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Re: Standards for Accessible Laws?

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From: Noble,Stephen L.
Date: Dec 15, 2018 6:42PM

I assume that these XML vocabularies are in ongoing development, but I don't know the extent to which some people from the accessibility community have been involved in the project to ensure that accessibility is one of the goals. This is the road that other document standards like MathML, the Digital Talking Book (DAISY) and now EPUB standards have evolved to support accessibility in various types of digital content. But I have had not direct involvement in the USML standard, so I cannot comment from direct knowledge. Nonetheless, one would hope that since the US government requires all federal agencies to abide by Section 508, there would be an impetus to ensure the USML standard will support the US accessibility requirements.


Sorry that I don't have enough information to answer the specifics of your question...


--Steve Noble


From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of Wolfgang Berndorfer < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 11:36 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

Hi Steve,
Thanks for Your link. Found some interesting things about US programs in
general.
But could You please precise, where I can find standards for accessible law
presentation within those projects? Had no success at all.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] Im Auftrag
von Noble,Stephen L.
Gesendet: Freitag, 14. Dezember 2018 23:23
An: WebAIM Discussion List
Betreff: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

I would think the first thing would be to piggy back on the current efforts
to implement United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.fdlp.gov_news-2Dand-2Devents_3560-2Dunited-2Dstates-2Dlegislative-2Dmarkup-2Dx&d=DwIFAw&c=OAG1LQNACBDguGvBeNj18Swhr9TMTjS-x4O_KuapPgY&r=67olWPWhVEsI50vpRdydglG2RHA1T81UHrTuRDeUqW4&m=ZhmVQePKpLId_304581Uv7H1xVIWAKqYUMVeHqeCg7Y&s=x_Lqs4t_3qFHvp9uE1xDzhDy_ZQQR3oM6dbk3rbz1f0&e=
ml

Of course, I know the Brits have their own version...Crown Legislation
Markup Language, but I don't know if other countries have their own. There
are surely commonalities that can be mapped.


--Steve Noble

<EMAIL REMOVED>




From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of
Wolfgang Berndorfer < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2018 2:12 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

Does anybody know about specific standards of how to present LAWS
accessible?



Perhaps I was just unlucky, but I never found a law which was presented
according to WCAG standards, not even in Anti-Discrimination-Laws. No
heading is semantically a heading and no list a list.



So I searched for standards to advice governments and their technical and
legal departments how to make laws accessible. No matching results.



All the blind lawyers I asked, navigate from paragraph to paragraph via
CTRL+F. None ever complained. Seems they don't know how to use their AT
efficiently or they are too used to suffering.



So if there are no standards I suggest:



1. Provide an accessible HTML version of the law. PDF and other formats need
more effort and don't mean more comfort.

2. The title of the law in the document gets <h1>.

3. If the law contains sections, the heading of the section gets <h2>.

4. If the law contains sections, the heading of each paragraph gets <h3>,
otherwise <h2> .

5. The number of the paragraph and it's title are contained within ONE
heading element.

6. Titles for meta information's about the law like short- and long title,
abstracts in foreign languages, . get <h6>. Means: Only the pure law gets
the meaningful heading hierarchy.

7. Lists of articles within a paragraph are contained in a <ol> with the
fitting CSS list-style-type. (Or is this wrong, since CSS should not convey
content, like the number of the article?)

8. References to passages of the law or other laws are linked in an <a
href.>.

9. Tables, diagrams, . get the necessary accessibility features.



TX for infos & thoughts!



Wolfgang

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