Accessibility / Section 508

There is a common misconception that website accessibility deals solely with blind people using “screen reader” software to browse the web. While roughly 4% of Web users report a visual disability, 22% report some type of disability, including:

• Difficulty using their hands
• Cognitive disabilities
• Hearing impairments
• Mobility issues

Nearly 70% of adults in the United States wear some type of corrective lenses. This percentage is even higher among corporate executives and other high-level decision makers who tend to be older.

Many more Internet users have temporary disabilities: sprained wrists, recent LASIK eye surgery, depression, and medication side effects. Still more people in your target audience have “micro disabilities”: a squirming toddler on their lap, a phone on their shoulder, a cup of coffee in their hand, a lack of attention because American Idol is on.

The simple fact is that nearly all users benefit from accessible web pages that allow text re-sizing, flexible widths, easy click targets, and no-nonsense terminology. In addition to building client websites for accessibility and Section 508 compliance, we also offer accessibility services to organizations who wish to improve accessibility or comply with one or more guidelines.

Accessibility Services We Offer

Accessibility Audit
Foraker's accessibility audit involves reviewing your site or application from a practical accessibility perspective, as well as from the standpoint of recognized guidelines such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium) and the US Government Section 508 Accessibility Guidelines. We are also happy to work within whatever accessibility guidelines your organization adheres to or is planning to adhere to. This audit service results in a set of recommendations for improving website or application accessibility and/or achieving Section 508 compliance. This service starts at around $2,500 for small websites, and can go up to tens of thousands of dollars for larger, more complex websites.

Accessibility Compliance Retrofitting
Once we have a clear picture of what changes need to be made to bring a website or application into accessibility compliance, we can help your organization make these changes quickly and cost-effectively. This can involve working with internal staff and existing vendors, or doing the technical implementation work ourselves.

Please contact us to learn more and get a better estimate of costs.

Accessibility from the Ground Up

The structure of each web page and the manner in which data is presented to the browser is crucial to building an accessible website. In addition to a visually appealing, usable interface; an accessible web page should include the following:

• Logical flow and organization of content
• Use of appropriate structural markup to contain content
• Use of clear, everyday language for navigation labels and hyperlinks
• A clear separation of content (text, content-bearing images & multimedia), structure (XML, HTML), and presentation (CSS, stylistic imagery) layers
• Scalability of text size and layout width—without causing errors, overlays, or other rendering problems
• Proper associations between headings and content, labels and form input elements, etc.
• A logical “tab” key order for navigation and input elements
• Allow users to take advantage of keyboard shortcuts for common navigation tasks (e.g. to reach the home page)
• Contingency plans for client-side scripts (e.g. JavaScript), multimedia (e.g. Flash Movies) and other components with special requirements.

If doing the right thing, bringing your organization into compliance with current and expected legislation, and increasing your potential customer base isn't good enough, you should at the very least pay attention to the needs of one blind, deaf, fingerless and cognitively challenged user....

Googlebot

Googlebot is the web crawler that Google uses to index the Internet. It reads your web pages and link structure just like a screen reader. And like a human web user, it attempts to quickly determine the relevance of your web page. Unlike a human user, however, Googlebot is stuck determining the relevance of each web page to the subject area it gleans from your HTML code and inbound hyperlinks. It can't post forms. It can't follow JavaScript “flyout” menus or popup windows. It can't intuit what you really mean by slick catch phrases and “marketese”. Googlebot rewards clear, common-usage language in hyperlinks and content. It also expects to find accessibility-specific HTML tags in websites published by reliable sources. Perhaps most importantly, it is the brain child of Larry Page and Sergey Brin—both of whom believe strongly in opening the Internet to all users.

Web sites designed from the perspective of print—with fixed font sizes, fixed page widths, and graphics used to display text—also tend to breed an inaccessible document structure that is full of nested tables and embedded images. These layouts may look great in Internet Explorer on a high-bandwidth connection with a 17-inch monitor set to 1024x768 resolution... but will fall apart on other operating systems and browsers—including specialized assistive technology browsers.

What is a Web Browser, Anyway?

While for the past 5 years “browser” has typically meant software such as Internet Explorer or FireFox installed on a desktop or laptop computer, the next 5 years will see an explosion of other devices that will be used to browse the Web. These devices include mobile phones, Blackberry® devices, and PDAs. These products have small screens with much smaller resolutions than desktop or laptop computers. They therefore offer their owners similar viewing challenges to users who depend on screen reader software. Users who browse the web with handheld devices fall into two distinct categories: young technophiles and corporate executives. CEOs, business owners, and other high level decision makers travel frequently, and their time is valuable. Forcing these users to scroll horizontally and download images to browse your website will quickly annoy them—particularly if your competition offers an alternative. An accessible website will naturally be easier and quicker to browse from today's handheld devices, and will position your organization well for what tomorrow brings.

What's Under the Hood?

In a fine automobile, the gearshift is where you expect to find it, dashboard gauges are easy to read, and you don't have to fumble for the wipers. Similarly, a well-crafted website is a joy for your customers to drive.

While a clean user interface and properly structured HTML is a must-have for any successful website, the underlying engineering that powers the interface is every bit as important. Errors, delays, and downtime all negatively impact the customer experience. If making changes in response to an accessibility audit is too expensive due to an aging or unnecessarily complex infrastructure, your organization can quickly be trapped in a cycle of high operating expenses and an inability to meet your users' evolving needs.

The first step toward a healthy technology infrastructure involves examining the underlying data model and database structure of your systems. We call this work database development and integration.

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