James

Here's a bit more on screen reader whys and wherefores: http://webaim.org/blog/screen-reader-user-survey-3-results/

The Web Aim survey is an annual appraisal of what's out there, and what current good practice looks like. Have a look at the link to the survey in the story. We were tweeting this around earlier this year. 

Adding my own bit to the discussion; I do quick appraisal of sites in the Arts Council sector using the testing tools linked to the IE 'developer tools' menu - the W3C validation tool and HiSoft's 'Cynthia Says' automated tester for WCAG compliance. 

As Chris Power says, you then need to apply both expert knowledge via manual checks and user testing with target audience groups to go further. 

Within the sector I work in now, the key accessibility challenge [as I perceive it] is not technical shortcomings of screen readers/browsers/CMS/CSS etc. It's the on-the-ground skills deficit experienced by people who are populating websites with content. Knowing the basics of good practice in link-naming, alt-tag writing, long description writing etc is really important, and having good publishing practice and workflows that encourage the checking of accessibility cues like these is important. 

All the best

Jon

Jon Pratty

[disclaimer: contributions to social media and e-list are my own, and not the views of my employer]

Relationship Manager, Digital and Creative Economies
Arts Council England
+441273 763037
07872419194
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Morley
Sent: 21 April 2011 10:02
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Accessibility testing - tools and services

Very belated thanks to everyone who responded to this request.

Chris, can I ask which tool you use for your automated testing? I've been playing around with a 30-day trial of Powermapper's SortSite and it seems better than most I've tried previously.  Just need someone to create an automated 'create more hours in the day' tool!

Regards, James

----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Morley                       [log in to unmask]
Website Manager                    Tel. +44 (0)20 8332 5759
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew         www.kew.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Christopher Power
> Sent: 15 April 2011 14:10
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Accessibility testing - tools and services
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> VoiceOver is a piece of assistive technology that can be used in user
> testing (or in manual expert tests).  However, novice users working
> with it, especially
> without knowledge of accessibility practices, will often make key
> errors.  The examples that James lists below are excellent, but things
> that are not always obvious
> to novice users, nor are the design solutions particularly clear.  For
> example, the "playing with building blocks" actually is voiced as a
> link leading to the shop first
> before the picture.  Further, that image appears to be not providing
> information to the user about the shop, but instead is a decoration for
> people with vision.
> Such decorative features should in fact not have an alternative text at
> all, but should have an empty alt text that looks like this: alt=""
> 
> There are three types of testing that we use at University of York for
> accessibility testing:
> 
> 1) Automated testing - this is the use of automated tools to pick up
> errors on some success criteria.  These tools check approximately 20%
> of the issues
> raised by the WAI as problems for disabled users.  So for an example,
> checking if an alternative text is present or not, that can be done
> automatically.
> 2) Manual testing - using a combination of tools checking those
> guidelines that can't be tested automatically.  For example, going back
> to the alternative
> text example, if you have a picture of a cat and an alternative text
> that says "This is an elephant" then that text is clearly wrong.  An
> automatic test can't
> do this check.
> 3) User testing - have a set of users come in and use their assistive
> technologies to perform high priority (and some lower priority) tasks
> on the site and
> collect problems for redesign.
> 
> All of these have their place, with the last being our gold star
> testing.  If you are recruiting a company to do accessibility testing,
> and from the sounds of things
> likely that is a good option, you may want to ask them how they do
> their testing.
> 
> ***SHAMELESS PLUG***
> As a note: the University of York offers continuing professional
> development courses in accessibility design and evaluation.  You can
> come to one of our
> regular courses, or we can come to your organisation to do the training
> with your team.
> ***SHAMELESS PLUG***
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris Power
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------
> Christopher Power, PhD.
> Lecturer
> Human Computer Interaction Research Group
> CSE/241, Department of Computer Science
> University of York,  Deramore Lane, York YO10 5GH
> Phone: +44 (0)1904325673 Fax: +44 (0)1904 432767
> Email: [log in to unmask];  Skype: cdspower; Twitter: cdspower
> Web: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~cpower
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------
> UoY Email Disclaimer
> 
> 
> 
> On 15 Apr 2011, at 10:45, Frankie Roberto wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:34 PM, James Morley <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Can I ask what tools and services anyone uses for accessibility
> testing,
> >> especially any particular recommendations?
> >>
> >
> > If you've got a Mac, then there's an accessibility tool called
> 'VoiceOver'
> > built in, and something I've started to do recently is to actually
> try using
> > it on various different sites (including ones I've built).
> >
> > You can activate it by holding down cmd and F5.  Then it'll read out
> > webpages when they load, or you can interrupt and navigate through
> either
> > the page content or the links on the page. It takes a little while to
> figure
> > out the keyboard commands, but there's a tutorial you can go through
> which
> > soon gets you up and running.
> >
> > When using it though, it's amazing how quickly you learn things you
> can fix
> > with your website to make it more user-friendly for those using
> readers. For
> > example, all those alt tags that you wrote in good faith thinking
> that you
> > were helping accessibility often make no sense in the context of the
> page.
> > (I often tell people that, in 95% of cases, empty alt tags are more
> > appropriate than filled-in ones).
> >
> > Even big websites have obvious flaws. For example, the first thing
> you hear
> > when using VoiceOver on the BBC homepage is:
> >
> > "visited link British Broadcasting Corporation BBC British
> Broadcasting
> > Corporation" - a bit much when all it needs to say is "BBC" (which is
> you
> > see when viewing the page).
> >
> > To take another example, the Science Museum website reads out the alt
> tag
> > "Science Museum logo" as the first thing on the page (should just be
> > "Science Museum") and currently has a picture on the page with the
> alt tag
> > "playing with building blocks" which leads to the shop.
> >
> > Most of the websites I've ever built have issues like this too - so I
> don't
> > mean to be too critical - but it just goes to show that if you don't
> see (or
> > hear) the alt tags, they usually go unnoticed!
> >
> > VoiceOver isn't the only, or even the most popular, screen reader, so
> you
> > probably shouldn't rely on it too much. But, given that it's free (if
> you
> > have a Mac), and only two button-presses away, it seems like there's
> no good
> > excuse for not testing websites using it now and again.
> >
> > Frankie
> >
> > --
> > Frankie Roberto
> > Experience Designer, Rattle
> > 0114 2706977
> > http://www.rattlecentral.com
> >
> > ****************************************************************
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