E-Access Bulletin Live

Levels of home internet access in the UK are directly linked to a wide range of traditional indicators of social exclusion including disability, a digital inclusion seminar at City University, London heard this month.

Ellen Helsper, lecturer in media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told the seminar that among the disabled population, 59% do not have home access, compared with just 29% of the general population.
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Personalisation of website accessibility, including customising tools and offering different versions of sites to suit individual needs, should be considered for some specialist websites such as social networking platforms, according to the latest draft of a British standard on web accessibility.

The second draft of BS 8878 ‘Web accessibility – Code of practice’, developed by a sub-committee of the British Standards Institution (BSI), IST/45, suggests that educational establishments, social networking sites, e-learning websites and other sites requiring a member login have an opportunity to provide users with personalisation facilities and “an individualised approach to dealing with their accessibility needs”.
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A campaigning peer has ensured that the new Equality Act, an update of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), includes a commitment to online accessibility, by successfully moving an amendment as the law passed through the House of Lords.

Lord Low of Dalston, vice president and former chairman of the Royal National Institute of Blind People and himself blind, moved a change of wording to the Act to state that when providing information, organisations’ processes should “include steps for ensuring that… the information is provided in an accessible format.”
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By Tristan Parker.

At first glance, the accessibility results of this year’s Society of IT Management (Socitm) ‘Better Connected’ review of all UK council websites ( bit.ly/dltkU5 ) would suggest that online access to local government for disabled computer users and others using assistive technology is still not a priority.

This year, for example, fewer local authorities achieved level ‘A’ of the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version one (WCAG 1.0 bit.ly/cmbc4g ) than last year – 32 compared with 36 – and for the second year running, no council achieved the more stringent level ‘AA’.
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UK local authority websites are “much more accessible now than they’ve ever been”, according to one specialist who worked on the recent ‘Better Connected 2010’ review of every local authority website in the UK conducted by the Society of IT Management (Socitm) (
bit.ly/dltkU5 ).

Bim Egan, senior web access consultant at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), told E-Access Bulletin the difference between council websites’ accessibility this year compared with 2009 is “astonishing”. “A much bigger proportion of [councils] are getting the message and are putting processes in place to make their websites a lot more accessible”, she said.
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Groundbreaking work to try to enable computers to describe visual content on web pages begun this month with the formation of a new UK academic research network.

The network is aiming to develop a web browser plug-in which would be able to analyse an image and describe it to a visually impaired user. It is one of a number of projects exploring computer vision and computer language programming to be undertaken by the new V&L Net ( www.vlnet.org.uk ) – the Vision and Language Network of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
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Manufacturers and suppliers of consumer technology devices in the US could be forced to make all their products accessible to blind consumers, if proposed legislation is passed by Congress.

Introduced by Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic House of Representatives member from Illinois, the Technology Bill of Rights for the Blind Act 2010 ( www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4533/text ) is based around creating accessible alternatives to what it calls “increasingly complex user interfaces” found in consumer electronics.
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A ‘European Disability Act’ has been proposed by the European Commission to standardise guidelines on web accessibility for disabled people.

In a speech in Brussels earlier this month, Viviane Reding – commissioner for information society and media – said approaches need to be harmonised throughout Europe. “We cannot achieve the single market by leaving aside certain parts of our population”, said Reding. “I am talking about e-accessibility: 15% of our population is disabled, and our rules on accessibility are still fragmented.”
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An online forum allowing anyone to become involved in accessibility reviews of major government and corporate websites has been launched in Australia.

No technical or specialist knowledge is needed to participate in the Australian Web Access Review (AWARe:
www.aware.org.au ),
which asks volunteers to evaluate the accessibility of prominent Australian websites by answering 13 questions, based around WCAG 2.0 (the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
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The purchase by Google of reCAPTCHA, the most widely used ‘CAPTCHA’ system on the internet, could lead to significant improvements in the system’s accessibility, a leading analyst has told E-Access Bulletin.

‘CAPTCHAs’ are tests used to block ‘robots’ or automated tools from accessing websites by posing a task that only humans can complete. These tests are usually visual, such as interpreting and keying in distorted letters and numbers, but audio CAPTCHAs – where letters are read out for the user to input – are crucial for visually impaired users. The reCAPTCHA system includes audio tasks.
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