March 31, 2008
by Jared Smith
As part of WebAIM’s Steppingstones of Technology project, we have performed an extensive literature review to identify elements that are often cited as having an impact on users with cognitive and learning disabilities when accessing web content. To further inform us, we invite you to complete a short survey.
WebAIM’s Steppingstones project is one of the first in-depth explorations into web content and cognitive disabilities. Our literature review provided us much insight into the types of things that authors reference as having an impact on web accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. The survey results will give us more insight into the level of impact these elements might have and how useful it might be for developers to receive feedback regarding these elements in their web design. As part of this project, WebAIM will be developing an evaluation tool that will report on the cognitive load and implications of some of these design elements. The survey results will help us determine which elements we will incorporate into such a tool.
The survey is available online and takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. By completing this survey you will greatly inform our process and support the creation of better tools for increasing accessibility of web content to this important audience.
March 8, 2008
by Jared Smith
In the six weeks since we launched WAVE 4.0 beta, over 100,000 accessibility reports have been run. We’re now happy to announce the release of the WAVE Firefox toolbar. This toolbar performs web accessibility evaluations directly in your web browser. This provides better security, an ability to evaluate password-protected or intranet pages, and evaluate dynamically created content.
You can download the WAVE Firefox Toolbar at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar
We have also launched a new WAVE blog and will be posting WAVE updates and information there. You can read more about the WAVE Toolbar or subscribe to the RSS feed now.
March 7, 2008
by Jared Smith
After the events of this week, I have several fewer reasons to loathe Internet Explorer.
It’s not a real secret that I, like many other developers, have experienced a vast amount of frustration in attempts to build standards compliant, accessible web sites that work in Internet Explorer. From the infamous hasLayout bug to CSS inconsistencies, I’ve been long waiting for the day that IE would either go away or step up to the standards table.
Then behold, Microsoft announced this week that IE 8 will support the ARIA specification and will no longer require developers to target a specific IE rendering engine (unless of course, they want to target an older rendering engine). Read the CIO.com article, the IE Blog posting, the press release, or the IE8/ARIA Whitepaper.
These announcements signify a significant victory for developers, for standards, and for accessibility. As Bruce Lawson documented, Microsoft’s previous plan to require developers to target specific browsers could have resulted in perpetual inaccessibility on sites that did not opt-in and implement the IE specific meta tag. Now, IE8 will default to the most current rendering engine and will support a true standards compliance mode. Developers will not be required to tell IE to act compliant. As such, screen readers and other assistive technologies can take full advantage of existing and future accessibility specifications (such as ARIA) in Internet Explorer without relying on the page author to trigger standards compliance mode specifically for that browser version.
The ARIA specification has much potential for making dynamic, AJAX-driven, interactive web sites more accessible. Despite it’s potential, developers have not taken it seriously due to the fact that there were no plans for Internet Explorer support. The announcement that IE8 will support ARIA means that developers can begin implementing ARIA very soon. While ARIA is not the panacea of accessibility and won’t solve all problems, it does provide a framework for making rich internet applications more accessible in a formalized, (and now) cross-browser compatible way.
