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Accessibility Resources

The ACE Centre publishes two guides to accessibility which can be downloaded from the box to the right of this page. The links on this page have been taken from these documents supplemented by others that have recently come to our notice. They are intended to help developers and publishers comply with legislation such as:

Compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA and SENDA)

It is now a legal duty for the education sector to make their services accessible. It has also been a legal requirement for web sites to be accessible since 1999. Education is subject to the DDA following the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001 and the DED. Educational institutions purchasing educational software need to ensure that disabled students are not put at a disadvantage by the purchase of inaccessible software for delivery within the curriculum. In fact the DED makes it a duty for schools to take positive action to improve the learning experience of their students.  Institutions are required to make 'reasonable adjustments' to ensure that a disabled student is not placed at a 'substantial disadvantage'. These requirements will obviously influence their choice of software, educational material and media policies. Also, if you follow the guidelines in this document you are unlikely to be sued!

General Guidance for Programmers

The FREE ACE Centre Publication "Making software inclusive and digital publications accessible" gives a over view of the considerations mainstream publishers should give to making sure their products are accessible to disabled people.  It can be download from the link on the right hand side of this page. The document goes into some detail of the properties that make for more accessible software and documents. To summarise we give 10 'top tips' for accessibility.

A top ten accessibility guide

  • All controls should be accessible from the keyboard and should not override the operating system's Accessibility Options.
  • Create consistent page layouts with buttons and controls in fixed positions wherever possible.
  • Enlarge the size of your 'hotspots' to at least 50 pixels square.
  • Make text style, size and colour configurable (allow style switching).
  • Create alternative texts for pictures and where picture maps are used, provide alternative text menus as well.
  • Make all textual material available as text that can be copied.
  • Remove time dependencies from controls.
  • Create alternative simplified texts, or at least summaries.
  • Create alternative texts for sounds or at least give sound files descriptive names and, add alternative text descriptors  to graphic and video materials.
  • Utilise system accessibility tools wherever possible.

Becta has published two guides 'Making Software Accessible' and 'Making Accessible Software' for schools and industry respectively accompanied by web based materials.  You can obtain these from the Becta Web site

There are a number of web sites that give guidance and resources for designers and programmers. The portal for accessibility at Microsoft is www.microsoft.com/enable. An article outlining Microsoft's view of the future of accessibility is available at www.microsoft.com/enable/business/future.aspx. There is also a check list template, general guidance and support available from IBM at www-306.ibm.com/able/access_ibm/index.html

The MSDN support for accessibility can be found at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms695623.aspx

Windows 2000 and XP

This is the system most frequently encountered system, and the one that new developments will currently be aiming at until Vista comes nearer to being available. In particular Active X Accessibility should be implemented. For a general user guide to accessibility in XP see: www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/accessibility/default.mspx

Vista

Looking to the future we see UIAutomation as a powerful new way for disabled people to gain more effective access to Windows.  We would urge all software developers to implement this in their software for Windows Vista.

Macintosh

The home page for Macintosh accessibility is found at www.apple.com/accessibility. This gives a guide to the accessibility features within Mac systems. The document "Introduction to Apple Human Interface Guidelines" is a good starting point. It's available in PDF format and as a Web document.

OSX has many universal accessibility features and an overview of these can be found at www.apple.com/accessibility and www.apple.com/macosx/features/universalaccess. The Apple developer pages for accessibility are also useful.

Unix

KDE Accessibility Project (KDEAP) is the main forum for accessibility for Unix. The KDEAP is a small on-line community of developers and other volunteers dedicated to ensure that our favorite desktop is accessible to all users, including those of us with physical disabilities.

Linux

Because of the open source development of this system, a number of different 'flavours' of Linux including RedHat Linux, Turbo Linux, GNU Linux and GNOME have developed.  Disability access to GNOME Accessibility is enabling people with disabilities to participate in substantial life activities that include work and the use of services, products, and information. They define GNOME accessibility as the suite of software services and support in GNOME that allows people with disabilities to utilize all of the functionality of the GNOME user environment.

Linux Accessibility Resource Site

http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca contains a summary of the work of the Linux Accessibility community - Currently edited by David Bolter and hosted by the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC)

The Linux Accessibility HOWTO

This covers the use of adaptive technologies that are available for the Linux operating system, as well as the software applications and hardware devices that can be installed to make Linux accessible to users with disabilities. The information provided targets specific groups of individuals with similar disabilities. See www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Accessibility-HOWTO

Websites

There is much activity on the internet involving initiatives to increase the accessibility of the web to people with disabilities. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a commitment to lead the web to its full potential, including the promotion of a high degree of usability (not a term to be confused with accessibility) for people with disabilities. In particular, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) in coordination with other organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the web.

The British Standards Institute has published a set of guidelines for web publishers "PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites" available for purchase from the BSI website.

Web-based resources

Many resources are now in web-compatible formats such as HTML, XML and can include Flash, Shockwave and Java plug-ins. In such cases the version 1 guidelines produced by the WAI initiative of the W3C (www.w3.org/WAI) should be followed and perhaps exceeded for switch users. The second published edition of the web content guidelines is expected in 2005/6 although it is available in draft form already (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20). However, there are a number of other websites in addition to WAI which provide help for designers, for example the British Universities' TechDis Accessibility and Usability Resource, (www.techdis.ac.uk) and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI - www.dublincore.org). Navigation design, the size and position of buttons or links, consistency of position of links, the use of breadcrumb trails can all aid the user in getting to the place they want to be.

Flash

In the past Flash has been notoriously inaccessible. Macromedia (producers of Flash MX 2004) have been making efforts to improve the accessibility of their tools but this new message has not necessarily reached all those using Flash as a tool to develop Web resources. Macromedia have published excellent guidelines for accessibility within Flash products, for example, "Best Practices for Accessible Flash Design" by Bob Regan.

Guidelines for Accessibility in Flash can also be found on the Adobe website.

Shockwave (Macromedia Director)

Shockwave is another multimedia environment that has caused problems with accessibility. Much of the problem now stems from the media creators who use Director to create inaccessible resources. Macromedia have created tools to permit Shockwave to be accessible, but these have not been extensively implemented in the past. See the Macromedia Director accessibility web pages.

Java

The TRACE Center at the University of Madison,Wisconsin started an extensive project on JAVA accessibility in 1996, in cooperation with SUN microsystems. A report on the project can be found at the following links. Sun has gone a long way in implementing tools for accessibility within the Java development environment. Along with accessibility tools for the developer, Sun have made available diagnostic utilities which will point out poor accessibility in Java applets, forms etc.

See:

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility

The main site for accessibility of Acrobat (PDF) publications is www.adobe.com/accessibility/index.html

Guidelines for creating Accessible pdf documents are at: www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs/acro6_pg_ue.pdf

To create fully accessible documents you need to use the Pro version of Acrobat. Adobe have published details of the accessibility tools in 8 pro.

Adobe give nine key criteria to aid the accessibility of PDF files:

  • The document is a searchable text file, not an image-only scan
  • The document's form fields, if any, are accessible
  • The document structure is indicated by tags
  • The reading order is easy to follow (use single columns if possible - Ed.)
  • Descriptive texts (alt-tags) are available for all graphics, links and form fields
  • Navigational aids (such as tags, bookmarks and links) are available
  • A document language is specified
  • The document uses fonts that allow characters to be extracted to text
  • The security settings don't interfere with screen readers.

InDesign

Accessibility guidelines for InDesign and tools for this and other Adobe products are available.

Games

The ACE Centre's GameOn! project looks at the accessibility of computer games. One of the main difficulties with PC software is the use of DirectX. This by-passes many of the accessibility systems and in many cases grabs the entire screen, leaving no room for accessibility utilities such as on-screen keyboards. Many people in or associated with the games industry (IGDA - International Games Development Association) have formed a special interest group promoting accessibility. They are producing guidelines for the industry. Here's their top ten wish list for games accessibility features for games:

  • Provide volume controls
  • User definable controls.
  • Broad difficulty level options.
  • Subtitles for dialogue and sound effects.
  • Trainer/help modes.
  • Easy to navigate menus.
  • Text to Speech.
  • Speed control.
  • Thought for partially sighted and colour blind gamers.
  • Simplified control mode option.

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