Oxymoron of the day: User Friendly
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Open source initiative will help the disabled
THE OPEN AJAX ALLIANCE (OAA) is using open source web 2.0 initiatives to improve Internet access for the elderly and disabled.
The OAA announced the open source tooling technology to help developers create accessible web 2.0 enabled sites that meet online accessibility standards. The guidelines followed are the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), considered as the industry-wide global standard for accessibility.
IBM, which is a member of the OAA, has been working on the web 2.0 tools and said lack of standards have been a hindrance.
"From a development perspective, tooling has been the missing link," said Michael Squillace, co-chair of the OAA accessibility tools task force and IBM human ability and accessibility center software engineer.
"WCAG 2.0 gave us the criteria for Web 2.0 accessibility, and technical specifications like WAI-ARIA helped us understand how to enable rich Internet applications for accessibility. But, there hasn't been a reliable way to ensure compliance or validate correct implementation of specifications for accessibility. This rules format makes that possible. It's a significant achievement."
The rules require developers to integrate structural design pattern analysis into their work, ensuring ease of access for users that need extra help.
The OAA previously set up the accessibility tools task force to monitor best practices for accessibility tools. Now it wants to use the task force to do the same for WCAG 2.0 and WAI-ARIA compliance. It will also be expanded to support the US Section 508 accessibility guidelines. µ
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Allowing adjustable font size ( that doesn't make a mess of the webpage) and colors (white text on black background is easier to read than the opposite) goes a long way for low-vision users. I'm talking to you Android developers! I was really happy to see that Google Maps Mobile had transit schedules, but then I got the latest version and they flipped the colors to black text on white and the text is tiny which made it considerably harder to read. I'd rather scroll a lot than not be able to read it, sheesh.