Web accessibility

Julius Charles Serrano, research director and accessibility consultant at Even Grounds, made a presentation at the recently concluded Wellington Web Design Meetup. This event was held on August 5, 2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.

The Wellington Web Design Meetup is a monthly gathering of industry professionals for talks, case studies, design/technology insights, networking and socializing.

TOTTORI, Japan and ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM ) Japan, Tottori Prefecture Information-Center (TIC) and KOA Corporation (KOA) today announced that they have embarked on a groundbreaking project to greatly
improve access to critical public government online services by constructing a first of a kind Web Accessibility Cloud Center.  The effort, adopted by
the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan as part of its Information and Communication Furusato Genki Project, an effort to re-energize
regions in Japan, will build on Tottori Prefecture's official Website and dramatically increase citizen's access to important public services that have
until now been out of reach.

We’ve just created a web accessibility channel in YouTube. We’d like to invite you all to check out our videos, subscribe to the channel, and add us up as your friend.

Barack Obama's administration has announced plans to ensure people with disabilities get better access to retails and hospitality focused websites, in addition to ensuring better access to physical premises such as cinemas.

Most of the proposals are aimed primarily at improved access for the those with visual and hearing impairments.

It is our pleasure to announce that the Australian Government Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy (
http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/wcag-2-implementation/index.html
) (NTS) was released today by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, the Honourable Lindsay Tanner, MP and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities
and Children’s Services, the Honourable Bill Shorten, MP.

You are no doubt already aware that web accessibility has been a government priority for a number of years and the government endorsement and adoption of
WCAG 2.0 will ensure that government websites are more accessible and more user-friendly to everyone.

Japan is one of the most technologically advanced and accessible countries in the world. Most major cities have the infrastructure to support accessibility for people with disabilities. In Japan there are elevators in almost every train station, busses with passenger lifts, and electronic signboards. There is also Braille everywhere--on the sidewalk, signboards, money, and even on beer cans.

Japan is also starting to build infrastructure for making information--particularly digital information--accessible to people with disabilities. This is best shown through the standards and policies that Japan has instituted to make its sites accessible.

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the nation’s oldest and largest organization of blind people, and three blind students who have applied or
are considering applying to law school in California-Deepa Goraya, Bruce J.
Sexton, and Claire Stanley-filed an amended lawsuit yesterday against the Law School Admissions Council and four California law schools for violating
provisions of the California Disabled Persons Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The suit was filed because the law schools require or encourage applicants to use a centralized Internet-based application process provided by the Law
School Admissions Council (LSAC) through its Web site (
www.lsac.org )
that is inaccessible to blind law school applicants. Blind students must
seek sighted assistance to use the LSAC system. Furthermore, blind law school applicants cannot perform other tasks on the LSAC Web site, such as
downloading official study materials for the Law School Admissions Test
(LSAT) that is required by almost all U.S. law schools.

Without your eyesight and sense of hearing, you may think you’d be unable to browse the Internet, let alone use the computer.

Our friend Ruby has however proven that a day of a deaf blind person can include these activities. Yet although deaf blind persons like Ruby have the assistive technologies they need in surfing the Net, they still find difficulty in accessing certain web sites.

Here, Ruby joins us one more time and shows us the challenges faced by deaf blind persons as they use the Internet.

For popular request, I put a workbook together which gives you easy to follow instructions to make your web site much more accessible to people with disabilities. Very often people ask me what can they do to make a site more accessible. Usually I find that their concern is that accessibility is too complex or overwhelming.

“Provide good content” is what many people say in order to increase your site rankings and convert your readers to customers. So you work to create the most informative and interesting articles out there.

But you must know that there are people whose comprehension is different from yours. What’s basic and simple to you may be too complex to others. How can you be sure that everyone would understand your content?

Here, we give you the answer by discussing the challenges faced by Internet users with cognitive disabilities. Joining us is Tristan, our friend who shared with us A Day in the Life of a Person with a Cognitive Disability. For each challenge below, we provide a solution to help people such as Tristan as they use your web site.