accessibility
I write monthly newsletters to all editors at TU Wien, inform them about important notions including information about web accessibility and I wrote a manual on what to do to make the websites accessible. I try to stay in contact with the editors and figure out why they don’t do what they are required to do by law.
By that, I was able to figure out what some problems are. Many did not know how to begin, because when your division has a large amount of sites, this is a gigantic task. Others did not even know what accessibility in web means or they did not understand the descriptions in my manual. To solve these problems I tried to adapt the descriptions and expand the available knowledge base and provided them with help.
Another problem is that many editors simply do not have the time in their day to day work to edit their whole website. In these cases, I cannot come up with a solution, because that has to be made by their supervisors or even higher management.
The last and sadly most common problem is that many people just ignore the mails or facts like the existing laws and they do not reply or communicate in any other way. My solution for that is that my supervisor will talk to the Vice Rector Digitalisation and Infrastructure and he will send an email with work instructions to the concerned editors.
Taggings:
Accessible Websites
According to the web accessibility act (“Web-Zugänglichkeits-Gesetz” – WZG) of the Austrian government, the websites of all the institutions that are funded by the government, as is TU Wien, have to be accessible according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). While the technical aspects are almost done, most of the editors have done nothing to make their areas accessible.
Taggings:
Website design & accessibility
Main problem that occurs is that designers focuses mainly on designing the website so it looks great. But lot of times they ignore about the user experience for people with disabilities and also people with age related impairments.
There are many simple solutions for the problems:
● Lighthouse
○ Google supported tool
○ Creates html report
● ARC Toolkit
○ In browser extension
○ Lists all violated accessibility test
● NoCoffee -Vision Simulator
To meet this requirement it is necessary to define proper order of tabulation by setting "tabindex" attribute and also provide the possibility to work with elements (set the checkbox, change value of radio button, submit the button, etc.)
Taggings:
Improve the accessibility of web application
One of the important accessibility requirements is that all the elements of user interface must be available from a keyboard (input fields, buttons, etc.) This requirement is intended to users with motor disorders (who can‘t use the mouse, for example). Also it is important when using screen reader for people with impaired vision.
Taggings:
Improve accessibility of a website
For differently-abled people it is quite complicated to access content on the Internet. To improve this the W3C consortium issued a recommendation called WCAG - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
The <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/">recommendation </a> defines 3 priority levels of the recommendations:
[Priority 1]
A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
[Priority 2]
A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
[Priority 3]
A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.
However a lot of websites does not fulfill even the Priority 1 recommendations. We want to find a client-side solution for altering of such pages for the people with special needs.
