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School of Computer Science
University Motto, Cognitio Sapientia Humanitas (Knowledge, wisdom, humanity)

Practical Accessibility: A Web Accessibility Primer

This tutorial has designed to have a good balance between theory and practice. It gives a broad overview of the fundamentals of Web accessibility theory and includes two hands on session for practising techniques to create accessible Web pages.

Presenters

This tutorial will be presented by Dr. Yeliz Yesilada and Dr. Simon Harper.

Programme

This tutorial has three parts:

Part 1: Web Accessibility fundamentals

The following materials will be used in this part:

Demo videos used in this session are listed below. We would like to acknowledge AbilityNet for these videos:

Part 2: Web Accessibility Engineering

The following materials will be used in this part:

In the practical session of this part, participants will be asked to evaluate the accessibility of a Web page by using the Barrier Walkthrough method. The following instructions explain how to complete this practical part:

  1. Please download the barriers Excel sheet;
  2. You can either evaluate your own page or you can also evaluate the home page of IMDB which will give a good experience of the accessibility issues;
  3. In this evaluation process, you can use any evaluation tool (e.g., a standalone evaluation tool or a browser extension) you like. A comprehensive list of the evaluation tools can be found at the WAI Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools page which also includes the complete list of evaluation tools.

    You are asked to evaluate each barrier with respect to users that are blind, that have low vision, that are motor impaired, and those who use a mobile device. For each barrier and user group, please check whether that barrier exists. If it does not exist then give 0 or leave blank, but if it exists please specify the severity based on three point scale (1=minor, 2=significant, 3=critical) and also explain the rationale for your rating. Please avoid just to say yes or no as we are also quite interested in identifying the severity of a barrier. If a page contains several instances of the same barrier type (e.g., several clickable images with no text) and same user group, then enter the severity rating by referring to the worst-case scenario and explicitly indicating which case or specific element you are referring to.

    A barrier is minor if it is detected by the user, but there are simple ways to overcome it or to avoid it; it is easy to remember it, to learn how to avoid or get around it; it is significant when it heavily affects the task execution. To overcome the barrier the user has to back-up, follow a trial-and-error strategy, guess the proper action, repeat an action several times; the user may incur in errors. In many cases it is not possible to avoid the barrier; even if it can be avoided, this requires a substantial knowledge and/or memory (to recall that there is the barrier and on how to avoid it). Finally it is critical when users give up, or they cannot reach their goals. This can happen after users have spent considerable time and effort to try to overcome the barrier, perhaps with many errors. There are no alternative ways (known to the users) that can be followed to achieve the goals.

Part 3: Future Research Directions and Conclusions

The following materials will be used in this part:

Related Events

There are a number of academic conferences that are related to this tutorial and we strongly recommend that you check out the proceedings of these conferences:

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the Inclusive Digital Economy Network for their support in this tutorial. Dr. Yeliz Yesilada has received a travel grant from this Digital Economy Network to attend this conference. The objective of this Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded network is to raise the awareness of the importance of developing a Digital Economy which is truly inclusive for all citizens. An inclusive digital economy ensures that all older and disabled people in addition to other currently digitally disenfranchised groups, benefit from the advantages of a Digital Economy. The network will assess the inclusivity of current digital systems and methods for improving and extending inclusion. The consortium will investigate the major challenges of inclusivity within the Digital Economy and will lay down the groundwork for long term research which will ensure that the UK is working towards a truly inclusive Digital Economy.

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