E-Access Bulletin Live

A blind accessibility consultant has won her case against the Canadian government for the lack of accessibility on its websites, the country’s Federal Court has announced.

As reported in last month’s E-Access Bulletin ( www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=508 ), Donna Jodhan sued the Canadian government after she was unable to apply for a government job online or complete an online census form without assistance from sighted government employees, arguing that this breached her rights.
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By Tristan Parker

It’s fair to say that Canadian citizen Donna Jodhan knows a thing or two about accessibility. A specialist consultant in the field with more than 16 years’ experience, her company has worked with numerous clients, including financial institutions and the University of Toronto. She has obtained Systems Engineering Certification from Microsoft and won various technical awards from IBM.

So when Jodhan – herself legally classed as blind – brought a case against the Canadian Federal Government, stating that the lack of accessibility of its websites for blind and visually impaired Canadian citizens meant that her rights were being breached, she made a formidable opponent.
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A web service offering audio clips to help people with long-term health conditions or disabilities to start their own businesses and become self-employed has been launched in Derbyshire.

The Work for Yourself programme (
www.businessability.co.uk )
is funded by Bolsover District and Chesterfield Borough Councils, and has already helped about 30 local people start their own businesses and a similar number find work.

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The website of Labour MP for Newcastle Upon Tyne East and former Cabinet minister Nick Brown has won the accessibility category in the 2010 MP Web Awards, hosted by BCS – the Chartered Institute for IT (formerly known as the British Computer Society).

The awards are presented to politicians who best use new technologies to engage with their constituents. The accessibility award was judged by representatives of technology charity AbilityNet, who reported a number of features that caused Brown’s website ( www.nickbrownmp.com )
to stand out, including no unlabelled images; a good default size for text, which can be resized; no distracting or moving images; keyboard access for the whole site; and no issues when using a screen-reader.
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The RNIB has given a cautious welcome to a World Intellectual Property Organisation decision to agree a timetable for creation of a new international law allowing sharing of accessible versions of copyright works across national borders.

If passed, the law would require the introduction of exceptions in the national legislation of all member states, so that print-disabled people, including blind people, people with impaired vision and people with dyslexia, can make accessible copies of copyright works and share them across international boundaries.
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By Tristan Parker

It’s certainly taken a while, but next month should finally see the long-awaited arrival of BS 8878 – a British Standard on web accessibility.

Developed by IST/45, a sub-committee of the British Standards Institution ( BSi: www.bsigroup.com/accessibility ), BS 8878 provides guidance on making websites accessible for disabled and elderly users. It has been in the making for some four years, with two public drafts released for comment, of which there was plenty. After further input from a wide range of field experts, extensive user testing, and numerous modifications, the final version of the standard is now expected to be published at the end of November.
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A call for text-to-speech functions to be included on all electronic book platforms to improve their accessibility has been issued by a group of publishing and literary organisations.

The Publishers Association, The Society of Authors, The Association of Authors Agents and The Right to Read Alliance – itself an umbrella campaign group, whose members include The Royal National Institute of Blind People – grouped together to issue the joint statement. It recommended that speech functions, which help many print-disabled readers access a range of otherwise inaccessible e-books, “is routinely enabled on all e-books across all platforms, at least where there is no audio-book edition commercially available.”
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A new technical report on accessibility for audio, video, and multimedia systems and equipment has been published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), an international standards body for electronics, as part of activities to mark this year’s accessibility-themed World Standards Day.

The report, IEC/TR 62678, provides information on accessibility and usability terms, activities, completed and ongoing standards, technical reports and projects, and is available as a pdf from:
www.stc-access.org/2010/10/15/iec-offers-free-technical-report-on-accessibility-for-multimedia-systems-and-equipment
Short link: bit.ly/cL1PJf
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The work of the government’s newly-launched e-Accessibility Forum will include demonstrating to businesses that accessibility is a financial opportunity rather than just a cost, the Minister for Culture, Communication and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, told E-Access Bulletin in an exclusive interview this week.

Led by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the e-Accessibility Forum ( www.bis.gov.uk/e-accessibility ) will bring together more than 60 members from government, industry and the voluntary sector, working to deliver more accessible digital services, content and goods for disabled consumers. Some of the forum’s work is detailed in an e-Accessibility Action Plan which will be updated quarterly ( available as a PDF at: bit.ly/8Xh71O ).
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An online service helping web users with disabilities report accessibility problems by linking them with thousands of tech-savvy volunteers is to be launched later this year by digital inclusion charity Citizens Online.

A trial version of ‘Fix the Web’, sub-titled ‘crowd-sourcing e-accessibility’, was unveiled at this week’s Web Accessibility London Unconference 2010 by Dr Gail Bradbrook, the charity’s lead consulant.
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