Tips and Tricks for Website
Accessibility Training
Annual Conference of Assistive
Technology Act Programs
May 24, 2007
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Training That Works
• AT programs have the capability to be
leading advocates in their states for
accessible information technology.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Training That Works
• Providing training to IT professionals is a
key means of raising awareness about
accessibility issues.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Training That Works
• AT programs can utilize the tips and tricks
presented in this training to develop a
training curriculum to meet the needs of
IT professionals.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #1 – Show Off Your AT Skills
• Introduce the audience to AT in general
and screen readers in particular.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #1 – Show Off Your AT Skills
• Most of your audience will have no idea
about what AT is and what it does.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #1 – Show Off Your AT Skills
• Saying something even as simple as “Alt
tags help people who use screen readers
understand images” is useless if the
audience isn’t familiar with screen
readers.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #1 – Show Off Your AT Skills
• Try to develop a happy medium between
talking about screen readers and other
technologies.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #1 – Show Off Your AT Skills
• The various IT accessibility standards
center around screen readers, but cover
other AT devices as well.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #1
• The simplest trick is to show off a screen
reader.
– Expensive: JAWS
– Cheap: Home Page Reader
– Free: Windows Narrator
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #1
• However, if you don’t have a great deal of
time (or expertise in using screen
readers) you can show a video of a
screen reader user.
• http://www.doit.wisc.edu/accessibility/vide
o/intro.asp
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #2 – Show Off Your Toolbox
• Introduce the audience to the various
online tools available to evaluate website
accessibility.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #2 – Show Off Your Toolbox
• IT professionals love cool tools to play
with, especially if they’re free.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #2
• Download the Accessibility Toolbar.
• http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #2
• The Accessibility Toolbar has a collection
of the best tools for validating and
assessing website accessibility, all on
one easy-to-use toolbar within Internet
Explorer.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #2
• The Accessibility Toolbar works very well
in a hands-on training (if you can get it
downloaded to every computer).
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #3 – Don’t Show Up Your Audience
• The easiest trap to fall into is to use the
evaluation tools on the website of an
audience member.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #3 – Don’t Show Up Your Audience
• There’s no easier way to alienate your
audience than by pointing out the
shortcomings of their own websites.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #3 – Don’t Show Up Your Audience
• Even using corporate websites or
university websites can backfire.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #3
• Use the “Mouse College” website to
illustrate bad website design.
• http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/lear
ningmodules/bad/
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #3
• “Mouse College” was developed by the
University of California – Fresno to serve
as an example of bad website design.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #3
• Try using the evaluation tools on the
“Mouse College” website to highlight the
problems a user would have accessing
information.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #3
• You can save the “Mouse College” site to
your computer in case you don’t have
Internet access during your training.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #3
• If you’d rather take the more positive
approach, you can demonstrate “Federal
Court Concepts,” a model accessible site.
• http://www.catea.org/grade/legal/index.html
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #4 – Show Off Accessible Design
• Show that accessible design doesn’t have
to mean ugly design.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #4 – Show Off Accessible Design
• Website designers value the visual
aspects of their craft, and don’t want to be
told how to make websites accessible at
the cost of prettiness.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #4 – Show Off Accessible Design
• There’s a myth that accessible design
equals ugly design:
• http://www.empowermentzone.com/
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #4
• Demonstrate CSS Zen Garden:
• http://www.csszengarden.com/
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #4
• CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheets.”
By swapping out the style sheet on a
given page, you can create a new version
of the page with a different design.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #4
• Encouraging IT professionals to use CSS
can allow for greater accessibility.
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tricks for Tip #4
• However, using CSS doesn’t guarantee
good design:
• http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://w
ww.brucelawson.co.uk/zen/sample.css
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities
Tip #5 – Keep Your Presentation Short
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The End
• Any questions?
New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
New Jersey's designated protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities