Access to, and movement around, complex online environments, of which the World Wide Web (Web) is the most popular example, has long been considered an important and major issue in the Web design and usability field. The commonly used slang phrase ‘surfing the Web’ implies rapid and free access, pointing to its importance among designers and users alike. It has also been long established that this potentially complex and difficult access is further complicated, and becomes neither rapid nor free, if the user is disabled. There are millions of people who have disabilities that affect their use of the Web. Web accessibility aims to help these people to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with, as well as contribute to, the Web, and thereby the society in general. This accessibility is, in part, facilitated by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) currently moving from version one to two. These guidelines are intended to encourage designers to make sure their sites conform to specifications, and in that conformance enable the assistive technologies of disabled users to better interact with the page content. In this way, it was hoped that accessibility could be supported. While this is in part true, guidelines do not solve all problems and the new WCAG version two guidelines are surrounded by controversy and intrigue. This chapter aims to establish the published literature related to Web accessibility and Web accessibility guidelines, and discuss limitations of the current guidelines and future directions.

Web Accessibility and Guidelines

A computing system for facilitating screen readers of online electronic documents includes a processor running computer readable program code configured to generate a structured electronic document including markup language code and scripting language code whose execution is triggered by an occurrence of an event associated with execution of the markup language code. Memory stores a configuration file that maps of functions of a screen reader program to functions performed by the scripting language code when the scripting language code is executed in response to the occurrence of the event. The processor executes computer readable program code configured to incorporate the configuration file within structured electronic document. On a client system, a given function of the scripting language code executes in response to the occurrence of the event, and, in response to the execution of the given function, the screen reader program performs each accessibility function mapped to the given function.

Method and apparatus for defining screen reader functions within online electronic documents

Current mobile web applications (apps) can be accessed using a mobile browser through a URL, or, packaged using specific packaging tools and libraries as native apps. To access these apps, Visually Impaired People (VIP) relay on screen readers that come built-in with smart phones. Among the well-known mobile phones’ screen readers is VoiceOver by Apple. In this paper we discuss the results of testing the accessibility of mobile web apps via Voice-Over and observe its performance. As a result of this observation we suggest some basic guidelines for designing mobile web apps.

Accessibility of Mobile Web Apps by Screen Readers of Touch-Based Mobile Phones

The "Wretch" Blog (http://www.wretch.cc/) is one of the most popular blogs in Taiwan. Through the Chinese screen reader "Big Eye", visual impaired users are able to interact with ordinary people on the "Wretch" Blog. They can share their experience and feeling via their personal space and forum. In general, most functionality of the "Wretch" Blog works well for visual impaired people except some perception transferred by pictures only. However, originally blog systems are developed for ordinary people, and do not concern the usability for visual impaired users. Lack of the concept of accessibility design brings some obstacle to visual impaired people.When a blog system is designated, the principles of designing web accessibility should be included. Therefore, visual impaired users are able to surf blogs easily. Many suggestions from visual disability are illustrated below to provide the critical issues for designing blogs by referencing "Wretch" Blog. It is hoped that the suggestions are useful for developing new blogs and/or revising existing blogs.1. Providing valid mapsNo matter a real map for space or a virtual sitemap for web navigation. It is important for visual impaired users to reconstruct a temporary psychological "map" for unknown space in short time. They are able to "walk" through a particular space only dependent on this "map". For blind people, not like ordinary people can see obstacle by eyes, they only know obstacle exist while they hit it. In a new environment, how to construct valid guiding functionality is one of the most important issues.Seeing through the service platform of "Wretch" Blog, there is no valid navigation mechanism. It makes the first visits visual impaired users very difficult to use it. They have to explore and experiment by no targets, and spend much more time than ordinary people. It might be good to leverage thought of navigation mechanism, i.e. sitemap, to assist blind people to reconstruct a whole map for better understanding the website. It is not necessary to be too complex. It is good enough only to describe the blocks of the major templates, as well as to explain the hierarchy and the paths of the website.2. Positioning himself/herselfFor unknown web context, visual impaired users usually loose themselves very often. "Searching cue and direction" is a lesson to train blind people who are able to walk independently. In case that they loose direction, they must have some ways to go certain "positions" in their psychological "map". Therefore, they may establish a new direction for future navigation. The idea of using accelerated keys is just the same thought.3. Locating the major blocksThe major block of web content is usually located at the center of a webpage for most websites. Visual impaired users may use accelerated key to reach this block directly. Using the "Blinding Scroll Bar" and "Simulating Mouse" functions of "Big Eye" screen reader, they may read the information of Web easily. If the location of the major block of web content is not precise, visual impaired users have to use "TAB" or "SHIFT+TAB" keys to sequentially surf the web content. The navigating process is become very inefficiently. Many screen readers made in Taiwan provide excellent features to read the major block of web content directly. However, not all of web designers leverage standard HTML syntaxes to design their Web. There are no and tags between the major block. Therefore, "Big Eye" with these excellent features is useless. Moreover, though other screen readers with similar features may ignore the hyperlinks to reach the text part directly, however, much irrelative information may be accompanied with those texts.4. Establishing voice reading mechanism for checking registrationVoice reading mechanism to assist blind people to validate their registered accounts and preserve security issues is established on some Portals in Taiwan. It overcomes the problem that visual impaired users can not see the validate text auto created by image. They have opportunity to accomplish the registration independently, such as on google or MSN Webs. However, though the "Wretch" Blog does provide similar mechanism, its function seems not work very well. How to fix the problem may make it more accessible.5. Adding alternative textWhile surfing the web pages of the "Wretch" Blog, many hyperlinks do not have alternative texts to explain the purpose of the links. Therefore, visual impaired users are difficult to understand the complete functionality provided by webpage. It might be good to add the alternative texts for all non-text objects.Actually, blind people ask not much. If blog designers follow these principles to develop blogs, such as the "Wretch" Blog does, most of the functionality fulfills the requirements of accessibility Web. It is hoped that more and more websites in Taiwan can be built by this phenomena. Letting more visual impaired users navigate these websites freely. They may enjoy the convenience just like ordinary people by information technology.

The status of using "Big Eye" Chinese screen reader on "Wretch" blog in Taiwan

There are limitations when it comes to promoting increased Internet access to the wider population in Taiwan, mainly because efforts are centered on government-led initiatives that are guided by a Web Accessibility policy. These include the establishment of a call center to handle both technical and administrative issues; creation of a validation toolset, known as 'Freego', to detect violation of Web Accessibility guidelines; the provision of services to support Accessibility Conformances; evaluation reports of websites conducted via automated and human reviews; and progress reports that monitor compliance with Web Accessibility guidelines. The Research, Development & Evaluation Commission (RDEC) has been established as an agency of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, and is responsible for the administration of a Web Accessibility policy.An Accessibility Evaluation platform, based on ideas taken from Web 2.0, is therefore proposed in this paper in order to leverage these public sector initiatives, as well as to allow for contributions from the wider, interested community. This platform borrows from concepts such as social learning theory (SLS) and social networking service (SNS), which demonstrate that increased social interaction and networking enables people to learn more and to utilize Internet resources more often and productively. Increased Internet accessibility overcomes the challenges of longdistance communication and allows for the maintenance of new and existing relationships, which has societal, as well as individual, benefits. The proposed platform framework is based upon front-end and back-end interfaces, which incorporate user and administrator functions that implement accessibility policies. This should enable a wider participation from the community in the accessibility evaluation process, and allow for a wider dissertation of community experience and knowledge.

Yui-Liang Chen

Papers

The status of using "Big Eye" Chinese screen reader on "Wretch" blog in Taiwan

An accessibility evaluation platform: borrowing from web 2.0