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In a recent article in Dan Jellinek’s E-Access Bulletin – “Access To Technology For All” (ISSUE 128, August 2010) Apple received high praise for its commitment to including accessibility features in its new devices.

The article notes that at this year’s E-Access ’10 conference in London, participants heard terms like are “revolutionary” and “game-changing” in the descriptions of Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices.

As quoted from the article:

Kiran Kaja of the RNIB Digital Accessibility Team told a mobile phone workshop that while accessibility applications are available for other smartphones – such as the ‘Eyes Free Shell’ for Google’s Android phone – the iPhone 3G is a “game-changer” because its accessibility features are built in across all its functions.

Using the standard touch-screen you can move your fingers along and the phone reads what is underneath them; and if you swipe down with two fingers it reads from that point to the end, Kaja said. A double-tap with three fingers will magnify the screen.

“A lot of people say they can’t use a touch-screen, but when I show them this it really changes their perspectives,” he said. “People have started asking why they should pay extra money for accessibility on mainstream devices. So slowly we are seeing changing expectations. When Symbian [an operating system for mobile phones] was released in 2000, it was two or three years before assistive technology was developed for it, so phones could be out of date before assistive technology appears. With the iPhone, I could use it the same day as my sighted friends.”

Accessibility features that are built in by the manufacturer are also more stable than added extras like screen-readers running on top of an operating system, Kaja said.

The article goes on to praise the new Apple iPad as well noting, “The iPad’s size…was a ‘revolutionary’ improvement for partially-sighted users, who could use it at a normal distance like a more visible smartphone, with applications and the keyboard feature all viewed larger.”

One of the features in both the iPhone and iPad are the built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers. The article refers to “the free ‘Dasher’ app which allows the user to tilt and move the phone with one hand to select items, a feature of use to many people with impaired mobility.” Information about the Dasher app can be found here.

To subscribe to the E-Access free monthly bulletin, email eab-subs@headstar.com with ‘subscribe eab’ in the subject header.

Terry Weaver, Director of the IT Accessibility & Workforce Division and his General Services Administration colleagues have inaugurated a new accessibility blog. Called Accessibility Forum 2.0, the blog has now been opened up to an extended audience, including non-government stakeholders. Participation, comment and feedback are welcome.

As they note on the blog: “The experiences and efforts of those from the front lines in the Section 508 world are extremely important and of value to others within the greater Section 508 community. It is not the intent of this blog to dictate GSA Section 508 policy but we hope to be a conduit for sharing real experiences and practices. We are looking forward to initiating a healthy dialogue.”

Check them out at buyaccessible.net/blog/

Although it is not considered a major update, Microsoft (MS) recently released the latest iteration of its highly popular MS Office. To me, it appears most of the changes to this version (Microsoft Office 2010) are minor in nature and looks very similar to version 2007 – which WAS a major upgrade. That said, there are clearly things “under the hood” that have been revised and it is always fun to try and discover those new things.

I will not comment on the cost effectiveness of upgrading to MS Office 2010 except to say that if you are still using MS Office 2003, this is probably a worthwhile investment. But if you are responsible for ensuring that the documents coming from your organization meet accessibility requirements, MS Office 2010 might be an excellent investment.

Accessibility Checker

For the new version of MS Office (MSO), Microsoft has made accessibility a priority since one of the new features is the Accessibility Checker (MSO-AC) built into three of the core applications: Word 2010, Excel 2010, and PowerPoint 2010. According to the MS promo, the MSO-AC helps users create more accessible content “by identifying areas that might be challenging for users with disabilities to view or use, and providing a task pane to review those areas, users can fix potential problems with their content.” So far, my limited experience with the MSO-AC has been favorable and here is what I have learned so far:

1. To use MSO-AC, click on the File tab [or Alt-F], tab to, or click on Prepare for Sharing and then tab to or click on to Check Accessibility. The MSO-AC dialog panel will appear along the right side of your screen and show you Warnings, Errors or Inspection Results. The MSO-AC works dynamically (see 3 below) and will continue to run as you create or edit your document. To find the location of the error in your document, click or tab to the Warning statement and your screen will refresh showing the error location highlighted.

In the lower panel of the MSO-AC, there is Additional Information which explains the reason for the Warning/Error and step-by-step instructions on how to fix it.

In developing this tool, Microsoft apparently differentiated between accessibility issues that are minor and those considered critical. For example, including extra characters (Warning: Repeated Blank Characters) is considered minor – issuing a “Warning,” whereas the absence of ALT text for an inserted image is considered critical – issuing an “Error”

2. When creating new documents using the default version settings (not documents saved in pre-2007 versions of MSO), the MSO-AC seems to run smoothly as advertised. Documents created in older versions of Office, or saved in the pre-2007 format, may or may not work as expected. For example, testing some 2003 version Excel spreadsheets yielded an error statement: “Unable to run the Accessibility Checker – Cannot check the current file type for accessibility issues.” Attempts at saving the file in the current (2010) version had no effect on this. However, if the data is copied and pasted into a new Excel 2010 spreadsheet, the MSO-AC worked fine.

When using Word and PowerPoint, the MSO-AC worked essentially the same way (error when trying to check documents made by older versions), but sometimes simply saving the document in the new 2010 version allowed MSO-AC to work. Note to Microsoft: I found this to work inconsistently.

3. One of the best features of the MSO-AC is that once activated in the application it will run dynamically and continue to alert you to accessibility issues via the Accessibility Checker task pane (see image on this page) as you continue to create or edit your document. In other words, in PowerPoint, as you add features to a slide such as an image or chart, the MSO-AC immediately notes that the new object is lacking an ALT text description and provides directions and rationale on how to fix the accessibility error. And if you accidently – or purposely – remove an accessibility feature, MSO-AC will note this and provide a description of the issue, how to fix it and why it needs to be fixed. This dynamic feature allows the author to add the accessibility on the fly, as the document is being created. This feature alone has the potential of making the process of adding accessibility features faster and easier. The feature should be very helpful in enterprise settings, ultimately reducing the cost of training and accessibility auditing.

4. When adding ALT description text in MS-Office 2010, the procedure has been thankfully standardized across all applications. Right clicking with your mouse (Note: there are a series steps to accomplish this task using keystroke alternatives) brings up the Format Picture dialog box. Choose the “ALT Text” option at the bottom of the list and add the alternative text. Unfortunately, Microsoft has chosen to add an input box for adding a “Title” and/or a “Description” to this option. Even though the MSO-AC will “approve” an inserted image that has only a Title and not a Description, if you convert this document into another format (PDF or HTML) the Title will not pass as a valid description for accessibility purposes. In other words, for conversion purposes, the Description is more important than the Title. At this point, it is recommended that users add BOTH a Title and Description to their inserted image and make the content of the Title and Description the same.

Final Thoughts

One can only hope that the next version of MS Office will expand the Accessibility Checker to MS Publisher and all of the products within the suite. Hopefully MS will also include this feature in updates to its version of MS Office for the Mac OS.

As I continue to play with MSO-AC, I will no doubt find new and interesting features. I will post them as additions to this blog article or as separate entries. See the Resources below for links to what others have said about MS Office and accessibility.

Resources

MS Tutorial on how to use the MSO-AC

A blog article from MSO2010 Engineering (January 2010) describing the how the MSO-AC was developed and more about what it checks for.

WebAIM article about how to build accessible documents. Includes information about the new MSO-AC.

Another blog article from Microsoft on Office Web Applications accessibility

Media Access Australia blog about the new MSO-AC

YouTube Video on MS-Office 2010 Accessibility features

Perhaps you may have overlooked this in your own attempt to gather as much information about your web visitors as I had. I am talking about Google Analytics’ requirement that users make sure they have a Privacy Policy which lets visitors to your website know that Google Analytics (GA) are being used on the website.

I just finished writing a Privacy Policy for the jebswebs site and will be adding a link on the blog to point to it.

Personally, I am not overly concerned about privacy on the web, but many people are, and I can certainly understand this. I am concerned about some of the “biggest offenders” who have made the press lately. It’s one thing to have an online service that gather’s information, it is something else when you don’t let people/visitors know about it – or if you constantly change the requirements to keep your information private. The “biggest offenders” are also guilty of creating a false sense of security by creating the illusion of a “gated community” when all the while, their patrons’ personal information is available to those beyond the “gate.”

So, I am a bit ashamed that I didn’t catch this a few weeks ago when I stated adding GA to several of my sites. Rest assured I’ll be remedying that in the next few days.

For those who don’t know about GA and wonder, why all the fuss, let me explain.

Google Analytics is a neat and free service provided by Google to website owners and developers. The developer inserts a small amount of JavaScript code on the pages of their website, and every time someone visits that page, the script grabs some information about the visitor and adds it to the owner’s GA account database. The website owner and/or developer can access this database information by logging into their GA account and seeing charts and graphs which aggregate the data collected. The information collected ranges from what pages are being visit, what browser is being used, and how long they stayed on the site. It should be noted that no personally identifiable information (i.e., names and addresses) are gathered through this interaction. There may be some debate about the use of IP addresses. GA’s policies say they are not harvested, but GA does give you location data – at least in terms of country of origin – and that would have to come from IP data.

It is important to note – and this is where the Privacy Policy comes in – that nearly all of this information is rather innocuous and completely anonymous. But, because the information is also sent to Google, and in the theme of complete disclosure, it is important that visitors know this. I guess you could make the case that by virtue of visiting your site, the visitor’s data is already collected, but let’s not go there…

BTW, just to play it safe, Google offers a free browser plug-in called the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on which, when installed in a browser [at this point available for Internet Explorer (versions 7 and 8), Google Chrome (4.x and higher), and Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and higher)], the information gathered by GA will be shared with the site owner, but not Google. So, if you are concerned about your privacy, you may want to install this.

Note: In researching for this blog entry, I came across an Australian news article on just this topic. Reading it next.

From the Access Board – The Department of Justice (DOJ) is moving to issue final rules that would update its ADA regulations, including standards governing the construction and alteration of facilities covered by the law. On April 26, DOJ submitted final rules to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. If cleared within OMB’s standard 90-day review period, DOJ may publish the updated regulations in late July or early August.

DOJ’s new rules will update its ADA regulations for state and local governments under title II and those for public accommodations and commercial entities covered by title III. The pending regulations will implement with effective dates new ADA standards for title II and title III facilities that are closely based on updated guidelines previously issued by the Board. In addition, the final rules, which DOJ made available for public comment in 2008, will revise or supplement other sections of DOJ’s regulations, including those covering existing facilities, service animals, policies and programs, maintenance of accessible features, auxiliary aids and services, and effective communication. DOJ had planned to issue the regulations in early 2009 but delayed publication in order to give officials of the incoming Obama Administration an opportunity to review them. For more information, visit DOJ’s website at www.ada.gov. Visitors to the site can subscribe to email updates from DOJ on this and other Department activities.

DOJ’s standards apply to all facilities covered by the ADA except transportation facilities, which are subject to standards issued by the Department of Transportation (DOT). DOT has already implemented updated ADA standards for transportation facilities. Similar standards are also in place under the Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) for most federally funded facilities. Housing facilities covered by the ABA currently remain subject to earlier standards pending the adoption of new standards by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Further information on the status of ADA and ABA standards is available on the Board’s website.