One of the things that I'm constantly
talking about in my courses is accessibility. The things is that I've come to realize
is that I can talk about this as much as I want but it's really up to me
to show to you why it's so important for you to make the Web as accessible
as possible for others. So today we're going to
talk about three things. First, I would like to explain what
a Web accessibility professional does. Second, we're going to talk in-depth
about how disabilities relate to the Web. Finally, I am going to introduce for the first time the four principles
of accessible interface design. These four principles are something
that will hopefully guide you throughout the entire time
you're making Web pages. So let's start off with this whole idea of
what a Web accessibility coordinator does. One of my pet peeves is people who say
they don't wanna go into technology because they'd rather do something
where they can help people. Well, my follow-through to that is that,
if you really want to help people, you need to understand technology. So, one of the things that people like to
do is find careers where they can help people who have issues, and work together
with people who are in technology. And that's exactly the type of thing
a Web accessibility coordinator will do. So first, one thing they might do is help
guide policy and purchasing decisions, on what kind of software is most
accessible to the widest range of people. Second, they can evaluate Web
interfaces for accessibility. So by learning just some key tips and
tricks they can go to different pages and find out where there might be pitfalls for
people. Third, they can assist people
with disabilities to access online infrastructure. Most universities and
large companies will always have someone who's job it is to assist those who need
some help accessing online material. Or really,
any type of technological tools. Fourth, it's very important that people
keep pace with changing technology. You will always have a job if you can find
a way to combine your love with helping people with the different
tools that are being used. So, let's talk specifics. According to the 2012 U.S. Census, 1 in
5 people in the U.S. have a disability. That means that there are 60
million people in the U.S. who are dealing with issues
that other people may not have. And half of them are impeded
from using the Internet. So we will talk briefly about four
issues that tend to pop up the most when dealing with disabilities and
the Internet. Visual issues, hearing,
motor and cognitive. When you talk about accessibility almost
everyone thinks about screen readers. They design and say, oh I'm gonna make sure that my
page will read well on a screen reader. However, it's much much more than that. While 1.8 million people are completely
blind, we also have 8 million people who have difficulty reading ordinary
newsprint even with their glasses on. So one of the things that we want
to think about when we're designing is more than just font size, we also
need to think about color contrast. Your different font style. Can someone really see your
page as easily as possible? We also want to think about
hearing disabilities. We're talking about from
partial to total deafness. So 8 million people have difficulty
hearing in normal conversation and 1 million are completely deaf. More and more places are moving
to online presence and of course we all know that watching
videos online is a very common thing. We're all doing it right now. So one of the things to think about
if you decide to add videos to your site is did you include
the close captioning to really make sure as many people
as possible can access your content. But there's also other
things to think about. Are you blaring music? You might have users who don't even
realize that music is playing. Or perhaps you have things so low that people can't quite
grasp what you're saying. One of the things we're gonna talk
about is making sure that people have the ability to control the different
multimedia that you're gonna put on your page. This is going to help people with hearing
disabilities feel that they are in command of the technology, not that
the technology's in command of them. One of my own personal issues
is that of motor disabilities. There are many, many people who are unable
to use a mouse or a physical keyboard. Maybe they have slow response time or
just limited fine motor skills. So dexterity issues are something that
affects 8 million people who have difficulty using their arms or hands. But my guess is that for most of us have
had some issue with trying to use the Web, and haven't been quite able
to do what we hope to do. So one issue that we talked about is
what happens when someone tries to tab through your page. This is a very common way for
people to get through pages. But unless you're very careful you
can make it that people tab through to nowhere. Another issue is do you
require a steady hand? Many people like to add flashy and cool
graphics and animations to the their page. But I know that I personally have been
frustrated at trying to click a button while the button keeps
moving around the screen. Another issue is cognitive disabilities
and when we talk about cognitive disabilities, there's a very wide range
of issues we might be talking about. There's learning disabilities,
distractibility, dyslexia. Even the ability to remember or
focus on large amounts of information. Some of the things I was laughing at when
I looked at this slide just now is that this slide, perhaps,
has too much text on it for people to really be able to
focus on what I'm looking at. So, we're saying that there are 16
million adults with ADD or ADHD. Another overlooked population is that
there are a large number of soldiers, Marines, and National Guard members who
have different psychological conditions such as traumatic brain injury, or
post-traumatic stress disorder. Now what does that have to do
with making your Web accessible? We wanna make sure that things
are easy to understand, not flashing, not requiring
great amounts of concentration. Cognitive disabilities number
greater than physical and perceptual disabilities combined. So it's something that you want to think
about when you're designing your page, or even if you're just help
other people design theirs. So let's get the specific stats because
nothing helps me convince people more that they want to design for
the Web than showing them the numbers. So almost 10% of the U.S.
population has two or more disabilities. 40 thousand people in the U.S.
are both deaf and blind. So think about trying to access technology
when you have those types of issues. 41% of adults 65 and
older have a disability. And there are almost 9 million people
with disabilities who are poor. 70% of the disabled are underemployed or
unemployed. The issue is not that they are not able
to do the jobs that are out there. Many times there are roadblocks put
up there that they can't get through in order to do jobs that they
are very well qualified for. So the Web offers unprecedented
opportunities for the disabled. Here we are right now all
taking a class online. So education has the benefit in
that we teachers can reach as many people as we can. And for students, it means that you have access to
resources that you never had before. Many, many people get their
news from online resources so we wanna make sure that we make
it available to everybody. Commerce I find particularly interesting because many many places
have online presences but are even realizing that they're
alienating such a large customer base? And of course the social benefits
of the Web are easy to see, so many people have created more friends online
than they actually have in real life. So the benefits of the Web
are amplified for the disabled. People who before could not access
education, news, commerce or social interaction,
are now able to do that. So the Web is an enabling technology and we want to make sure that
we continue to make it so. So hopefully I convinced you just from
a human standpoint that it's important to make your Web pages accessible, but
there are of course legal aspects as well. The Department of Justice is in
the process of updating the American with Disabilities Act to include online
resources of state and local entities. What this means is that universities,
state governments, local governments all need to make
sure that the information they have online is accessible to everyone. There are many instances of
case law where individuals or groups have filed civil complaints against
universities, companies because they feel that their products are not accessible
to people in a way that it should be. So, let's just review this for a second. What is Web accessibility? What it is is making sure that you're
making your Web accessible for the widest possible audience, this includes
people with permanent disabilities and those with temporary disabilities. Currently, the online infrastructure, while a wonderful resource,
is hostile to those with disabilities. Another issue you want to think about
is that accessibility is inseparable from search engine optimization,
mobile technology, and usability. Improve one of these things and
you can improve all the others. So what's the best way to
accomplish accessibility? It's adherence to standards. As you start now, you're at the very
beginning of your Web career. It's the perfect time for
you to learn the best possible tags and the best possible ways to
make your page accessible. These standards are going to come from the
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, called WCAG. And these guidelines are printable,
not technology based. What this means is that you don't need to
go out and find the greatest language or greatest technology to
make your page accessible, instead you really just need to follow
four principles as you design your sites. Is my site perceivable, is it operable,
is it understandable, and is it robust? We'll be talking about these four
principles throughout our entire course. So, let's review quickly. I know that right now you're just
starting your Web design career, and it can be overwhelming. But I'm really hoping that one of
the things you'll make sure that you do is design with accessibility in mind. It is the right thing to do for
so many reasons. Whether it's because you really want to
reach out to the largest customer base you can, or because legally it's required. The important thing is
make sure you do it. And the great thing is accessible design
is actually pretty straight forward. All you need to do is adhere to standards. The reason that many
pages are inaccessible, is because they're trying to be flashy and cool and do things that aren't quite yet
fully implemented to standards. So, finally as we go through this class
make sure that you pay special attention to the semantics behind HTML tags. These semantics contain
special information that are going to make it much easier for people who are using assistive devices
to understand the content of your page. Together we can make sure that
the next generation of Web developers are designing for
the greatest possible audience.