Yahoo! Hack University: Accessibility Innovations and Challenges

Accessibility Innovations
and Challenges
Ted Drake
Yahoo! Accessibility Lab
Thursday, March 3, 2011

this presentation was created for the Yahoo! Hack U event at the University of Washington,
2011

Accessibility is...

Yahoo! Accessibility Lab Accessibility.Yahoo.Com | @yahooaccess | Facebook.com/YahooAccessibility

Leveling the playing
ﬁeld


Our goal is to give everyone equal access to information, tools, jobs, and activities. We
acknowledge there may be different methods to achieve tasks, but they are possible.

Removing Barriers


Don’t break the web by creating an application that is not accessible. Avoid “shortcuts” that
assume the user can see, hear, and/or has full mobility.

Universal Design


produce buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to both the able-bodied and the physically
disabled.
Apple products do a great job at this.
don’t think a,b,c, i.e. high contrast or low contrast. Think about how you can provide a range of contrast.
Provide functionality for hover, active, focus.

Who makes it
accessible?


lainey feingold, an attorney that works with companies to improve their products accessibility.
for instance, braille credit card machines at Target and other stores.
She says advocates and champions are needed for accessibility changes

Advocates Refuse Barriers

Creative Commons: image by tigoe on Flickr

Advocates, she explained, are people with disabilities that are not satisfied with having to work around barriers to entry.
They demand equal access, whether that is an accessible web form, ATMs with audio feedback, or tactile point of sale devices
that allow a visually impaired shopper to use a credit card at a store’s cash register.

Champions make it happen

Some rights reserved by woodleywonderworks on Flickr

Champions are people within organizations that understand the problems and are devoted to implementing the changes.
Some people are both advocates and champions.

Some rights reserved by ocad123 on Flickr


It’s our job to avoid upsetting advocates in the ﬁrst place.
We are also the champions that listen to the advocates and ﬁx the problems.

Make it Accessible


The following slides discuss basic accessible web development concepts.

Contrast


Make sure web sites have enough contrast
http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html

Red Green
click on the red button


Don’t use color as the only delimiter.
Finance uses color + arrows.
Yahoo! sites are pretty good at not doing this

Lady Gaga performs “Born
Lady Gaga stuns the This Way” while
Grammys suspended from 15 golden
elephants with swans
resting on their heads

This is good alt text

“lady gaga stuns the Grammys” is a headline, followed by an image.
the image has a great alt text. The text describes what is in the image.

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/
Lady Gaga stuns the images/thumbnail.aspx?
Grammys q=590377916357&id=99b
50262230077d041a48c43
e717cf39


don’t forget to add the alt attribute to every image.
the screen reader user will be presented with the source of the image instead of a
description.

Lady Gaga stuns the
Grammys Lady Gaga stuns the
Grammys


It doesn’t help to duplicate the headline in the image.
Try placing them in the same link and use alt=””

Lady Gaga stuns the
Grammys


alt=”” is ignored by screen reader.
Good for decorative images
Good for images within a link that has descriptive text
Not good for content images by themselves
role=”presentation” will tell screen readers to ignore the image

Images Disabled

This toolbar had a twitter badge with white text on top.
add a background color to your background CSS when the link text is the same color as the
container background color.
This can cause problems with transparent images using rounded corners.

<html dir=”rtl”>

The mother of all scroll bars

Off-screen Text

off-screen text generates huge scroll bars when switched to rtl text direction
this is caused by using text-indent:-999em or left:-999em;
top:-999em; will cause the screen to jump if item is focused.

Use Clip
.obscure, a.bg span {
position: absolute !important;
clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); /* IE6, 7 */
clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
}

http://yaccessibilityblog.com/library/css-clip-hidden-content.html


This rule tells us to position the element absolutely
then only show the top left pixel.
Visit the blog entry for complete information on using this css pattern.

<bu$on>Sign
In</bu$on>

<a>Cancel</a>


Don’t use a link for a button.
at least add role=”button”
you can style a button to look like a link for UED

<th scope=”col”>
Name Color Taste
</th>

Gala Red Sweet

Granny Smith Green Tart

<th scope=”row”>
Pink Lady Pink Sweet
</th>

Rome Red Sweet


add scope=”row | col” to your th cells
screen readers will announce the header before the appropriate cell.
th[scope=”row”] allows you to style row headers

Command +
Is not testing for text size ﬂexibility


In ﬁrefox and safari choose view->zoom text only, then use command +
simply zooming the page causes scroll bars.
your page should allow user to increase font without breaking layout.
use YUI CSS for fonts,grids,base,reset to instantly solve this

Label Your Input

<label for=”fname”>First Name</label>
<input id=”fname” name=”fname” type=”text”>


Use a label for each form input.
Explicit binding via for+id will work in all browsers.
Implicit binding, wrapping the input in a label tag, will not work in IE6
replace label with aria-label=””, aria-labelledby=””, or possibly alt=”” on input.

ARIA
Accessible Rich Internet Applications

Some rights reserved by paul goyette on Flickr

ARIA allows us to deﬁne the application like interactions for web pages.

Use ARIA Today

• Landmarks: role=”search”, role=”main”
• Function: role=”button”
• Labels: aria-label=”Search Term”
• State: aria-invalid=”true”


Visit the accessibility lab’s aria library for more information: http://yaccessibilityblog.com/
library/tag/aria

Innovative Solutions


Traumatic Brain Injury

• Iraq Veterans
• Football Injuries
• Crashes

Some rights reserved by CorCor Beware on Flickr

short term memory loss
require repetitive instructions
avoid confusion

PEAT

• Schedule for daily tasks
• Reinforce remembered
tasks


PEAT was originally designed for NASA astronauts.
scheduled reminders require user to interact when a task is completed.
how can we reinforce good behavior when the task is completed without prompting
Palo Alto V.A. is working on this

Short Term Memory
Loss Hacks
• Re-Education
• Workforce transition
• Resources aggregator


application that restores basic personal knowledge
applications that storyboard workspace tasks, such as replacing toner, creating spreadsheets

Cognitive Disabilities


Autism, intellectual disabilities, developmentally disabled, brain injuries, mental diseases

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.”

87 years ago our country was created with the belief
that all men are equal and deserve freedom.


Can we generate a simpliﬁed version of an article for those with a lower reading level?

Readability.com

Readability is a browser plugin that simpliﬁes a page
it removes images, navigation, etc
user can personalize font size, background color, and optional resource link list

Photo Dialer


this is a fairly easy application that lets user make phone calls via the images in their contacts
rather than names and phone numbers
This can integrate with phone’s contact list for very easy dialing.

Memory Loss


slide shows to feature family and friends with names
mental games
journals for keeping track of what has been done during the day.
Growing population with dementia and alzheimers

Non-Visual Innovations


In Plain English?


create a function that translates significant value changes into a sentence. what did it start/
end at?
Charts give instant recognition of history, how can this be in text?
Finance, science, math, poliditcs, and any other data source
http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=YHOO&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv
use firebug to watch the data requests

Directions


How can a blind user navigate the city when they cannot see the map/street names

Phone Wand


Phone Wand: waving the phone to get hot/cold feedback to ﬁnd the correct direction
Also being developed: read street signs, ﬁnd nearby stores and friends.
Yahoo: bubbles for sharing local photos, info. Sketch a search navigation
Geo project to get local information, bus routes, and more for location.

Games


Audio-based games:
Tap Beats
using stereo audio for role playing game
scrabble?

Deaf
Hacks

Some rights reserved by izahorsky on Flickr


Sound Detector

Some rights reserved by Thomas Hawk on Flickr


detect sirens, alarms, and other audio signals

Twitter Deaf Twitter


user creates short video, uploads to ﬂickr/post to twitter. Interface also tracks replies,
retweets, etc.
plays video inline on phone/computer

this could also work for blind users: audio instead of video

Physical Challenges

Some rights reserved by Christiana Care on Flickr


paralysis, cerebral palsy, muscular distrophy, stroke, age related, parkinsons

Site Scanner


Site scanner was developed by the Yahoo! prototype team to address the difficulties of using a
scanning keyboard to navigate a web page.
allows navigation with a single button press
http://nexpace.com/sandbox/scanner/bookmarklet/

Communication
Communication Tools


Pic to Speech is an assisted communication device for the android. It allows customization of
the icons and translations.
DDweb provides an online environment http://ddweb.developingmindssoftware.com/site/

Prologue2go is a popular ipad app

Support Social Network

social networks for the individuals and their support network.
journal for daily activities, moods, health
communications amongst support network

If it ain’t broke...
Fix it anyway!


Not all accessibility applications were built to solve an accessibility problem

color detector used by blind for imaging colors of environment
real time video chat used for sign language chat rooms
google goggles for determining money values

Some rights reserved by Oha-Lau 2 on Flickr


Ask yourself what if:
you couldn’t see the difference between red, green, yellow
you couldn’t click on a link
there was no hover
you can’t remember the beginning of an article
you know what to say but can’t speak

You are the Champion!


Visit the Yahoo
Accessibility Lab’s Blog
Accessibility.Yahoo.Com


Yahoo! Hack University: Accessibility Innovations and Challenges

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