Again with the Ajax accessibility

Christian Heilmann, AbilityNet, July 2008

Thanks to: Gez Lemon, Steven Faulkner, Paciello Group, BBC, Gartner research.

I am here to talk about Ajax and accessibility.

Especially in a web2.0 context.

I can do that, but I have no clue if I can reach you.

Therefore I will give you lots of information to look up as

your own homework.

Cause there’s one thing about good development and

accessibility that you should know:

It is up to you to make things better.

No shortcuts,

no silver bullets.

You need to want to learn and constantly keep your

eyes open to make this work.

What is Ajax, and what are the problems with it?

Ajax means loading information and updating an

interface partially.

This is great for usability:

Shorter loading times.

A real application interface.

It is however not how the web was planned to work.

Back button.

State Retention.

Informing the user.

Interaction with assistive technology.

Any good interaction with any interface gives the user feedback as to what is going

on.

If you load content with Ajax, change the interactive

element that initiated the loading process.

When the information was successfully retrieved,

change the interface and the original element.

Beware, though.

Connections are flaky, things break.

Your implementation should plan for this.

Have a timeout that stops the Ajax malarkey and just loads the real document or view of

your application.

Usability tips for this:http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns

Screenreader tips for this:http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-

screen-readers.php

Back button and application state:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/history

However, this does not mean that assistive technology knows that things have

changed...

Screen readers are elephants.

They are big, cost a lot and have quite a memory.

When the page loads, the screen reader takes a

snapshot.

This is what it looks at – if you change the page, that doesn’t

mean a thing.

In order to make screen readers know something

went on, you need to entice them to take another

snapshot.

This is really easy – simply change the value of any form

field on the page.

Improving Ajax applications for Jaws:

http://juicystudio.com/article/improving-ajax-applications-for-jaws-users.php

This is all there is to Ajax and accessibility.

What people consider Ajax is another issue though.

Web applications are simulated applications.

HTML is not semantically rich enough to describe

applications.

One way out:

ARIA

http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?cat=23

http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/misc/ARIA/atmedia2008/

What about web2.0 features?

web2.0 is *not* a technology.

web2.0 is a mindset

It is about opening your applications to the world and

create a read+write web.

It is about giving up control and trust others to enrich

what you offer.

http://www.starfishandspider.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7501073.stm

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=718107

Technically you do this by using web2.0 applications for

good.

Web2.0 is there to collaborate and the collect feedback.

You can consume the outcome on the site or in any format you need via APIs and

mashups.

Example: Flickr annotation.

Example: Easy YouTube

Screenshot of

Easy Youtube

http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/

Collaboration and “crowdsourcing” can even

make people remove barriers themselves.

http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/socialaccessibility/http://webvisum.com/

It’s a sweet ride.

Join us.

Self promotion time:

Scripting Enabled19th/20th of September 2008

Metropolitan University, London

http://scriptingenabled.org

Self promotion time:

Scripting Enabled19th/20th of September 2008

Metropolitan University, London

http://scriptingenabled.org

THANKS

Christian Heilmann

http://wait-till-i.com

http://scriptingenabled.org

http://twitter.com/codepo8