Link Roundup - April 2010

• Accessible Documents in HTML, Word & PDF by @terrillthompson from the Digital Accessibility Expo.
• Open letter to to U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary by @johnfoliot with feedback & accessible testimonies from a government hearing on digital accessibility.
• Are sprites accessible?
• Accessibility BOF (birds of a feather) Notes from DrupalCon in San Francisco.
• Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessments: Lessons Learned So Far
• Designing Accessible & Usable App UI for Mobile Phones - slides from #CSUN10 presentation by @berryaccess
• W3C update to HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives by @stevefaulkner.
• An ode to 'Click here' and to other phrases forcing reading back for context.
• Juicy Studio Accessibility toolbar is updated by @gezlemon. Supports ARIA, color contrast, more. (Firefox)
• U.S. Access Board's proposed 508 & 255 standards & guidelines (Draft Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards and Guidelines)
• Expand and collapse content accessibly with progressive enhancement, jQuery, and ARIA
• Do I Have to Learn Programming to Make My Site Accessible? (Even Grounds)
• Slide presentations from W4A (7th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility)
• Expand and collapse content accessibly with progressive enhancement, jQuery, and ARIA.
• White House promising more attention to 508
• Do we need a new game plan to make the Web accessible? (be sure to read comments)
  

Adding ARIA Landmark Roles

ARIA Landmark Roles were recently added to the Web Axe web site. It's a great and easy way to add better accessibility to your site, start learning ARIA, and future-proof your site. And it only takes a few minutes, so why not add it into your site? (If you haven't already!)

An ARIA landmark role is simple an attribute added to a (probably) already existing tag in your site. For example, to add a search role, simple add the attribute role="search" to the tag which contains the search content (the div, fieldset, etc).

Here are some basic landmark roles with links to the W3C definitions:

• banner - usually the main header of your site; the area with logo, slogan, etc.
• complementary - supporting section of page, separate from the main content, like a sidebar.
• contentinfo - area that contains information about the site such as copyright lines and links to privacy notices (i.e. page footer).
• main - the main content; area with central topic of the web page.
• navigation - a section for navigating the site.
• search - a section with a any type of search tool.

In the following example, four landmark roles are used to create a basic page structure.

<div role="banner">
[header content]
</div>
<div role="navigation">
[nav content]
</div>
<div role="main">
[main content]
</div>
<div role="contentinfo">
[footer content]
</div>

Addendum

If more than one type of role is implemented, use the aria-labelledby attribute to give each a unique name. Here's an example from this web page which has two navigation role attributes.

<div role="navigation" aria-labelledby="prevpostsLabel">
<h2 id="prevpostsLabel">Previous Posts</h2>

<div role="navigation" aria-labelledby="archiveLabel">
<h2 id="archiveLabel"><label for="archivemenu">Archives</label></h2>

Podcast #80: Web Accessibility Successes

Dennis and Ross review a few excellent web sites. Each provides great accessibility as well as being standards-compliant.

Download Web Axe Episode 80 (Web Accessibility Successes)

[transcript of podcast 80]

Announcements

• Ross' relaunch of 3.7 Designs
• Assistive Technology Boogie (Flash) by Inclusive Technologies
• Volunteers/donations wanted for transcribing Web Axe podcasts
• CSUN was great! A few of the many folks Dennis met and hung out with:
  • @ppatel
  • @johnfoliot
  • @wendyabc
  • @mpaciello
• Future Midwest Detroit

News & Articles

• iPad releases — accessibility
• Spoken e-books
• Accessibility features (Apple)
• Apple iPad hands-on review (CNET)
• HTML5 + Quake
• Canvas element is powerful, also huge accessibility concern
• When ever you use :hover, also use :focus
• Microsoft offers UK users a choice in browser
• Hat tip to all the techie 2010 April Fools Day jokers!

Main Segment

Testco

• In 2001, a new easy-access version of Tesco.com was launched, making the online shopping service available to a higher number of customers. In 2002-3, the web-based business made a profit of £12.2 million, more than 30 times that made in the previous year.
• Reference: 3 case studies on Universal Design.

Sydney For All

• Won 2009 Vision Australia award for web site accessibility.

LF Legal

• Developed by Mike Cherim
• Article on 2-year Anniversary
• Built on WordPress!

Interview with Jennison by Steve

If you missed it from Twitter a month-and-a-half ago, Steve Grobschmidt (@AquinasWI) published an interview with accessibility expert Jennison Asuncion (@Jennison) in a 3-part series. It's published on Steve's blog "the art of web accessibility". I recommend reading the interview as well as checking out Steve's blog. Both Steve and Jennison are excellent contributors to the web accessibility community.

• Jennison Interview - Part 1
• Jennison Interview - Part 2
• Jennison Interview - Part 3
• You can also find Jennison on LinkedIn.