Sakai Accessibility Update

Mike ElledgeAccessibility Team Lead

Assistant Director, Michigan State University Usability & Accessibility Center

Topics

• Background• Current Accessibility• Upcoming Projects• How You Can Help• Questions/Comments

Background

• Mandate to be accessible– Section 508– WCAG 1.0: Priority One, Two

• Steady progress despite constraints– Multiple technologies: Velocity, JSF, RSF– Distributed development– Limited resources

Background

• Strong contributors– Accessibility Working Group: Comments and

suggestions– Gonzalo Silverio: Implementation, review– Aware Developers: Design to specs, experimentation

with 2.0-based tools– Sakai Accessibility Testers: Indiana University,

University of Toronto, others

• Accessibility site on Confluence: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/LgI

Current Accessibility

• Overall– Meets 7 of 10 Section 508 mandates (6 not applicable)– Meets most WCAG 1.0 recommendations

• Priority One: 6 of 8 (7 = NA)• Priority Two: 15 of 18 (3 = NA)

– “NA” mostly content or server-related elements

WCAG 1.0 Failures

• Priority One– Calendar: In data tables that have two or more logical

levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.

– JavaScript: Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.

WCAG 1.0 Failures

• Priority Two– All Sakai: Provide metadata to add semantic information

to pages and sites. – All Sakai: Provide information about the general layout

of a site (e.g., a site map or table of contents). – WYSIWY Editor: Ensure that any element that has its

own interface can be operated in a device-independent manner.

Current Accessibility

• Screen Readers (JAWS, Window-Eyes)– Core Tools: Accessible, some glitches– Quizzes and Tests: Needs review– Provisional Tools: Some tested, some not

• Screen Enlargers (ZoomText)– Okay at lower magnification– 4X a problem

Current Accessibility

• Text Magnifiers (Kurzweil 3000)– Not very accessible

Accessibility Issues

• Remaining iFrame– Crushes linerarization, non-CSS rendering– Hampers short-cut keys, skip links

• Dynamic page creation– Mangles page titles

Upcoming Projects

• 2.4 Review of revised and provisional tools• Discussion, reviews of 2.0-ish tools (Lightbox, live

forms, page order helper)• Fluid

– Protocol development– Tool review and refactoring

Accessibility Priorities

• Accessibility review of current version followed by code revision

• Frame-less presentation/Refactoring of tools to be JSR-168 compliant

• Modification/Refactoring of JSF Tools• Adoption of PreferAble and StyleAble tools• Development of Fluid• 2.0 Tool experimentation• Implementation of Fluid in Sakai

How To Help: Everyone

• Sign-up to review Sakai tools:– http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/uq4

• Share knowledge, become more aware of accessibility issues: join Accessibility Working Group– accessibility@collab.sakaiproject.org

How To Help: Developers

• Follow accessibility guidelines– WCAG 1.0 (soon to be 2.0)

• http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php

– ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)• http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/

– Sakai Accessibility Styleguide• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/ew4

– Sakai Developer Checklist• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/LgI

• Test for accessibility– Sakai accessibility protocol

• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/uq4

How To Help: Designers

• Design for Usability and Accessibility– Sakai Design Patterns Library

• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/-3

– Involve Users in Design Process and Review Designs for Accessibility (PowerPoint presentation)

• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/OrI

Accessibility Contacts

• Mike Elledge, elledge@msu.edu• Gonzalo Silverio, gsilver@umich.edu• Colin Clark, colin.clark@utoronto.ca • Accessibility Working Group:

accessibility@collab.sakaiproject.org

Questions/Comments