Winter Olympics Web Site Not Accessible

On February 12, Jebswebs and I twittered that the Vancouver Winter Olympics web site is not accessible. Jebswebs reported 58 errors on the home page alone using the WAVE tool. (View the re-tweet from Jennison.) I listed examples such as several navigation issues and Flash and JavaScript issues.

Ten days later, Joe Clark published an excellent article Vancouver Olympics Web sites are inaccessible to disabled people. He first points out that John Furlong (CEO of VANOC) broke a promise to make the web site accessible. (Even after a a blind man in Australia won a human-rights case against the Sydney Olympic organizing committee and IBM for an inaccessible web site.) Joe provides a report on the inaccessible content and also publishes responses from the VANOC and his replies.



It doesn't take an expert to find areas where the Winter Olympics site needs improvement. Even for alternative text, one of the most basic and important guidelines for web accessibility, the site is lacking. This includes inadequate alternative text for Flash content and the fact that many images do not have alternate text.

In addition, the following points are for navigation only!

• Dropdown menus require JavaScript.
• Redundant title attributes
• No skip-to links
• No focus state on links (only mouse-over)
• No ARIA
• No menu heading
  

My suggestion for those who need more accessibility? Try Yahoo's Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage.

This post is sponsored by: Dedicated Web Server

Contribute to Twitter Presentation at CSUN10

Twitter And Assistive Tech

Dennis Lembree (@dennisl) and Joseph O'Connor (@csunwebmaster) are presenting "Accessibility of Twitter for Mobile, Desktop and Web" at the 25th Annual International Technology and Persons With Disabilities Conference in San Diego, California. The conference dates are from March 22 to 27. The presentation is scheduled at 8 a.m., Thursday, March 25.

You Can Help!

We are asking you to tweet about using Twitter with assistive tech on two topics:

• How do you deal with the interfaces?
• How has Twitter changed things for you?

Optional: audio record the written Tweets at http://twaud.io/ or whatever you want to use. If you do record, please be sure to record what you have written in each Tweet you write. Write a Tweet, record that Tweet. You don't have to record your Tweets to participate.

Accessible Twitter

This might be a good time to try Dennis Lembree's Accessible Twitter site and to Tweet about the experience.

How We'll Use Your Tweets

We will use the Tweets/audio in our #csun10 presentation. We'll present the Tweets on screen and hear the words - something for everyone. We'll be looking for patterns such as the use of desktop applications with ZoomText, or mobile text with Talks, or mobile app with VoiceOver. These patterns will be touch-points for our presentation.

Hashtag

The hashtag for these Tweets will be #csun10s with the "s" representing story.

When Do I Start?

The days/dates we'll be collecting Tweets and audio are Friday, February 26 - Saturday, February 27 in the northern hemisphere; Saturday, February 27 - Sunday, February 28 in the southern hemisphere.

Be Creative!

Feel free to be creative, to have fun, to be serious, to be furious, to be whoever you are. You know you want to do it!

NOTE:
This article on Joseph O'Connor's web site Black Telephone