times are changing
- weebls-stuff has captions
- no single technology can be 100% accessible to all users
- aim to fit the most 508 features into your work within reasons
- many think that as features rise, accessibility decreases. in reality, your level of accessibility is much more directly tied to your level of effort put in
barriers
- technology - screen readers
- developer - interface folks need to know what to do and when
technology (flash player)
- screen readers (win/ie)
- keyboard control
- focus is clear to users
- focus is made available to assitive technologies
standards and guidelines (?)
- understand the user - what are they going through and what do they need from us
- take away the mouse and see if you can complete tasks
- display types
- visual (not just screen readers - must address color blind/failing vision)
- audio (no/partial hearing)
- motor (no mouse control/shaking hands/poor alignment of mouse to action item)
- cognitive (addressed through proper copy-writing - causes completely avoidable drop outs)
screen reader access
- can either/and scrape the graphics cards and snag events to bubble up
- MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility)
- set the names of buttons
- specify the reading order
- Avoid using wmode - uh oh…
- test projects with screen reader and MSAA tools
demos
- group tab orders by function - page copy: 0-49, menu items: 50+
- shortcuts are a little flaky, and most users don’t use your site often enough to learn the commands
- sometimes with a screen reader you won’t get the visual tab order - add a rollover to all buttons for partial vision users
- virtual buffer - the segment of memory that holds content right before it goes out to the display - using the mouse for interaction breaks the sync with the virtual buffer and causes the reader to flip out.
keyboard access
- provide keyboard access in a logical structure
- default order generated by Flash is a little rough
- code tab stops like BASIC, so you can add features later without recoding previous stops
- 10 headline
- 20 subheadline
- 30 goto 10
links
