E-Access Bulletin Live

by Majeed Saleh.

The Olympic Games are currently being followed avidly by sports fans, journalists and politicians worldwide, many of them using the official Beijing 2008 website (en.beijing2008.cn), the most comprehensive source of information on events.

Given the huge global interest the Olympics always stimulates, the demands and expectations on the Games website are high, and designing a site to please everyone is always going to be tough. Where accessibility for people with disabilities is concerned, however, previous organisers have not always got it right.
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Two new draft documents relating to accessibility and the future of the web have been published in the past month the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C – www.w3.org).

The first, ‘Shared web experiences: barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities’, notes that many of the barriers faced by internet browsers on mobile devices are the same as those experienced by people with disabilities. The document provides examples of the barriers of access to web content for both sets of users (www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences). Read the rest of this entry »

A draft anti-discrimination directive from the European Commission has been criticised by a major disability lobby group for failing to cover technology accessibility standards.

The commission’s proposal, ‘Non-discrimination and equal opportunities: a renewed commitment’, deals with discrimination against people on the basis of disability, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and covers non-employment areas such as education, social security and health care (see fastlink.headstar.com/eur8).

In a statement European disability Forum (EDF) President Yannis Vardakastanis said the draft directive omits “important issues for persons with disabilities as the concept of universal design, the necessity of European and national accessibility standards and the right to services ensuring inclusion.”

In addition the document “leaves room for interpretation and will create legal uncertainties”, Vardakastanis said (see fastlink.headstar.com/edf2).

The EDF was created in 1996 to give a voice in the European Union to Europe’s 50 million disabled people (www.edf-feph.org).

More help is needed to ensure the ‘struggling seventh’ – the most disadvantaged 15 per cent of UK society – are reached by the benefits of the information society, according to a ‘Digital inclusion manifesto’ published by specialist consultancy humanITy (www.humanity.org.uk).

Contrary to expectation the so-called ‘digital divide’ has compounded exclusion among vulnerable groups, and while a lot of resources have been directed towards the improving the access of the ‘final third’, there is still more to be done for the most disadvantaged groups, the manifesto finds.
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The new guidelines for UK public sector bodies on ‘Delivering inclusive websites’ (see E-Access Bulletin, June 2008) are a bewildering blend of the vague with the Draconian.

The guidance, published by the Central Office of Information (COI) under the reference number ‘TG102′ (See www.coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=129),stipulates that all new UK public sector websites must conform to at least ‘AA’ accessibility standards as specified by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Existing central government department websites must conform to ‘AA’ by December 2009. “This includes websites due to converge on Directgov or BusinessLink, unless convergence is scheduled before this date,” the guidelines state. Sites of all other government agencies and non-departmental bodies must conform by March 2011.
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The forthcoming British Standard for accessible websites, BS8878, is to be aimed at marketing departments of major retailers and suppliers of consumer goods and services, it has emerged.

At an open planning meeting hosted this week by the British Standards Institution (BSi –
www.bsi-global.com), the committee charged with producing the standard consulted a range of other academic and technical bodies to ensure the new work will not repeat or  Compete with other guidelines.
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Joe Clark, the Canadian web accessibility expert, has said that he believes we now live in a post-guideline era.

What might Joe mean by this?

To date, talk about making websites usable by disabled people has usually featured the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Web Accessibility Guidelines as a key aspect. This is absolutely appropriate and remains the crucial foundation of every website.
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A leading charity is using a wide range of social networking and multimedia sites – Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube and iTunes  – to provide support and information to parents of disabled children and help them contact each other.

Contact a Family (www.cafamily.org.uk), which runs a parent networking website called Making Contact (www.makingcontact.org), says parents of disabled children often feel isolated because they don’t know anybody in the same situation. But mothers, who are often the primary carers for children with disabilities, are now among the biggest users of social networking sites, it says.
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A taskforce to help businesses provide accessible technology to employees and customers has been launched by the UK’s Employers’ Forum on Disability (EFD – www.efd.org.uk),a body whose members include some of the country’s largest corporations and public agencies.

The aim of the forum’s Business Taskforce on Accessible Technology is to “make accessibility and usability as fundamental to IT as security is now,” said Steve Lamey, Chief Operating Officer of HM Revenue & Customs and chair of the new group.
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By Dan Jellinek and James Scott.

The creation of the Employers’ Forum on Disability (EFD) Business Taskforce on Accessible Technology (see News, this issue) is a sign that the UK’s and the world’s largest companies and organisations are beginning to take accessibility seriously.

The taskforce aims to help global ICT suppliers and regulators understand what organisations need from IT products and standards if they are to employ and do business with disabled people.
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