Invited speech: Dr. Carlos Velasco, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT)

1. Web Accessibility from a
software engineering
perspective: how RIAs and the
Mobile Web changed
accessibility testing
Dr. Carlos A. Velasco
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Web Compliance Center – http://imergo.com/
1st International AEGIS Conference
7-8 October 2010, Sevilla
20101007_AEGIS_Sevilla

2. About Fraunhofer FIT
— Fraunhofer Society
— Fraunhofer Institute for
Applied Information
Technology FIT
 Web Compliance Center
 Research Area “Life
Science Informatics”

3. Work areas
— Web Compliance Engineering — Consultancy & training:
 SOA/ECMS – Systems' industry/public sector
implementation
— Interdisciplinary team:
 Quality Assurance
 UIs (accessibility, usability;  Computer science
biofeedback and therapeutical  Pedagogics
intervention systems)
— Standards bodies (W3C)
 Linguistics
— Development &  Engineering
commercialization of software

4. Software/Web engineering
— Software engineering:
«… is a profession dedicated to designing,
implementing, and modifying software so that it is of
higher quality, more affordable, maintainable, and faster
to build.» (Wikipedia)
— Web Engineering
«The application of systematic, disciplined and
quantifiable approaches to the cost-effective
development and evolution of high-quality solutions in
the World Wide Web.»

5. What is the Web?
«Web Science, the science of decentralised
information systems.»
(A Framework for Web Science,
Tim Berners-Lee et al.)

6. Web pre-, prehistory:
WorldWideWeb Browser

7. Web prehistory: Mosaic Web
browser

8. Web of the «End of the
Century»

9. Web 2.0

10. What is Web Accessibility?
«Web accessibility means that people with
disabilities can use the Web.»
(W3C/WAI)

11. Components of the Web

12. Components of the Web 2.0
2W

13. Compliance: what to test?

14. Web Compliance in general
SEC 17a-4 (USA) Canadian Basel II
Electronic Capital Electronic Ledger Storage Law
Evidence Act Accord (Japan)
HIPAA (USA) 11MEDIS-DC
(Japan)
ISO 18501/18509 AIPA (Italy)
FDA 21 CRF GDPdU & GoBS
Part 11 (Germany)
NF Z 42-013
(France)
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (USA)
Public Financial
Records Services
Office (UK) Authority (UK) BSI PD0008 (UK)

15. Accessibility compliance

16. Device compliance and ...
MobileOK
SEO
Corporate Identity

17. Testing Web 1.0
— Static pages
 Only form interaction
— Limited layout possibilities
— Limited CSS implementation
— Poor JS support in AT: JS was «evil»
— UAs swallowed anything
 Web = poorest & more successful software product of the
history
— Poorly defined criteria («until UAs ...»)
— Poor object models implementation

18. … and the RIAs arrived
— Technology Penetration Report (Security Space, 2009-09-01,
1,485,767 web sites)
 Technology Sites Percentage
 JavaScript 955,494 64.31%
 Frames 150,439 10.13%
 StyleSheets 942,486 63.43%
 Java 8,609 0.58%
 Iframes 227,627 15.32%
 GIF Images 918,961 61.85%
 JPG Images 847,491 57.04%
 PNG Images 293,430 19.75%
 Flash/Shock. 183,363 12.34%

19. RIA Characteristics
— Ubiquitous clients: desktop, mobile, …
— Self-adapted across different platforms
— Function in low bandwidth connections
— Restore processing power to the client
— Deliver engaging UIs: interactivity
— Utilize seamlessly audio, video, images and text
— Support the mobile workflow
— Asynchronous content retrieval
— Access multiple middle tier services and backend data stores: Web Services
— Integrate with legacy applications and systems
— Allow for the incremental addition of new functions

20. The problem with HTML
interfaces ...
— Accessibility relies on abstracting semantics from both content
and presentational information
 Semantic cues from HTML are unreliable (tag elements names)
— HTML allows content to be repurposed for:
 presentational formatting (e.g., tables instead style sheets)
 dynamic custom components (e.g., combined with script and CSS)
— HTML lacks the ability to attach meaningful metadata about
document structure
— HTML elements commonly used for repurposing produce
custom components not keyboard accessible

21. Testing Web 2.0

22. ARIA: filling the gaps
— Separation of content and presentation
— States and Property attributes
 Full keyboard focus
 Mapping to accessibility APIS (passive monitoring of the
application by AT)
— Role attribute
 Machine-readable information about purpose of an
element
— Role document landmark values
— Taxonomy of ARIA role values (Semantic Web)

23. The contract model:
accessibility APIs

24. Challenges for a compliance
tool
— Direct interaction with the server vs. accessing OS accessibility APIs
— Emulation of user behaviour
 Collect document landmarks (role taxonomy, derived from abstract
roles):
 Widget Roles
 Document Structure Roles
 Landmark Roles
 Monitor WAI-ARIA states and properties (modifiable via JS events):
 Managed (user-agent controlled)
 Unmanaged (author controlled)
 Focus management

25. Roles' summary

26. Type of tests
— Automatic
— Expert
— Users
(See UWEM)

27. Testing workflow

28. Authoring Tool integration

29. Conclusions
— Traditional testing approaches are no longer valid
— Semantic Web technologies are needed:
 Definition and customisation of rules and rulesets (tests
and test suites)
 Expression of results (EARL)
— Experts need to be incorporated into the workflow
 «Expert Viewer» approach
— Web apps to be accessed via rendering engine or OS
Accessibility API

30. Q&A