W3C

THE OPEN AJAX ALLIANCE (OAA) is using open source web 2.0 initiatives to improve Internet access for the elderly and disabled.

The OAA
announced the open source tooling technology to help developers create accessible web 2.0 enabled sites that meet online accessibility standards. The guidelines
followed are the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), considered as the industry-wide global standard
for accessibility.

W3C has released Unicorn
, a one-stop tool to help people improve the quality of their Web pages. Unicorn combines four popular tools, including the Markup validator, CSS validator,
mobileOk checker, and Feed validator, with a single interface. This means you can check a Web page with a visit to one url instead of four. Unicorn allows
you to choose all four validation checks at once, or any one of the four individual checks as needed.

Unicorn allows the same three ways to validate your Web site as the individual tools, i.e. you can submit a url to the page to be tested, upload the files,
or enter (cut-and-paste) the code directly into a text box.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to talk with you again regarding accessibility of the Web. My name is Judy Brewer,
and I direct the Web Accessibility Initiative ni (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium nii (W3C).

For the Web to work, computers need to be able to talk to each other across the Internet in the same computer languages - and W3C is where those languages are agreed upon. W3C is an
international standards body with over 300 member organizations, primarily web industry leaders. We are based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
the European Research Consortium on Informatics and Mathematics in France, and Keio University in Japan. W3C is directed by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of
the Web, and a strong believer in the Web for All. W3C has developed over one hundred technical standards and guidelines, ranging from HTML and XML, to
graphics, math, voice, rich media, mobile devices, web services, linked data, security, privacy, e-Government, internationalization, and more.

Among its other work, W3C hosts the Web Accessibility Initiative. WAI develops standards, guidelines and resources to make the Web accessible for people
with disabilities; ensures accessibility of W3C technologies; and develops educational resources to support web accessibility. WAI is supported in part
by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research at the US Department of Education; the European Commission; WAI Sponsors; and W3C Member
organizations. My comments do not necessarily represent those of WAI's funders.

New Delhi: Despite India’s various e-governance initiatives, government websites are still inaccessible to citizens with disabilities, barring one recent
example.
http://blip.tv/file/get/Sidin-GovtWebsitesYetToEaseAccessForDisabled836.flv

The ministry of social justice and empowerment last month revamped its website by following global norms of universal accessibility set down by the World
Wide Web Consortium.

As we embark on another decade most of us take surfing the web for granted. But for the nearly eight million people* in the UK who have health conditions
such as blindness or visual impairment, colour blindness, hearing impairment, dyslexia or mobility impairment, this simple everyday task can be an extremely
frustrating experience.

The reason behind this exasperation is almost certainly the fact that many websites have not been built to make them easily accessible to disabled people,
many of whom are increasingly using assistive technology to help them glean information from the internet. This software can provide users with a speech
or Braille output via a screen reader, text magnification to make reading online content easier and allow them to move around websites using their voices
instead of a keyboard or mouse.

We know it’s frustrating when you come across a website that’s less than functional, full of accessibility barriers. How often do any of us take action?
Those days are over.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wants you to take action when you come across an inaccessible  website. They are encouraging users to tell organizations how important it is that their websites are accessible.

We all want our site to be at its best. That’s why we spend days and even months in trying to figure out the most visually appealing design for our web pages.

But apart from layout and design, the correctness of your pages’ codes is another key factor to consider. So to ensure that the codes you put in your pages are all correct, you need to dedicate a part of your time for page validation.

Introduction

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to make it possible to provide an enhanced user experience for people with disabilities when using internet applications with assistive technologies. ARIA is an extra set of tools developers can implement into their web applications to directly communicate information to assistive technologies.

Recently there are many technical descriptions on ARIA, this article aims to explain what it is in general terms, and give you an idea of how and when to use it.

Presented at CSUN, March 21, 2009

Presented by:

• Tom Babinszki, Even Grounds, Director
• Larry Campbell, Overbrook International Program Director

Introduction

Under the sponsorship of the Overbrook-Nippon Network on Educational Technology (ON-NET), we conducted a web accessibility course online during the first half of 2008, and face-to-face in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in June of 2008. The purpose of the course was to teach blind and visually impaired people about web accessibility, equipping them to work as accessibility consultants and trainers in their own countries. There is still much work that needs to be done in the South East Asian region on accessibility. For example, there is a need for more accessibility trainers, work opportunities, and, of course, accessible web sites. This paper will discuss the process of conducting a WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 course, including the challenges and lessons learned during the course and its follow-up in order to facilitate further work and share experience with those who are interested in contributing to web accessibility in the South East Asian region.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to increase its work in the social networking sphere by investing more resources into the development of industry guidelines and payments protocols, and undertaking greater outreach on accessibility and mobility matters.

In a new report summarising the organisation's recent Workshop on the Future of Social Networking, the W3C argued that the lack of a micropayments protocol could be holding back some networks from creating sustainable business models.