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[Fwd: [techlunch] Article: New Firefox browser bulks up on 508 compliance]

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From: Michael Moore
Date: Dec 9, 2005 11:00AM

Forwarded from another list, sorry for cross posting but I thought that
this audience would be interested in this.

Mike

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [techlunch] Article: New Firefox browser bulks up on 508
compliance
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 14:11:33 -0600
From: Angela English < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Reply-To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >, < <EMAIL REMOVED> >

Government Computer News (GCN.COM)
December 7, 2005

New Firefox browser bulks up on 508 compliance
By Joab Jackson
GCN Staff

The Mozilla Foundation has posted a Voluntary Product Accessibility
Template
(VPAT) for the newest version of its Firefox Web browser, the first
Section
508 compliance checklist ever posted for a browser, according to Aaron
Leventhal, web accessibility architect for IBM Corp.

"Every item [applicable to browsers] is supported 100 percent, or is
supported with some exceptions," Leventhal said. The Firefox browser
also
has a number of features to help disabled users navigate dynamic Web
pages-features not available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Leventhal
added.

The Mozilla Foundation, which manages the volunteer-based development of
Firefox, released version 1.5 of the browser last week. IBM contributed
about 50,000 lines of code to enhance the accessibility of the browser,
according to the company.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires agencies to make
their information technologies accessible to those with disabilities.

The United States Access Board, an independent federal agency, issued
the
access template as a voluntary statement of compliance that vendors can
use
to easily show agencies what aspects of Section 508 their products meet,
said David Baquis, accessibility specialist for the board.

Leventhal admitted that earlier versions of Firefox had pretty poor
accessibility, a trait that the new release rectifies. The Firefox VPAT
describes a number of new features, including:

* The ability to run a program entirely from a keyboard without the
help
of a mouse
* A method of alerting assistive technologies which part of the
program
has the operating system's focus
* A method to provide information about the user interface so that
an
assistive technology application can represent that interface to
users
and
* Product documentation in alternate formats.

Leventhal pointed out that Firefox is the first browser with a VPAT.
Although Microsoft Corp. has posted VPATs for a number of its
applications,
Internet Explorer is not among them. Various versions of the Microsoft
Windows operating system, which include the IE browser built-in, do have
VPAT templates though. And according to Laurel Abbott, lead program
manager
for Internet Explorer accessibility, the current version of IE has
508-compliant features.

In addition to VPAT specifications, Firefox developers also worked to
ensure
that the browser offers accessibility to dynamic web pages, in
particular
those Web applications rendered with Asynchronous JavaScript and
Extensible
Markup Language (AJAX). AJAX pages allow users to manipulate data on the
browser without executing server calls.

"Up until now, there has been no way to make those kinds of Web
applications
accessible," Leventhal said. "We did an analysis of the gaps of what you
can
do with applications today that you can't do with the Web, and we filled
all
of those pieces in."

For this endeavor, IBM is working on a World Wide Web Consortium's
Dynamic
Web Content Accessibility workgroup. That group has set out to address
what
it calls on its Web page the "JavaScript Accessibility Problem," or the
challenge of making JavaScript widgets as accessible as standalone
applications.

"The 508 requirements for Web pages might be a little bit too specific
to
ordinary HTML, and may not consider this possible future world where
we're
moving away from documents and to real applications available on the
Web,"
Leventhal said.

Source: http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/37705-1.html



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