 363: <embed src="videos/f2.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="225">
  • Line 374: <script type="text/javascript">
  • Line 376: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="200" height="300" title="News of CWG">
  • Line 379: <embed src="images/Theme_of_CWG.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200" height="300">

...

Tactile Ground Surface Indicators

ABC Radio National By Design program had a segment on Tactile Ground Surface Indicators (TGSI) today. The guest was Murray Mountain, Chairman, Australian Standards Technical Committee ME/64. TGSIs are bumps or ridges on the ground to help people with limited eyesight to find they way around. Australia leads the world in standards and design of TGSIs and you will see them at Australian railway stations on the edges of platforms, and at the bottom and tops of flights of stairs in public buildings.

As Murray described them, the most common indicators are truncated cones 4 to 5 mm high. They are arranged in a rectangular grid. The indicators are designed not only to be easily felt through the feet or with a cane, but also to be seen. Their design has been carefully researched to make them prominent enough to be noticeable, but not a tripping hazard. Also they have to be long lasting and easy to install.

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) released Guidelines on access to buildings and services in 2007. This provides guidance to designers, builders, planners, certifiers, building managers and access consultants about access to buildings and services for people with disabilities, inlcuding use of TGSIs. This accompanied by The good, the bad and the ugly – design and construction for access which has examples of what can go wrong. The first problem covered is inappropriate use of TGSIs.

As well as the round knobs for warning of a hazard, there are directional tiles with ridges to steer people in a particular direction, such as to the entrance to a railway station. Usually the directional tiles end with the warning tiles, to indicate where to stop. I saw an unfortunate absence of warning tiles on the footpath outside the Beijing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games headquarters. Directional tiles had been laid down the center of the footpath with no warning tiles. So the path guided people into obstructions such as poles and off the high curb into six lanes of traffic. In contrast the Sydney Olympics had a clear policy for use of the paths and was praised for its efforts.

As Australia is the leader in TGSI standards, there would be an opportunity for training materials, planning an installation aids. These could be web based and include tests and checks. The would appear to be a large market for such support in China.

Standards and guides include:

1. AS/NZS 1428.4:2002 Design for access and mobility - Tactile indicators
2. TRAINING PROGRAM Tactile Ground Surface Indicators Workshop - 1428.4
3. BS 7997:2003 Products for tactile paving surface indicators. Specification
4. DR 04020 Design for access and mobility - Part 4.1: Tactile indicators
5. JIS T 9251:2001 Dimensions and patterns of raised of parts of tactile ground surface indicators for blind persons

TGSIs are also known as tactile guide pathways and Tactile paving. US ones are known as Detectable Warnings and use truncated domes, rather than cones. The indicators need not be any particular color, but must have sufficient contrast to be easily seen. The international work is under Working Group ISO/TC 173/WG 7 - Provisions and Means for Orientation of Visually Impaired Persons in Pedestrian Areas.

In Japan, TGSIs are commonly known as "Braille Blocks" (Tenji Block) , by analogy to Japanese braille (Tenji 点字). The paths (usually yellow) do not use braille, just the same grid of dots as used in Australia.

See also books:

1. Americans with Disabilities Act

Beijing 2008 Olympics Online Coverage Blocked for Apple and Linux Users?

A blog entry by Tim Bray, speculates that the 2008 Beijing Olympics will only be available online to Microsoft Windows users and those with newer Apple Macs. This seems unlikely, as if for no other reason it would make the Olympics less accessible to the disabled, exposing NBC and Microsoft to lawsuits for unlawful discrimination. I was one of the expert witnesses in the accessibility case over the 2000 Olympics and invited to Beijing in 2003 to talk at a BOCOG 2008 Olympic web site symposium.

Not all is sweetness and light around the Olympics. The 2008 version in Beijing will be made available online; but only via Silverlight. Which means that if you use a Linux or Solaris box, or one of the few million pre-Intel Macs that are still out there, the Olympic Community doesn’t want peons like you on board. This seems scandalous to me, but nobody else seems to care.

From: Tab Sweep — World, Tim Bray, 2008/01/13

Just to unravel what is being said: Silverlight is a Microsoft developed web browser plugin to provide similar features to Adobe Flash. Tim refers to a blog entry by a Microsoft staff member who makes claims about exclusive coverage of the Olympics:

On 8-8-08 the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will officially kick off in Beijing, China. ...

We have signed an agreement to partner with NBC Universal to build a Silverlight 2.0 based web broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympic games. This agreement also sets MSN as the official home of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

As a part of this, we will provide users with exclusive access to over 3000 hours of live and on-demand video content via Silverlight streaming. This means that viewers can access every minute of every event. Additionally, the amount of meta-data attached to each of the streams will be extensive and include links to player bios, medal counts, shortcuts to particular events (i.e. athlete x’s third long-jump attempt), maps of the Olympic facilities, pop-up overlays with real-time event alerts, headlines, video search capabilities, etc. ...

From: 2008 Olympics brought to you by Silverlight, January 07, 2008 2:54 AM, Somasegar

This in turn refers to an agreement with NBC, which was reported earlier by news sources:

... NBC Universal, owner of the exclusive U.S. media rights to this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, China (August 8-24, 2008), announced today that it was teaming up with MSN and Microsoft in an unprecedented strategic alliance to create "NBCOlympics.com on MSN", a next-generation online experience for Olympic fans across the United States. With thousands of hours of competition video in both live and on-demand formats, deep analysis and results delivered from NBC's award-winning broadcast and digital media teams, and Microsoft's Silverlight technology to deliver deeply immersive user experiences, NBCOlympics.com's coverage will be powered by MSN and Microsoft technology to complement NBC's broadcast programming and put millions of fans in control of the Olympic sports,
athletes and countries they want to watch.
.... During the Beijing Games, NBCOlympics.com (www.nbcolympics.com) content will be prominently featured on the MSN.com homepage (www.msn.com), seen by
over 100 million users per month, as well as on MSN Video (video.msn.com) and across the MSN and Windows Live networks, all moving the massive MSN Network audience to NBCOlympics.com's complete coverage of the Games.

As a result of this unprecedented alliance, "NBCOlympics.com on MSN" will
deliver: -- 2,200 hours of live event video coverage, with more than 20
simultaneous live video streams at peak times
-- More than 3,000 hours of on-demand video content including full-event
replays, highlights, features, interviews and encore packages.
-- An "enhanced playback mode" powered by Silverlight that gives users the
choice of a high-quality full screen viewing experience that is as good
or better than anything on the Internet today
-- Unique metadata overlays powered by Silverlight that enable fans to
have access not only to high quality video, but also to the wealth of
related content including results, statistics, comprehensive bios,
rules and expert analysis from NBC's Olympic digital media team in
Beijing
-- Live video alerts so fans can stay connected to the events and teams
they care most about
-- Social networking features that enable fans to share aspects of their
Olympic experience with friends ...

Adam Freifeld of NBC Sports, +1-201-965-2971, adam.freifeld@nbcuni.com; or
Adam Sohn of Microsoft, +1-503-443-7000, adamso@microsoft.com

From: NBC Universal and Microsoft Team Up On Unprecedented Web Offering for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Reuters, an 6, 2008 9:30pm EST

Some points to note from this:

1. USA only: The International Olympic committee allocates TV rights to the games on a country basis. NBC only has the U.S. media rights to 2008 Olympics and so whatever is done will only effect those in the USA.
2. Video Only: The media release was about the way video will be delivered online, it does not necessary mean that other Olympic information, such as text, audio and still images will be delivered this way. In addition, even if NBC and Microsoft only deliver information in this format, similar information should be available from other Olympic suppliers.
3. Accessibility Law: Under the laws of the USA, Australia, UK and many other countries, organizations providing services via the web are required to supply them to persons with a disability. Failing to do this is unlawful. This principle was established in the 2000 Sydney Olympics case which I was an expert witness for. It seems unlikely that NBC or Microsoft could fail to be aware of their obligation to provide access for the disabled to Olympic coverage. Microsoft's web site includes a case study for the Toronto 2008 Olympic Bid, which mentions accessibility for people with a disability. Microsoft's search engine returned 250,000 hits on "2000 olympics web accessibility" and 16,000 on "2008 Olympics "web accessibility".
   

See also:

• Olympic Failure: A Case for Making the Web Accessible, INET 2001: Internet Society Conference, 8 June 2001, Stockholm.
• Making an Accessible and Functional Website for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Official Website Preliminary Strategy Plan Symposium, Beijing, November 2003.

Web Accessibility and Mobile Phones

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are doing some work on web accessibility and the overlap with mobile phone web page design. This has the delightful acronym of WAMO (Web Accessible Mobile Overlap). W3C's original accessibility guidelines were intended for use with mobile devices as well as for people with a disability. It is a lot easier to convince hard headed clients (and students of web design) to put effort into web design for mobile phone users than for the disabled. I have been teaching this to ANU students for several years and it is good to see W3C picking up on it:

• Common Barriers Experienced by Users of Mobile Phones and People with Disabilities provides a summary of common Web content features and how they're similarly experienced by a user with a disability and a user with a mobile device.
• Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  • MWBP and WCAG 2.0 Working Draft Together combines the requirements and is designed for those who are not necessarily familiar with either document.
  • From MWBP to WCAG 1.0 and From MWBP to WCAG 2.0 are designed for those who already know MWBP and want to learn how they relate to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
  • From WCAG 1.0 to MWBP and From WCAG 2.0 to MWBP are designed for those who already know WCAG and want to learn how it relates to the Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP).

From: [DRAFT] Web Accessibility and Mobile Phones: Making a Web Site Both Accessible for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, W3C, 2008/01/03 23:31:09

Web Accessibility for the Ageing in Europe

The World Wide Web Consortium have a project on web accessibility for the ageing (WAI-AGE). This is based in France and funded by the European Commission. So far they do not appear to have produced much, but Andrew Arch, who was previously at Vision Australia, has gone over to joint the team, so we might see some results in the next few months.

In terms of teaching web designers about the needs of the elderly, perhaps we need an online equivalent to some of the teaching aids used for physical designers. These consist of goggles to simulate limited vision, thick gloves to give limited hand movement and the like. Perhaps we could have a web service which would blur the text and images of a selected web site, to make them harder to see and reduce the size of the links, to make it harder to select. It might also run the text of the web site through a language translator twice to make it more difficult to understand and simulate intellectual impairments.

The project was planned during 2005 and 2006 and officially started in January 2007.. W3C/ERCIM is the primary partner. The project runs for 36 months and has 5 main objectives for increasing the accessibility of the Web for those with accessibility needs related to ageing within European Union Member States:

• to inform the development of extensions on WAI guidelines and supplemental educational materials which can better promote and meet the needs of people who have accessibility needs related to ageing, with particular relevance to the needs of the elderly in Europe;
• to better inform the ongoing work of W3C/WAI with regard to the needs of the elderly, and to create an ongoing dialog between ageing communities and disability communities, and other stakeholder groups on the needs of people who have accessibility needs related to ageing;
• to provide educational resources focused towards industry implementors, including developers of mainstream technologies, assistive technologies, and Web designers and developers, through reviewing and revising existing WAI educational resources, and developing new educational resources which support the promotion and implementation of Web accessibility solutions for people with accessibility needs due to ageing;
• to provide educational resources focused towards organizations representing and serving ageing communities, and towards individuals with accessibility needs related to ageing, through reviewing and revising existing WAI educational resources and to develop new educational resources which support promotion and implementation of Web accessibility solutions for people with accessibility needs due to ageing;
• to promote increased harmonisation of Web accessibility standards so as to further build a unified market for technology developers and expedite the production of Web accessibility solutions, through promoting ongoing dialog between organisations representing the needs of the ageing community, and educating standards organisations and policy makers on commonalities between the needs of people with disabilities and people with accessibility needs due to ageing. ...

From: WAI-AGE Project Reference, W3C, 2007/09/21 10:44:31

Flawed accessibility tool accessED from Education.au

At the Web Adaptability for Inclusion Conference 2007 (OZeWAI 2007) last week I picked up a pamphlet about accessED, a free accessibility tool from education.au. The tool installed easily as a Firefox plugin, but has a very confusing interface. When I went to report this via the provided feedback facility and discussion group, I found neither worked. Added to the way Edna excluded disabled and low bandwidth users from its recent birthday celebrations, it makes me wonder if the new federal government should invest its education funding elsewhere.

... development of the Accessibility Panel has focussed on making testing for accessibility a more welcoming process by;

• Enabling users to test for accessibility on a protected web page.
• Clear and easy to understand descriptions of each checkpoint.
• Offering a simple step by step process for testing accessibility. ...

From: The Accessibility Panel (AccessED) now available!, Education.Au Ltd, 2007

Downloading the panel was quick and easy. When activated a panel appears next to the web page listing accessibility tests. A magnifying glass symbol is displayed next to each test. If the text fails, the magnifying glass changes to a cross. Clicking on the cross or magnifying glass will display a short text description. A check box allows the relevant areas to be highlighted on the web page.

Some problems with this:

• Magnifying glasses: When I first ran a test nothing seemed to happen. It took me some time to notice that some magnifying glasses had turned into red crosses. While the meaning of a cross is reasonably clear ("test failed"), the logical opposite of this would be a green tick, not an amber colored magnifying glass.
  
• Where are the errors: By default no problem errors are highlighted on the web page. This might be better than the default option in many tools, where all errors are highlighted. On a poorly designed wed page that can result in a hopeless jumble of lines. But it would be useful if something was highlighted to show that the tool actually worked.

To report my concerns I attempted to first post to the Accessibility Panel discussion forum. This required registration, so I registered (edna having deleted my previous registration), but with the new registration the result was "CAS Authentication failed!".

Attempting to use the "Feedback" resulted in an invitation to offer thoughts followed by the error message "You've already completed this activity".

Some weeks ago I was invited to submit some thoughts on the early days of EdNa. But when I went to the relevant web page I found the invitation only applied to those who could use Web 2.0 high bandwidth applications and audio. EdNa seemed to think those using text based interfaces, because they had limited bandwidth or had a disability, were no longer worth hearing from. This was disappointing. This was around the time one of the members of the new federal government asked me about computers in schools. One of the recommendations I made was for increased funding for EdNa. Now I am wondering if that would be the best use of the money.

Making Information Professionals Accessible

Greetings from the Web Adaptability for Inclusion Conference 2007 at La Trobe University, near Melbourne. I gave a keynote presentation on "Making Information Professionals Accessible" and there is now a group discussion taking place on "What should be taught, in what course, by whom?": Should there be certification for inclusive practice (like ISO 9001)? Who should be rated? What should be rated? Participant responses and discussion.

I am a little worried that my presentation was painting too negative a picture. My view is that a cross discipline approach is needed. There are not enough IT professionals interested in accessible web design to make it viable as a specialization on its own. We need to get the other professions involved to make it viable and work on a set of requirements and even a curriculum we are all happy with and then share the cost of developing training and certification for this.

Another way to look at this is that accessible web design for the disabled and ordinary web design should be subsumed by a discipline of information representation. This would look at how to communicate information well and tools to do this. A byproduct would be accessibility. An example of this is ICE which will encourage a particular layout for course materials, producing slides, web pages and PDF from the same source document. However, ICE is constrained by having to work from content prepared with a word processing template. A word processor is designed to produce printed text on paper, with limitations not present on a screen.

One aspect of a web accessibility conference is that the slide presentations are very easy to read. All the presenters used large text with good contrast backgrounds and very clear graphics. This is a very pleasant change from the average conference with tiny text on textured backgrounds.

Charles McCathieNevile from Opera gave a presentation remotely using Skype. The slides were advanced manually by the local MC pressing buttons. Opera was used in full screen mode for the slides.

ps: The discussion session used wireless Sure Microflex conference system microphones. These are "boundary effect" microphones which sit flat on the desk. One problem with the wireless units is the limited power of the batteries, so that people had to remember to turn of the units when not in use, or the batteries would go flat. The wireless units cost more than US$500 each. It might make sense to use cheaper wired units and plug them into something like the ASUS Eee PC, to make them wireless, as I looked at for ACS Council meetings.

Australian Government Web Accessibility Test

The Web Standards Group meeting this Wednesday at the National Library of Australia had a demonstration and a talk on accessibility of government web sites. Debra Wells used JAWS screen reader software on a laptop to try to find information on several web sites. complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites. Ruth Ellison, from Stamford Interactive, then talked on how to motivate web workers and executives to implement accessibility.

Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The first test was to find the Web Publishing Guide on AGIMO's web site<http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au>. What the audience heard was a very fast, uninteligible synthetic voice reading through the options on the AGIMO web site. It was surprising how much text had to be read through to find the needed option. Those who want lots of text on their web site might be made to have to sit down and navigate this way.

The voice was then slowed down to a rate the audience could understand and the BOM web site was navigated <http://www.bom.gov.au>. Unfortunately the standard screen display was used so that while the audience could hear the voice they could not easily follow where it was reading from on the screen. The BOM annual report was found on the BOM home page, but after reading out a lot of "vertical bar"s.

The same process was then carried out on the Environment Department web site. On this site there were many "bullet link"s read out, but the annual report was found. An audience member suggested that a quicker way to find the annual report was with a search. This was tried, but department's search function listed so many old annual reports for parts of the agency, that the latest report for the whole agency was not found.

The Australian Council for the Arts web site was then tried. This has a Flash animated graphic at the top of the page which is labeled with unhelpful numeric codes such as "1", "2", "3". When this was skipped, there were other objects on the page causing navigation problems. This was the poorest page tried in the demonstration and one which needs attention to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

The annual report of the Health and Aging and Archive Office web pages were then checked at high reading high speed. Each took 45 seconds. By now the audience had got used to the synthetic voice and were able to follow where it was up to, if not understand many of the words.
Debora pointed out that many users would not have the latest reading software, which was being demonstrated, due to the cost. Older versions may not be able to read PDF.

An online survey was then filled in on the Australia government home page. This worked reasonably well, but it was evident how tedious repeated text in a web site can be.

A kids flash page about Parliament house was then tried. The sound of a lawn mower included with an animation then drowned out Jaws voice, making navigation difficult. There was an option to turn off sound which the sighted audience could read, but this was not found using the voice system, making the web content unusable.

Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison, from Stamford International, talked about how to get across the importance of accessibility to web designers, project managers and senior decision makers. For those who simply say: "tell them to use the accessibility guidelines", this was a valuable lesson in the realities of motivation.

Ruith gave examples of where accessibility is not just about a group of identified individuals, for example "situational disability", of trying to use a device on a crowded tram. Some impairments are temporary, others permanent and some develop over time. She argued for a holistic approach and not just something tacked onto then end of the web design process.

Ruith suggested ROIs with reduced compensation claims, maintenance and litigation. This might be more effective than appealing to the better nature of a CFO. ;-) She also suggested looking at accessibility when buying off the shelf and tendering for development. She showed images of ZoomText keyboards, Braille displays and alternate mice.

See also books and products:

• Books on Accessible Web Design
• ZoomText Large Print Keyboard
• braille devices

Accessibility of government web sitesScreen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra 21 November, 2007. Recommended:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Accessibility of government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra, 21 November, 2007:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Google Ads on Mobile Phones

After years of trying, and failing, to interest people in the problem of providing accessible web sites for the disabled, I gave up. But I think they will listen to how to put Google ads on mobile phones (which uses the same accessibility techniques). All welcome at this free seminar in Canberra:

Seminar Announcement
Department of Computer Science, FEIT
The Australian National University

Date: Monday, 15 October 2007
Time: 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Venue: Room N101, CSIT Building [108]

Speaker: Tom Worthington

Title: Google Ads on Mobile Phones: accessibility, standards and implementation

Abstract:

Google's AdWords/AdSense system allows businesses to advertise on the web. This service was recently expanded to provide advertisements on mobile phones using XHTM/WAP 2.0, WML/WAP 1.0 and CHTML/iMode, implemented with PHP, CGI Perl or ASP. This is a brief overview of how the Google system is implemented and a demonstration. The differences between the system for desktop and hand held devices is discussed, as is Google's adherence (or lack of) to web standards. The accessibility of the ads, particularly for disabled will also be looked at.

Biography:
Tom Worthington a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University, where he teaches the design of web sites, e-commerce and professional ethics. Tom has been an expert witness in several court cases involving international patent, computer, web and Internet issues, as well as advising governments and companies on ICT problems. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution to the development of public Internet policy.

Notes: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/google_mobile_ads.php

DCS Seminars: http://cs.anu.edu.au/seminars/

Image SPAM from National Archives of Australia?

Recently I received a mail message where the content consisted of an image. This Image SPAM, is used to circumvent spam filters, as there is no text for the filter to check. But as I was about to delete the message I noticed it was from the National Archives of Australia.

Image spam is a kind of E-mail spam where the message text of the spam is presented as a picture in an image file. Since most modern graphical E-mail client software will render the image file by default, presenting the message image directly to the user, it is highly effective at circumventing normal E-mail filtering software.
From: Image spam, Wikipedia, 2007

I contacted the NAA and found that what they had sent was an invitation to an event in the form of an image. When I looked closely at the image I found it did contain the details of an event in October. However, the text was difficult to read. I have suggested that the NAA include the text of such announcements in the body of the message as text, so that they will not be mistaken for a Spammer.

Also this will allow who are blind, or otherwise can't seen the image, to read the message. I pointed out to the NAA that failing to do this may breech the Australia's Disability Discrimination Act, as well as government guidelines. The precedent was established for web pages, but most likely applies to email as well. Filing to include the text could cost the NAA $20,000.

Web to reduce UAV bandwidth use

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or robot planes, are used for remote surveillance, but use up a lot of bandwidth sending back images. The US military is providing millions of dollars in research on how to reduce the bandwidth needed, but seems to hav missed the obvious: use web technology.

Reports such as "$10M to Utah State to Help Ease ISR Bandwidth Crunch" (11-Sep-2007 14:45 Watershed Publishing LLC), indicate that networking and image processing will be exploited to reduce bandwidth:

Utah State University Research Foundation, North Logan, Utah, is being awarded $10M for cost-plus-fixed-fee completion task order #0007 under previously awarded contract (N00173-02-D-2003) for research in the area of Time Critical Sensor Image/Data Processing. Specifically, they will research advanced . ... massive bandwidth crunch being created by hundreds of video-equipped UAVs and networked airborne ISR systems sending video back to base. ... The Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, DC issued the contract.

However, a better way to reduce data transmission is not to send the data in the first place. The typical UAV is really just a remote control airplane, like a larger version of a hobby plane. With a little more intelligence the camera can just transmit when there is something interesting to see and at a resolution the user requires. The images can be zoomed in on to provide a high resolution view of a small area. Progressive scanning schemes can be sued to give a low resolution preview and then add detail of the area of interest. The aircraft can store the data for later replay. These are all capabilities available in web image formats and with off the shelf open source web server technologies, rather than something needing millions of dollars in research.

A hand launched UAV could use a small off the shelf computer such as the business card size Via Mobile-ITX which is intended for use in a smartphone.

Accessibility Problems with Microsoft Office Open XML

Stephen A. Hockema and Jutta Treviranus from the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre have written a thoughtful analysis of accessibility issues for the disabled with the Microsoft Office Open XML format. This is timely as OOXML is proposed as an international standard. Essentially Stephen and Jutta argue the world would be better off improving the existing ODF standard, than creating a new one. This is a point of view I agree with.

There are grave issues with respect to the accessibility of Office Open XML as a format and potential standard that should preclude its adoption at present. It may be the case that OOXML can be improved to ameliorate some of the more specific technical concerns, but it is most likely too late for the higher-level issues, especially those inherent in the process by which OOXML was developed. We suggest that energy would be better spent in the ongoing effort to improve the existing ISO ODF standard (with which OOXML would overlap and compete if it is adopted). In any event, decisions with respect to standardized document formats should be made in consultation with members of disability communities, disabilities experts and developers of assistive technologies, with universal accessibility as a core requirement as opposed to an ad hoc afterthought.

From: Accessibility Issues with Office Open XML, Stephen A. Hockema
Jutta Treviranus, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto, 2007

Metadata for Disabled Access to Electronic Documents

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is proposing to add a new element "Adaptability Statement" to describe how an electronic document can be accessed by disabled people. This would, for example say if a digital video has closed captions for the deaf, keyboard shortcuts for those who can't use a mouse, or an audio cometary for the blind.

Resources that are made available electronically are often not in a suitable form for users because the users have particular needs resulting from their choice of devices, user agents, circumstances or perhaps a disability. While many of these problems can be adjusted automatically, there are some that can't and, as much as anything, should not be adjusted without input from the user about how they want these adjustments made.

Currently, there is no way for a user to determine if a resource will satisfy their needs, or to allow a system to automatically match a user's specified needs to the characteristics of a resource, in a way that enables all users to access content equally. Metadata descriptions of resources (and a user's needs) can be used to provide the necessary information and the term being proposed aims to facilitate this.

When a resource does not itself have the necessary accessibility characteristics or components, they may nevertheless be available and discovered as the result of a suitable search, in which case they could be assembled into the original resource for the user. Isolated use of the new term is not recommended but its use in combination with other descriptive information should enable the AccessForAll process described. ...

From: Adaptability Statement, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2006-02-23

You can read about the AccessForAll accessibility strategy on the DC Wiki.

Designing with Web Standards

Came across the very useful looking book "Designing with Web Standards" by Jeffrey Zeldman. He argues that web pages can be designed using XHTML, CSS and ECMAScript and(standardized Javascript)and Document Object Model (DOM) which will look good in most browsers.

Zeldman avoids the graphical approach to web design, which treats web pages as if they were printed documents. He makes the case that standards will set us free, at least from having to worry about lots of work arounds to make every web page look identical in every web browser.

Web microformats for coordinated government reports and accessible PDF?

The 31 May Web Services Group meeting was on Web microformats and accessible PDF.

Microformats

John Allsopp gave a passionate overview of Microformats and a small plug for his book "Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0".

Microformats are lightweight approach to what the semantic web is attempting to do. While the Semantic Web requires you to recode your data in an XML format, such as RDF, microformats adds some semantic content to existing HTML. Applications such as the "Operator" extension to Firefox can be used to read the microformat data and transfer it to other applications.

John gave several examples, including the XFN the "XHTML Friends Network" for representing (human) relationships in XHTML. This adds a 'rel' attribute with a controlled vocabulary to the <a href> tag, so a hypertext link not only points to someone, but says what your relationship is to them.

One refreshing aspect of this talk was the plea to web designers not to be obsessed with every web page rendering the same in every browser. John used the example of conditional CSS selectors, which do not work with older browsers. These can be used, for example to put icons on all external links in a web page. John argued it was worth having such a feature in browser which could support it and we should not get too worried about old browsers which do not.

Other microformats mentioned included:

* hCard: The HTML version of the vCard format for electronic business cards.
* hCalendar: The HTML version of iCalendar. Works similarly to hCard.

Less well established Microformtas:

* hReview: For assessments of products and services.
* hResume: For resumes and CVs.
* hAtom: Atom feed in HTML format. Perhaps XSLT could be used to generate hAtom from Atom in the browser?
* hCitation: This would be very useful for authors citing materials, but seems a long way from being a standard.
* Geo microformat: For the physical location of something, used by Flickr.

Pingerati supports microformats, but exactly what it is for I am not yet sure. The first link I clicked on went to Twitter, as mentioned in the NLA talk yesterday.

The microformats approach is a clever idea and may be useful for accessibility (as suggested by Brian Hardy at the beginning of his talk). It might also be a way to ease authors and web designers out of a rigid graphical/print based approach to information design. XHTML and CSS was supposed to provide better separation of content and layout. But these added a lot of complexity for the creator, with little in return. If the author and web designer can build their content using microformats, that might provide easier creation and better structure.

As an example, those in a government agency preparing an annual report would be provided with a microformat enabled web based system. Hundreds of staff would enter their parts of the report in web pages using the appropriate microformats. Some of these would be extracted from spreadsheets and databases. Plain text would be entered in a web based editor. Staff coordinating the publication would add the rules for layout, images and style. The system would then generate the web, PDF, and print versions of the annual report.

That might some very ambitious, but a system for creating complex documents larger than annual reports in web, PDF and print already exists. This is the ICE system for course content. But that system relies on authors using a supplied word processing template and having extra software on their PCs to interface to the central system. Using microformats and a web based system would remove the need for use of WP templates and PC software.

ACCESSIBILITY AND PDF:

Brian Hardy from Vision Australia talked about Accessibility of PDF files. This was a more detailed version of his talk to university people.

Brian's message was that PDF could be made accessible to people with a disability, with a little extra effort in document creation. He started with some simple tips:

• Bookmarks: Have bookmarks open by default in the PDF document.
• Tag PDF for screen readers.
• PDF help page is not useful, nor are PDF icons (the text "PDF" will do). Include the size of the file.

Simple Access issues:

• Reduce file size. PDF creation tools and addons have options for reducing file size.
• Remove non-essential graphics.
• Offer report in sections.

Accessibly issues:

• Well marked word processing documents convert well.
• Fix up with tools.
• Test with readers.
• "Print to PDF" is not recommended.

Brian discussed the use of Adobe's own PDF creation tools. It occurred to me that Open Office has PDF creation built in and version 2 seems to do an okay job.

Vision Australia has delivered a draft report on accessible PDF for government agencies, which should be available soon.

I asked Andrew if it would be simpler to produce accessible web pages to complement the PDF print versions, Andrew said at least one agency found it easier to produce HTML than fix up the PDF. This would seem a sensible option as accessibility tools for web pages are better developed and there is less expectation that a web page will look identical to a printed document, than with PDF.

An audience member asked a question about business processes. It seemed that most of the discussion of PDF assumed that reports were being produced in the old fashioned for-print way. If the document were produced by loading the content into a management system and then generating the web and PDF, the issue of accessibility should disappear. It should be a simple matter of configuring the content management system to include the PDF accessibility options, just as they do for the web.

There was some discussion as to if agencies having a common look and feel would like the process easier. If each agency did not try and produce unique pretty printed documents and PDF facsimiles of them, then accessible documents would be much easier to produce. It was argued that the Queensland and NZ were adopting a Common User Experience (CUE) for web sites and this might be done for the Commonwealth.

Perhaps a more ambitious target could be set to produce one coordinated annual report for the Commonwealth government, similar to the federal budget web site. The Finance Department would provide a web based system for all agencies to enter their annual report information. This would then be published online. It would be possible to see an agency based view, or a cross section of the same category of information comparing all agencies. PDF versions would be available for printing. All the material would use the one standard Commonwealth branding.

ps: I am presenting some of the courses in the series "A System Approach to Management of Government Information" at ANU later in the year. These are for public service senior executives on how to implement e-document management and e-archiving.

Web microformats and accessible PDF

The 31 May Web Services Group meeting would be worth attending just for John Allsopp on Microformats, or Brian Hardy on PDF. John talked at a previous WSG meeting, the slides, podcast and photos are available. Brian I were speakers at a university accessibility forum at the AVCC a few weeks ago.

Recommended:

Ninth Canberra WSG meeting
When: Thursday 31 May
Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia ...
Cost: Free
RSVP: Become a WSG member and RSVP at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=94

First speaker: John Allsopp, Westciv
Topic 1: Microformats
John is a founder of Westciv, head developer of Style Master, an organiser of Web Directions (North and South) and author of a book about Microformats.

Second speaker: Brian Hardy, Vision Australia
Topic 2: Accessibility of PDF files
Brian established Vision Australia's web accessibility consultancy service and has been working on access to information issues for more than eight years. He has provided strategic consultancy services on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility for governments and major corporations throughout Australia and internationally. His particular interest is in how accessible design can enhance ICT products and services for all users. ...

Creating coordinated web, PDF and presentation content with ICE

The Integrated Content Environment (ICE) provides a way to create large complex document, particularly learning content for web based systems, print and for live presentations. It is free open source software which works with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org word processors (and others which use the OpenDocument format).

The courseware author writes one document using a template supplied with ICE and the ICE software then generates versions of the document for the Web (HTML), Learning Management Systems (IMS package), Printed documents (PDF), and slide presentations.

The ICE web site is generated using the software and shows the type of documents generated. As an example the "About ICE" page has buttons for the PDF and presentation versions.

The templates and ICE software run on the user's PC. The system can also save a copy of the document to a remote repository. This allows very large and complex documents to be created in pieces. Different people can work on parts, with the system keeping track of it all.

ICE is intended for heavy duty university research and education. However, there is no reason why it can't be used by one person preparing a short vocational course, an article or writing a book, provided they are prepared to spend time learning to work it.

The software can be downloaded for free. There are versions of the ICE software for Microsoft Windows and for Macintosh OS X, using Microsoft Word or Open Office.Org word processors.

In addition you need the Subversion version control system, which is also available free (but will not run on Microsoft Windows). This brings up the major problem with the ICE system: it is corporate software designed for an organisation with IT support staff to look after it. It is not intended for one lone author with a computer and a good idea. Installing the software is very complex and should be left to an expert, unless you have a lot of patience.

Assuming your IT expert managed to install the software (or you can follow the technical guide), there is a user guide to help you use the software. The author creates word processing documents using supplied templates. The templates help the ICE software then convert the documents to web pages, slides and PDF documents.

ICE has been written by University of Southern Queensland (USQ) for their educational content, but shows a lot of potential for other use. Preparing major reports for government agencies and private organisations would seem a prime application. What tends to happen is that an organisation will spend moths or years preparing a large report and then have problems in the last few hours in the mad scramble to get it ready for launch. I have had the experience of having to have a defense report online as soon as the Minister finished speaking in Parliament.

Usually the full report is provided as PDF, then there is a web summary, media release and slide show for the launch. All these have to have last minute changes incorporated. ICE's use of the Subversion version control system would allow each person to do their bit and then check it into the repository (with a record of who changed what and when). ICE could then generate the package of materials, with the full report in PDF, web version and presentation.

Rather than just a web summary, ICE could generate the full text of the report in accessible web format. This would overcome the problem that only a handful of people ever actually read the reports created. It is too hard to download hundreds of pages of PDF and then find the bit you want. Most people read what someone else wrote about the report, not the actual document. Automatically breaking the report into chapters, each with an index at the top, would make the report far more readable.

In several cases of I have taken reports in PDF and created an easy to use web version. My version tends to rate better with search engines than the original, because it uses accessible web design. Even people from the organisation which created the official report will refer people to my version, as it is easier to use.

ICE might make coordinated, well managed accessible web based reports easier to generate. But this assumes an organization has the discipline to accept the systematic process the software imposes. It also requires the organisation to accept easy to read, accessibly formatted documents. In many cases organizations seem to prefer to produce reports which look pretty, even if they are harder to read.

Making Australian Universities Accessible Online

The the Web Accessibility Forum 2007, Canberra, 11 April 2007 went well. Trevor Allan from ANU gave the introduction. I gave my talk on "Teaching Web Accessibility at an Australian University". Brian Hardy, from Vision Australia talked on "Making non-HTML content accessible" and Dey Alexander, from Dey Alexander Consulting, on "Australian university website accessibility revisited". The theme of the day turned out to be: "accessibility is not hard, but how do we get people to do it?".

Tom Worthington: Teaching Web Accessibility at an Australian University

I talked about how the accessibility standards, practical examples and online tools were used to teach accessible web design to ANU students. One aspect of this is that the lecture notes are made available as web pages and a digital audio Podcast of the lectures is provided, making the lectures about accessibility more accessible.

Brian Hardy: Making non-HTML content accessible

Brian Hardy, from Vision Australia talked on making word processing, presentation and e-documents accessible. He concentrated on Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and PDF creation. He had a useful list of techniques to use and pitfalls to avoid.

The techniques to make a document accessible are very similar to those used by Ian Barnes and Peter Sefton, to convert word processing documents via XML, to other formats for archiving and electronic publishing.

To make a word processing document accessible (or convertible), you use a well structured template, avoid arbitrary formatting and label non-text items. Headings should be marked with styles (such as "Heading 2"), not by just increasing the font size. Images need captions to identify them for those who can't see them and should have an extended description in the text.

The process for Powerpoint is much the same as word processing, but with more work-arounds needed, due to Powerpoint's more limited structuring ability.

Brian made the point that Adoboe had made great improvements to accessibility in PDF and it was possible to make good PDF documents. But the document creator had to do work to make the documents accessible and newer reader software had to be used. Just selecting "print to PDF" does not produce a good result.

The issues seem to be similar to those for web pages: accessible documents are possible, but this takes extra expertise and work from the document creator. How can the document creator, or their employer, be motivated to put the extra effort?

This is a topic I have discussed at length for electronic document creation: if only we could get authors to use templates correctly, e-document creation would be so much easier; but can we? The alternative might be to have the author use a specialised authoring tool which enforces the structuring rules. With no font setting commands, the author would be forced to use styles.

But would people use new tools? This seemed unlikely, until the advent of web based services. Some authors are now used to using web based tools to create email messages, blog postings and the like. It is not too large a step to have them use similar tools to write a whole media release, article or book. Google Docs (previously Writely) shows it is possible to create a web based word processor (with limited functions).

Where a document creator is working as part of an organization, such as in the media center of a company, or even writing a scientific paper for a particular journal, it may be easier to get them to use a web based tool, than try and make them uses styles and templates in a word processor.

Dey Alexander: Australian university website accessibility revisited

Dey described work underway to assess the accessibility of Australian university web sites. A previous review in 2003 showed that almost all Australian universities failed the most basic accessibility tests. Work so far indicates that universities have not improved and may now have less accessible web sites than they did in 2003. This has serious implications for universities and the Australian economy.

Australian universities are at risk of court action for unlawful discrimination against the disabled. Many Australian universities run courses in other countries and are subject to the laws of those countries. The cost of a court action in the USA, for example, could be considerable.

Overseas students are a significant source of income for Australia and the universities failure to make their web sites accessible will be making Australia less competitive with other countries. Many of those in India and China have slower Internet connections and older computers with older versions of software. Students may turn to less reputable sources of information about Australia courses or look to other countries instead.

A recent survey of federal government web sites showed good and improving support for accessibility. There would appear to be no good reason why Australian universities should not be showing similar improvements. In contract they appear to be acting unlawfully and presenting a poor image of Australian education internationally.

Universities which do not comply with Australia law should not be in business. DEST could put all universities on 12 months notice that those which failed to comply with web accessibility requirements would be banned from taking overseas students. If the universities failed to comply after a further 12 months they could then have all federal funding suspended, effectively shutting down the institution.

The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) , which is soon to be renamed "Universities Australia", might like to take the initiative to have universities fix their web sites. This might lessen the need for government and court action. The Vice Chancellors would have a strong incentive to act, as they may be held personally liable under the laws of some countries for the actions of their institutions.

But the AVCC needs to first get its house in order. One surprising problem at the forum was the poor setup of the AVCC meeting room for computer based presentations. There was a video projector, but the connections for it were at the back of the room. As a result presenters had to sit behind the audience at the far back of the room. The audience had to swivel their heads from looking at the presentation to look at the speaker. This was ironic for a meeting on accessibility and would have been very difficult for anyone with a disability to use. It looks as though the AVCC is still in the "slide show" mode of the previous century.

Making popular and accessible web pages

Accessible web design can make your web pages very popular. I am talking about this in "Teaching Web Accessibility at an Australian University" at a forum of the Web Accessibility Network for Australian Universities. The forum is on at the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee office in Canberra Wednesday 11 April.

An example of a popular web page is one I did last year on the Australian Defence Amphibious Ships Project. This has a short summary of the multi-billion dollar project to build two new Australian aircraft carriers. I hadn't realized how popular this was until I had a message from one of the international defence industry consortia bidding for the project. They explained my page was the most referred to one on the project and suggested some extra links. In a nice touch they provided a link for the rival bider as well as their own.

Electronic Voting Machines being tested in Australia

It has been reported that the Australian Electoral Commission is asking for vision impaired people to test its accessible Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the next federal election.

The government minister responsible, Gary Nairn MP, Special Minister Of State, has said the system must be ready for use by 4 August. There are to be two limited trials of electronic voting for the disabled and military personnel. The last Victorian state electionused six "E Centres" and the last two ACT elections used a locally developed system.

The Australian Electoral Commission is currently undertaking a limited trial of accessible Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the upcoming federal election. We are currently looking for Testers in Sydney to assist us in evaluating the software providing feedback on the usability of the software.

Background

In mid 2006 the government approved the path forward for the development of EVMs to enable blind and vision impaired voters to cast a secret and independent vote. The EVMS are to be located at up to 30 sites around Australia for the next federal election. The AEC has been working with Blindness and Vision Impairment Peak bodies to guide the AEC in the development of the software and to provide input as to the locations of the EVMs. Key players in this development include:
* Vision Australia - Michael Simpson
* Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission - Graeme Innes
* Australian Federation of Disability Organisations - Maryanne Diamond
* Blind Citizens Australia - Nadia Mattiazzo

User Testing

The user testing will be carried out in Sydney on the 16th and 17th of April.

The AEC is seeking a range of blind and vision impaired electors who are interested to participate in user testing of the electronic voting technology.

The AEC will select a representative group of testers, which meet the following requirements:
* Gender balance
* Age balance
* Computer Literacy balance
* Vision ranging from low vision to complete blindness

If you are interested and available to assist us for an approximately 2 hour sit in session on either the 16th or 17th April, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Please also feel free to pass this information on to people you think might be interested, but who are not as computer literate.

Please contact the Australian Electoral Commission on 02 6271 4611 and leave a message or by email to evoting (a) aec.gov.au to register your interest.

Please note that because we will require a spread of testers who meet the different requirements listed above, we may not be able to accommodate all respondants to this request.

Location Details
* The testing will be held at ... Sydney
* Staff will be present to welcome, guide you and pay for your taxi ride to and from the hotel.
* A stipend of $60 and cab charges will be available to facilitate your attendance.
* Coffee and tea will be provided

We look forward to hearing from interested electors ...

From: "Fwd: vip-l: Electoral Commission Seeking Sydney-based people for user testing", Jan Whitake, Link mailing list, Apr 5 10:31:03 EST 2007

Wii Games Web Browser

Nintendo are releasing a web browser for their Wii games console in March. It is based on the Opera browser. Games consoles may not seem a mainstream web device, but along with mobile phones may the first and primary way many people in Asia use the web.

Reports indicate it has a similar look to other browsers designed for use with a TV, such as Microsoft Web TV. This reformats web pages to fit on a low resolution TV by increasing the size of the font, reducing white space, eliminating sideways scrolling and adding on-screen navigation buttons. The WII display is limited to 608 x 456 pixels by the TV technology. Input is limited to the buttons on the games controller; there is no numeric keypad (as on a Web TV device) or QWERTY keyboard (as on a PC).

The Internet Channel is a version of the Opera web browser for use on the Wii by Opera Software and Nintendo.[1] On December 22, 2006 a free beta version (promoted as a "trial version") of the browser was released.[2] The final version of the browser will be available in March 30, 2007 and will be free to download until the end of June that year. After this period the browser will cost 500 Wii Points to download.[3] Users who download Opera before June 30, 2007, can continue to use the browser at no cost for the lifetime of the Wii system.[4]
From: Internet Channel, Wikipedia, 2006, URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Browser

The Wii (pronounced as the pronoun "we", IPA: [wi?]) is the fifth video game console released by Nintendo. The console was previously known by its project code name of Revolution, and is the successor to the Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of other seventh generation gaming consoles.[7] It competes with both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. ...

Video:

* Up to 480p (PAL/NTSC) or 576i (PAL/SECAM), standard 4:3 and 16:9 anamorphic widescreen[44]
* Component (including Progressive scan), RGB SCART (PAL only), S-Video (NTSC only), composite output, or D-Terminal[45]

From: Wii, Wikipedia, 2007, URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii

Australian Government Web Design, Acccessibility and Market Share

The Seventh Canberra WSG meeting on 18 January 2007 was excellent, as is usual for the Web Standard Group: with Navy web site redevelopment, 2006 web standards audit of Australian Government home pages, and Best practice tactics for government web sites. These are some notes taken during the presentations:

Navy web site redevelopment, Alexi Paschalidis, Oxide Interactive

Alex gave a passionate exposition on how to redevelop a web site using web standards, the battle against those who just see the web as a form of graphic design and the wishes of "corporate" for something flashy and fleeting.

The Royal Australian Navy were one of the pioneers of web development in the Australian Government. They had developed a web site of their own <http://www.navy.gov.au/> before I initiated the project to create the Defence Home Page <http://www.tomw.net.au/papers/bpt.html>. The Navy seem to have maintained their independent tradition with their own web site, working alongside Defence's central site and Defence Recruiting.

A feature of the Navy site redevelopment is semantic consistency. They are using Semantic XHTML with structural consistency; for example a second level heading <h2> always has a first level heading above it <h1>.

Images are important for the Navy, as might be expected with photos of ships. But Alexi pointed out that photos of people are actually more popular than those of equipment.

The Navy web site is relatively modest, with 2,500 static web pages and 4,000 visitors a day (my web site gets about 1,000). Because of the use of centralized maintenance there is no need for a CMS and the staff code directly in HTML without the use of a web layout package.

Alexi argues that using Semantic XHTML (as emphasized in XHTML 2.0 ) cuts out many day to day design decisions is creating web pages. Clearly he saw this as a positive feature (whereas some of the creative types might see it as a negative). Some of the metadata for the web pages can be inserted automatically from the content (for example the TITLE from the H2 heading). There is minimal layout in the HTML code, with this done in the CSS.

In place of the usual web development tools, the open-source revision control system is used <http://subversion.tigris.org/>. This is usually used by computer program developers to maintain multiple versions of complex systems, but has been used for document editing, but is also used in the ICE educational document creation system <http://ptsefton.com/blog/2006/03/09/ice:_agile_publishing_(with_a_long_snout)>. This allows for smart change control of the web site with detection of conflicts between different updates.

Because the Navy have an emphasis on photography, the Navy site has a special system for collecting the professional take photos and uploading them to the web site. The system creates versions in multiple resolutions and maintains the metadata from the originals.

Interestingly the Navy use Google, rather than their own search software. They use the Google Public Service Search program <https://services.google.com/pss_faq.html#1>. This provides the Google search engine, tailored to the organisation's needs but without ads. Given the importance of Google to Australian web sites (discussed in a later talk below), this is a reasonable decision. But it might be disappointing to Australian web search companies, such as Public Service Search program enterprise search companies, such as Funnelback <http://funnelback.com/>.

A little AI on the site's feedback form had allowed 80% of queries to be answered automatically.

Alexi emphasized the need to educate the customers about the benefits of using standards on web sites and the need to be vigilant about the danger of graphic designers being brought in to design web sites. This and the frustration with senior executives wanting to make quick changes are problems familiar to IT developers.

The Navy has to position its web site with the others of the Defence portfolio, principally the central Defence site <http://www.defence.gov.au/> and Defence Recruiting <http://www.defencejobs.gov.au>. Some might ask why the Navy needs a web site at all. However, having one large amorphous web site will confuse the clients and lead to expensive extra layers of coordination (as the UK Government is likely to find out in the next year with its centralist push). An emphasis of Defence's at present is recruiting (the Defence department advertise jobs on my web site using Google AdSense <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/adsense.shtml>).

The next version of the Navy web site will have the text rewritten for the web (rather than just whatever was take from an existing source). Consideration will be given to adding commonly used business transactions and support for reserve personnel without access to the Defence secure network (this was an issue ten years ago when I was at Defence HQ).

Some items on the wish list were blog style pages (with moderation) for a more personal view of the organisation, tags <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags> and wiki style text based cross references.

Google Analytic is used for analysis of web site use. I have used this myself, but with a small site the novelty wears off quickly. If you do want Analytics (which is free) it might be quicker to get it by singing up for Google AdWords <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/adwords.shtml>.

Unfortunately some of Alexi's credibility as a web worker was undone when I went to his own web site and found a message saying "... our website will be offline from Friday 19 January to Sunday 21 January for a complete overhaul ..."<http://www.oxideinteractive.com.au/>. Why give a presentation on web site design one day to hundreds of potential customers and take your web site off-line the next?

2006 web standards audit of Australian Government home pages, Dispain, Department of the Environment and Heritage

During December 2006, Gavin arranged for 105 Australian Government web sites (from AAD to WEA) to be tested for accessibility, compliance with web standards, and Australian Government guidelines. The results deserved a whole day presentation, not the few minutes available.

Gavan used tools such as the W3C HTML and CSS Validators, Xact's Bobby tool to test the sites. In 2001 I did a similar analysis but only did one page per agency <http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/govtest.html>, whereas Gavan has done up to 5,000 pages per agency.

The results showed government web pages are good orverall, but with room for improvement:

* 69% had the correct government logo on them. Most used the 48 pixel size version. But I wonder what percentage of web traffic is being wasted transporting duplicate copies of the Australian Arms <http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/epolicy.html#edocs>.

* Only 28% of home pages had an accessibility link (but this is not required by the guidelines).

Some hot topics on government web sites were "connected water" 4% and "access card" 14.2%, while 28% of all the traffic to government web sites was coming from Google. 55% of the Government web pages are in HTML, 18% PDF and 1% Microsoft word. Annual reports have 55% PDF documents and the Budget 84%.

Home pages contain an average of 17 images and other pages 12 images. This is much lower than the industry average of 53 images per page. 77% of HTML web pages have DTD references. 48% of the HTML is XHTML level 1 transitional. Only 27% of the pages are valid HTML, but with Gavin commenting most of the errors were only minor.

One site which rated badly was that of CrimTrac <http://www.crimtrac.gov.au/>. So I ran a few tests myself. The W3C Markup Validation Service reported 120 errors in the CrimTrac home page <http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcrimtrac.gov.au%2F>. The page has 42 images, which is a little high. There is dublin core metadata on the page but not an ordinary author, description or keywords. The page failed an automated accessibility test <http://webxact.watchfire.com/> with: 66 level one, 31 level two and 12 level three problems. Also the favorites icon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon> seems to be missing <http://www.crimtrac.gov.au/favicon.ico>. In addition CrimTrac's use of the Australian Arms does not appear to comply with government guidelines.

In terms of web site accessibility for the disabled, the sites rated relatively well on the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines:

- 78% A
- 10% AA
- 6% AAA

The "A" rating could be improved with simple additions of ALT text on images <http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/bws.html>.

71% of home ages were less than 100kbytes (which is good). There were 100,616 broken internal links on government web pages (which is not so good). There were 404 misspellings of "Australia" (which is odd).

Some hot topics were "community water grants", "e-strategy guide". Highly rating web sites were BOM, ATO, Job Search and Center Link.

Gavin got a show of hands at the end to indicate that a similar survey should be run next year by AGIMO. But I doubt that a more official audit will be so entertainingly reported.

Best practice tactics for government web sites, Karl Hayes, Hitwise

Hitwise provides statistics on who is looking at what web page <http://www.hitwise.com/products-services/how-we-do-it.php>. Karl provided some fascinating statistics and insights. Hitwise combines traditional market research with on-line monitoring of what people are looking at on the web with information obtained from ISPs.

A very surprise to find the Online Opinion web site <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/> tops the "political" category, greatly outperforming any of the web sites of political parties. On Line Opinion is a non-profit academic style e-journal. I am on the advisory board for the site and have suggested we up our advertising charges as a result <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/display.asp?page=eab>. ;-)

As noted in Gavin's talk, BOM dominates government web sites in terms of page views (56%) and Google dominates in terms of searching (86%). One surprise is that Google is also a significant web site in its own right (16%).

Karl had some interesting speculations about the future of web sites with consumer generated media, MySpace,YouTube, Podcasts and Wikipedia.

Hot topics: "water crisis", "water saving".

Karl argued that Australian advertisers were overspending on advertising in tradition radio, TV and print media, given the Web's increasing influence. He quickly skipped over some of the demographic categories which market researchers divide the population into. Some of the categories I saw were "Australia: Raising Expectations: comfortable outer suburban families in affordable homes", and "US: Cracker Barrel Cheese: Satellite dish, field and stream magazine, NASCAR Wilson Cup, Ford F250 Pickup".

One point he made was that commercial advertisers were buying government related keywords from Google and directing viewers to their commercial sites. This seems to be legal and largely ethical. About all the Government agencies can do is to bid for the keywords themselves (my web site gets ads for Defence recruiting).

One thought which occurs to me is that web sites featuring the whether and disaster information might rate very well. Government's may not wish to have paid commercial advertising on their web sites, but perhaps they could have internal government advertising. Each government web page could have a space reserved for advertising. Normally this would be used to promote government initiatives and publicize web sites (in effect the Government's own Google AdWords). The reserved space would also be used to advise the public of emergency information (emergency information is an area where Federal and State Australian governments do poorly online and as a result are placing the lives of citizens at risk).

Unfortunately Karl's excellent content was let down by slides with largely unreadable text. Hitwise need to study up on the accessibility standards the other two speakers were talking about.

This was very much a user group with a comfortable camaraderie amongst the speakers and audience, without the usual phony pretentiousness of many corporate IT events. One surprise is that AGIMO came in for light hearted banter, unlike the usual cold resect (or loathing) that central coordination agencies usual get.

I attended to hear of the audit of web sites, but both of the other presentations were worth attending for on their own. WSG meeting usually have two talks and they should return to that format. While it was all good, there was just too much content to absorb in one session.

It was a little cramped, with every seat taken in the "bunker theatre" under the Department of Environment <http://www.tomw.net.au/travel/gallery.shtml#jgb>. And yes, my phone didn't;work in the radiation shielded former cold war nuclear shelter.

The WSG is providing an excellent forum for government web developers in Canberra.

One use of such meetings is to chat with other web workers.