What is Web Accessibility

Here is an upbeat (literally) concise video on web accessibility.  In three minutes and twenty seven seconds the folks down under (Australia - Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) have put together a big band introduction/reminder of what web accessibility is:

“What you do at the start makes it easier in the end.”

Yes, an audio version is also downloadable.

In agile development, user stories capture what a user does or needs to do with the website or application. These “stories” are the basis for defining the functions that the system must provide and concisely captures the who, what and why or of the requirement.

Imagine … you are right-handed and you just broke your right wrist. You're a programmer: how in the world will you get any work done?

Dragon Naturally Speaking is a speech recognition software that makes it easier for anyone to use a computer and allows users to communicate comfortably in a way that works for them.

Have you heard of PDF/UA?  It is a complementary set of guidelines to the WCAG 2.0 success criteria and is a technical standard that provides a consistent means for achieving accessible PDF documents.  Recently the AIIM published a mapping, Achieving WCAG 2.0 with PDF/UA, to help people understand the alignment between the two sets of guidelines. 

In a study conducted by Google in 2008, it was found that there are more deaf and hard of hearing users with access needs in the US than all of the Internet users in Spain!  

How would the loss of your hearing affect you on the Internet?

There are three types of auditory impairments, any of which can be caused by accident, illness, environment, heredity, aging:

How do I test for accessibility?  In short, there are two ways to test the website’s user accessibility: human evaluation or digital evaluation tools. But the most successful approach is to use a combination of both. That’s because no single tool – no matter how expensive it is – can judge every component that affects accessibility. 

Pull up your favorite website, close your eyes, and imagine trying to use it.  Yes, that is extreme, but users users with disabilities face serious challenges trying to use inaccessible websites.  Vision disabilities affect website users in different ways depending on the type and severity of the disability.  The good news is that we can make it significantly easier for users by following some accessibility guidelines.

Accurate and Reliable Accessibility QA Testing

An accessibility audit is an evaluation of how well your product supports the needs of web users with disabilities, carried out by our expert accessibility consultants and people with disabilities.

The Section 508, WCAG 2.0, and ADA accessibility audit testing helps enhance customer satisfaction, minimize business risk and leverages the latest technology that best addresses business needs.

Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Audit

An accessibility audit and evaluation:

You've probably known people, maybe a neighbor or a co-worker, with a reading disabililty or attention-deficit disorder. So you know how users may struggle to write down information (e.g., fill out a form) or comprehend the information on web pages.