WebAIM Blog

Web accessibility experts often say something like, “Screen reader users prefer…” followed by some accessibility recommendation. However, many of these recommendations are based on personal preference or conjecture - often from sighted users who only test with screen readers. The fact is that there is little data about screen reader usage to back up these recommendations.

In an attempt to address this problem, WebAIM is conducting a survey for screen reader users. If you are a full-time, part-time, or even occasional screen reader user, please take a few minutes to complete the survey and provide us with a few details on your screen reader usage and preferences. Your feedback will help influence the accessibility techniques that web developers implement.

We will be comparing results between those that rely on screen readers and those that primarily use them for evaluation and testing, so all screen reader users are invited to respond.

The results of the survey will be made public in a few months. We believe the results will be very useful to those who are developing accessible web content.

We are relying on all of you to help us spread the word. Please post to lists, blogs, etc. where screen reader users might participate. The survey is will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.

Access the survey at http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

After nearly 8 years in development, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines has been finalized and has reached recommendation status. Congratulations to the working group on this accomplishment. Read the press release. For entertainment, go back and read the initial, January 2001 version of the guidelines to see how the guidelines have dramatically changed (and for the better) over time.

Look forward to more detailed analysis and resources on WCAG 2.0 on the WebAIM site in the near future.

WebAIM is excited to announce that we are beginning translation of the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool. There are relatively few web accessibility evaluation tools available in other languages, and we feel that none of them are as advanced or user-friendly as WAVE. The Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University is funding an initial translation of a Spanish-language version of the WAVE web-based tool and Firefox toolbar and the development of a framework that will support translation into many other languages. Diogenes Hernandez and Jon Whiting, both Spanish speaking members of the WebAIM team, will be coordinating these efforts.

During the first phase of this project, which begins December 2008, we will develop a framework that facilitates the translation of WAVE. We will then begin translation of the WAVE evaluation rules and supporting documentation. A private alpha and public beta versions of the translated tool will be available in spring of 2009. The final Spanish-language version of WAVE will be released no later than June 2009.

You can help

Although WebAIM staff will provide the bulk of the translation work, you can help in several ways.

Improve translation of the WAVE feedback.

Every WAVE icon has a title, a description, and recommended actions that must be translated.

Improve the accuracy of WAVE rules.

For example, you can help us identify examples of inappropriate alt text (“image of”, “spacer”, etc.) or link text (“click here”, etc.) in Spanish.

Improve the translation of the WAVE site and toolbar.

We hope to translate additional content on the WAVE site and toolbar and toolbar (e.g., help files).

Identify WAVE bugs and offer suggestions for improvement.

While WAVE is a very stable tool, there are still bugs. As part of the translation process, we are going to refine our bug reporting process to make it easier for you to let us know what we can improve.

Spread the word.

We have provided a Spanish-language translation of this announcement. If you are able, please circulate this announcement to Spanish-language accessibility forums and discussion lists and to Spanish-speaking individuals.

Be ready for translation into other languages.

If you would like to help us translate WAVE into another language, let us know. We don’t plan on translating WAVE into other languages until this initial Spanish-language version is finalized, but we would love to hear from you now if you can provide or help with other language translations.

If you would be interested in helping in any of the ways mentioned above, contact Jon Whiting. A Spanish-language translation (traducción en español) of this announcement is available.

This new article provides an overview of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and demonstrates how it can be used to resolve many of the accessibility issues found in dynamic, complex web applications and widgets. Additional ARIA documentation and examples will be coming to the WebAIM site in the near future.

Read the article at http://webaim.org/techniques/aria/

Momentum

WAI-ARIA, the W3C protocol for making rich internet applications more accessible, is gaining much momentum (Read the ARIA FAQ). Even though ARIA isn’t entirely finalized, it is currently supported in most of the major browsers and screen readers. New versions of browsers and assistive technologies are providing better and more extensive support with each release. Industry leaders, such as IBM and Mozilla, are pushing ARIA’s great momentum.

Implementing ARIA is getting easier. Tutorials and examples are being released each day. Common scripting libraries are providing better support - Dojo, YUI, and GWT have native support, with JQuery and many others beginning implementation of ARIA.

Developers can currently implement most of ARIA into their web applications with tremendous increases to accessibility.

Internet Explorer’s Non-standard Implementation

Perhaps the biggest barrier to ARIA implementation is that it is not yet supported in Internet Explorer. It’s difficult to truly recommend a technology that does nothing in the most popular web browser. The standards and accessibility community was thrilled to hear that Internet Explorer 8 will support ARIA. However, this excitement is being tempered by the fact that Microsoft is currently implementing ARIA in a non-standard way.

I will not provide great technical detail into what Microsoft is doing (Aaron Leventhal has provided the details), but in short, there are two major differences in the IE8 implementation of ARIA when compared to what the spec requires and what is supported by all other major browsers. The current beta of Internet Explorer 8 requires a different mechanism and syntax for setting ARIA properties and does not properly update certain page elements when ARIA properties are dynamically changed.

Suffice it to say that Microsoft’s non-standard implementation of ARIA will make it more difficult for developers to implement an ARIA solution that works universally across browsers and assistive technologies. If developers must choose between an ARIA solution that works only in Internet Explorer or one that only works in every other browser, or if they must implement difficult and often unreliable mechanisms to account for specific browsers and even versions of browsers, then the reality is that many web developers will simply not implement ARIA or accessibility at all. And that would result in decreased accessibility for people with disabilities.

A Call for Action

We, therefore, encourage Microsoft to increase their commitment to standards and to accessibility by implementing Internet Explorer 8 ARIA support according to the specification and the ARIA User Agent Implementation Guidelines. We also encourage all browser and assistive technology vendors and even web developers to look further into the great benefit that ARIA can provide for people with disabilities and implement it where necessary.