While much of Sarah’s presentation covered accessibility features I was already fairly familiar with (i.e., VoiceOver, screen flashing for deaf/hard-of-hearing folks, and sticky keys for folks with mobility impairments), she started off demonstrating the new AssistiveTouch feature. It was a lot to absorb.

I had almost forgotten about AssistiveTouch until yesterday when I discovered New York Times tech dude David Pogue’s article from November 10th where he described the new AssistiveTouch features in greater (and great) detail.

Rather than having me comment any further, please head over to Pogue’s Post entitled Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone

From CBS News-60 Minutes:

(CBS News) Ten-year-old Nuno Timoteo, an autistic child who does not speak, was thought to have the intelligence and attention span of a two-year-old until teachers put an iPad in his hands and learned he loved opera and classical music. Joshua Hood, 27, also non-verbal and autistic, was thought to understand much of his world, but his lack of speech frustrated him and all around him until he began communicating freely with a touch-screen tablet computer.

Nuno, Joshua and others whose autism prevents normal speech have made these breakthroughs with the help of tablet computers and special applications that allow them to communicate, some for the first time. Lesley Stahl reports on this new tool for understanding autism for a “60 Minutes” segment to be broadcast on Sunday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

More of this story from 60 Minutes…

A preview of the episode…

The process to get involved does require installing a free Beta-Tester plugin to your WP install, activating it, and then downloading and installing the latest beta version of the WP core. I decided against installing this myself on this jebswebs blog as I was not sure if it would mess things up. They give you fair warning that once installed, it may be impossible to go back to a stable version – I’m fairly threat sensitive.

I encourage readers to check it out and consider testing and providing input. Here is the link to the Make WordPress Accessible blog.

Given the time available at the meeting, I did not provide a response then, but I will now.

First, to explain fully what “skip navigation” is I will refer you to the Web AIM website where you can read an extensive explanation.

But the short answer is…When the Section 508 web accessibility guidelines were developed 12 years ago as an addition to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 the issue of navigation links, or the navigation menu commonly found on web pages created headaches for people who used screen reader assistive technology.  At the time, people who used screen readers had rather limited options when it came to reading web pages as the technology of the time could just basically read the content of the page without differentiating various parts. The standard web design custom then – as now – was to build a web page with a title at the top, a menu of internal links (navigation links) either across the top of the page or down the left side of the page, and the content below or to the right of the menu. This meant that a screen reader user had to listen to all of the content of the menu before they got to the main content of the page. It may be okay to read all of these navigation links on first page visited, but it quickly gets tedious when one reads through multiple page on a website and is forced to listen to all of the menu items repeated over and over again. So, the “skip navigation” link was a method designed to help screen reader users by creating a by-pass link around a long list of menu items.

As the years have gone by screen reader technology has changed dramatically and there are now methods built into all of the major screen readers that allow the user to move about the web page more readily ostensibly allowing the user to “browse” the content without having to read every word. However , the Section 508 guideline on “skip navigation” (specifically standard “o”) continues despite these advancements.

I should point out that another method web designers can now use to solve this issue is to put the content toward the top of the page and the navigation after the content. The designer then uses CSS to relocate the navigation menu content back at the top or side of the page for non-screen reader users to see in the usual location. But the screen reader “sees” the page in the order is it written with the content first and the navigation menu later. This is the method I prefer to use and I always seek to choose CMS themes/templates that are designed to render the content in this manner.

Regarding the “hiding” of the “Skip Navigation” link – that’s purely optional as the Section 508 requirement is still met as long as the screen reader can see it. There really is no obvious reason to make it visible and it has the potential to create some confusion to the casual web user.

Why this is particularly interesting is that today WebAIM released a report on their third survey of screen reader users. In December 2010, WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users and received over 1,200 responses. One question pertained specifically to the “skip navigation” issue and I think it supports my position.

When survey respondents were asked, “When a ‘skip to main content’ or ‘skip navigation’ link is available on a page, how often do you use it?” 29% said they used it “sometimes,” 22% said “seldom,” and nearly 14% said they “never” use this feature. On the other end, 15% of respondents said they used the skip navigation links “Whenever they’re available” and just over 16% said they used them “often.” This suggests that the “skip navigation” is used by a minority of screen reader users. The report also observes that, “…there has been a slight decrease in the usage of ‘skip’ links…likely due to increased usage of headings and landmarks for navigation…” In addition, the survey also reports that just over 57% of respondents use the “Navigate through the headings on the page” as the most popular method for “finding information on a lengthy page.”

I suspect that when Section 508 is revise in the coming years the “skip navigation” requirement itself will be…skipped!

What do you think?

Photo credit: Image licensed by Creative Commons by MonkeySimon

• The education (K-12) textbook publishing business is very different from other forms of educational publishing (e.g., college textbooks) or general commercial book publishing. In many ways things have not changed in K-12 textbook publishing industry as dramatically as they have elsewhere. They had better get moving.
• There are 22 U.S. states called “state adoption states” where the curriculum is selected by a single statewide board of education and all schools use the same books. The remaining states are considered “open territory states” where the curriculum is selected by local school boards. In state adoption states, textbooks are chosen and remain in classroom use usually for a minimum of seven years because of the large replacement cost to the state. Many of the “state adoption” states actually have a customized set of textbooks geared specifically to their state curriculum and state learning standards. Texas is a “state adoption” state; Maine is an “open adoption” state. Here is a nice resource about textbook adoption process from the Association of American Publishers.
• The economics of school textbook publishing industry are complex and starting to change as pedagogy changes. I suspect, but I don’t have the data, that instructional materials are now more likely to be workbooks and thinner modular sets of content rather than the large, thick and heavy books of my youth. Most social studies textbooks are probably out of date by the time the ink dries. Math and Reading textbooks probably have the longest shelf life.
• The movement to experiential learning and project-based learning, particularly in the middle and secondary classrooms has dramatically changed the types of instructional materials used.  The increased attention to students’ individual learning styles and the principles of universal design for learning have transformed the practice of teaching in many classrooms with teachers moving away from the use of traditional textbooks.
• The internet has changed the world, albeit somewhat more slowly in our American classrooms than in our homes and businesses.
• Contrary to the predictions made in a Forrester article from 2000, the e-book is not dead. That may have been true in 2000, but not 2011. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com now sell more e-books than paper books. Check out this data on e-book sales.

In my opinion, many of the folks publishing K-12 educational textbook are scared because things are all changing so fast and they fear that what happened to the music industry will happen to them. They have probably been reading things like this which looks like it was published 2-3 years ago.

If K-12 textbook publishers continue with the same old business plan, they will be gone.

I personally think the future for educational publishing never looked brighter – if they do it right. Here’s someone who agrees:

Peter C. Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education stated last summer, “We are making content more usable and parsable so it can be targeted to create an individualized and personalized learning experience for students and produce desired learning outcomes.  We need to stop thinking of e-books as transformative.  They are not. Adaptive and interactive learning tools are where education needs to go and where the real opportunity lies. Bring on this new world. The quicker it happens the more exciting it is for us.”  (Source citation)

Whether you call them 21^st Century Learners or Digital Natives, today’s students in K-12 classrooms have been and continue to be exposed to information sources and delivery systems radically different from the ones that existed even a decade ago. The idea of going to a shelf to get a dictionary or an encyclopedia to find information is archaic. The idea that a textbook can hold all of the information a student needs to know, even for a semester, is almost as obsolete.

Rather than asking about where to get a digital textbook, we should be asking: “What are, and how do we acquire, the instructional materials needed to help students learn and to help teachers facilitate learning?

Some things to look at…

• Educational Publishing blog from the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP)
• From xplana: “How” Is More Important that “What” in the Future of Educational Publishing — Services, Tablets, and Mobile Expectations

Have a thought on this…comment please!

Photo credit: Licensed by Creative Commons by Crystal

Beginning I believe with Acrobat Pro version 9, which came out in mid-2009, Adobe introduced a built-in Accessibility Checker (AC) to assist users in making PDF documents accessible to people with disabilities. This was the first product I can remember to have this feature and the new feature was readily welcomed by those of us in the accessible design business. Since that time I have sung the praises of Adobe and the AC in presentations I’ve given, in e-mails to colleagues and in articles that I have written for Maine CITE and the State of Maine Office of Information Technology. The AC was simply a wonderful tool which made is very easy to check and fix accessibility errors in just about any PDF. What was best about the AC was that when run with the Full Scan settings, the application would create a complete and detailed report (the Accessibility Report) which listed the errors, AND provided links to the exact location in your document where the error occurred, AND provided a specific set of directions for how to fix the problem. This was a godsend to people eager to review and edit their PDFs to ensure accessibility. And it made it easy for anyone to make their PDFs accessible.

So last week I purchased and installed Adobe Acrobat X on my Windows 7 machine and have been running it through the paces. It all ran perfectly until I tried the accessibility checker on my first test document. It took a little while to find this feature since it is not automatically loaded in the Tools section that is a new feature in version X. But one of the neat features of Acrobat Pro X is the customizable menu bar (called Quick Tools). Using the Customize Quick Tools feature, I was quickly able to add a button which will activate the Full Scan Accessibility Checker.

But then the fun began. While reading the Accessibility Report and particularly the remediation directions provided in the Report, it became quickly apparent that it was impossible to proceed further. The directions for fixing errors were all wrong! I was stunned; the directions provided were for Acrobat Pro version 9, not Adobe Acrobat Pro X!

To make sure, I ran the test again on several other documents and each time, the AC provided remedies for fixing documents using version 9 of Acrobat Pro. The directions had not been updated!

In fairness, not everything is wrong. Apparently, for the new version of Acrobat Pro, the good people at Adobe reduced the number of editing tools, reorganized them and combined them into a smaller collection. The vast and complex number of tools was actually a shortcoming in version 9 and the new setup is much easier to understand in version 10. But changing the names and locations of the tools has made the directions for fixing error obsolete and incorrect.

So the good news is that the new Adobe Acrobat Pro X does have a great Accessibility Checker, and it will accurate work and find all of the accessibility errors in the PDF documents you scan. But for figuring out how to fix your document, you are currently on your own until Adobe updates the application and puts in the correct remediation directions.

Some might say that this is a minor annoyance and obviously just an oversight. To them I say: making documents – particularly PDFs – into accessible documents has always created contention since it is perceived as being difficult to do. As a result, very high proportion of the digital documents created everyday fail to be accessible for people with disabilities. Anything that can make the process smoother, faster, easier is a step in the right direction. The Accessibility Checking built into Adobe Acrobat Pro was this kind of step.

I’ve sent an e-mail to my friend Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe’s Group Product Manager for Accessibility, expressing my concerns and asking for a target date as to when this will be fixed. In the meantime, I don’t recommend that anyone upgrade to version X until this is fixed.

To help those of you who have already taken the plunge, I have figured out the correct directions for three of the most common accessibility errors: Creating PDF Tags, Adding Alternative Text to images and Specifying the Language of a document. The first most common accessibility error is the absence of any tagging in the document and this should always be the first thing you do after you run the Accessibility Checker.

Please note that there may be other ways to accomplish these remedies; I am only reporting those I have found so far by trial and error.

If you find errors or additions, drop me a line!

Here are the old directions and the corrected directions for fixing common accessibility errors in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Tagging the document

Directions for Acrobat Pro v 9 – Creating PDF Tags

If your document is not tagged, the AC will note this and offer these directions:

• Re-create the PDF file from the authoring application with tagging enabled (this primarily is for documents created with Adobe InDesign)
• Choose Advanced > Accessibility > Add Tags to Document to infer the tags.
• Choose Advanced > Accessibility > TouchUp Reading Order Tool to create the Tags tree manually using the TouchUp Reading Order Tool.
• Create the Tags manually using the Tags panel.

Corrected Directions for Acrobat Pro v 10 – Creating PDF Tags

If your document is not tagged, the AC will note this and offer these directions:

• Re-create the PDF file from the authoring application with tagging enabled (this primarily is for documents created with Adobe InDesign)
• Choose Tools on the Menu bar, Choose Accessibility (if Accessibility is not viewable, find the tiny “show or hide panels” button in the upper right part of the Tools menu, click on it and unhide Accessibility). Choose Add Tags to Document to infer the tags.
• Choose the Tags view panel. Where it says “No Tags available,” right click on this and choose Add Tags to Document.

Alternative text for images/figures

Directions for Acrobat Pro v 9 – Adding Alternative Text

Before repairing this problem, you must add tags to the document. (See directions above)

• To add alternate text to an image, choose Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Object Tool. Click on the image. Right click and choose Properties…from the context menu. Click on the Tag tab and fill in the alternate text field.

Corrected Directions for Acrobat Pro v 10 – Adding Alternative Text

Before repairing this problem, you must add tags to the document. (See directions above)

• To add alternate text to an image, choose Tools on the Menu bar. Choose Content, and select the Edit Object tool. Click on the image. Right click and choose Properties…from the context menu. Click on the Tag tab and fill in the Alternate Text field.

Specifying Language attributes

Direction for Adobe Acrobat v 9 – Specifying a Language (adding language attribute to the document)

• Set the default language for the entire document by choosing File > Document Properties > Advanced tab and setting the Language field
• Set the language for all the text in a subtree of the Tags trees by selecting the element at the root of the subtree, right click and choose Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field
• Set the language of any amount of text by selecting the text in the Content panel, choosing Options > Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field.

Corrected Direction for Adobe Acrobat v 10 – Specifying a Language (adding language attribute to the document)

• Set the default language for the entire document by choosing File > Document Properties > Advanced tab and setting the Language field
• (There is no change here)Set the language for all the text in a subtree of the Tags trees by selecting the element at the root of the subtree, right click and choose Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field
• Select Tools from the top menu bar. Choose Content and select the Edit Document Text tool. Set the language of any amount of text by selecting the text with the Edit Document Text tool. Right click and choose Properties. Select the Tag tab in the TouchUp Properties window, select Language from the drop-down menu.

I had this feeling today when I read a series of articles from this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about accessible and universal design in college websites (links to all articles below). The cover story for the series tells the story of Darrell Shandrow, a senior at Arizona State University at Tempe. Mr. Shandrow is a journalism major who at age 37 would be considered a “non-traditional” student. But what makes Mr. Shandrow all the more non-traditional is the fact that he is blind student who isn’t afraid of making a few waves.

The right place, right time comment has to do with the fact that I had just blogged a few days ago about this exact topic. It’s nice to see some supporting documentation for my position.

If you are interested in the stuff I write about here you should absolutely read these articles. And like most on-line news stories today there is a place to make comments. I find reading the comments to often be more informative than the article. In this case, the comments made by a few people prove the point of why we need to be advocates for accessible and universal design and why we need to be vigilant.

After reading the articles the first thing I did was send the links out to a half-dozen colleagues and put links on Twitter. Then I went and testing the home page of my alma mater. St. Francis College of Brooklyn would probably score in the lower third.

As someone who started their web design career as a university webmaster, I have a particular affection for this topic. But to me web accessibility for a college/university website is a no-brainer.

The series:

Chronicle of Higher Education article “Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online”

Sidebar: About Cal State’s success

Sidebar: Chart ranking the best and worst college web sites

Universal Design, Usability, and Accessibility

It was clear to me at the outset that the iPad will be a great asset to teachers as a personal learning tool for students of all ages. Given Apple’s commitment to universal design in all of their products, I was eager to hear a presentation given by Sarah Herrlinger at the ACTEM MAINEducation Technology Conference this week. I could easily spend this whole blog entry talking about all of the information that Sarah shared, but I wanted to get the word out about this particular resource.

Authored by Eric Sailers, the resource called “iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps for (Special) Education” was compiled from a list developed by Samuel Sennott, David Niemeijer and Sailers. You can access this on Scribd and save it, print it, or simply link to it. If you are like me and have been looking for a list of apps that can be used with students with disabilities in the classroom, this should be your first stop.

Spread the word!

Addendum: I just discovered that Eric Sailers has another, more recent, list that has some additional information. Check that out too. Here is the link on Scribd. And you may want to check out Eric’s blog Speech-Language Pathology Sharing. He has a list of links to other websites with even more information.

Fix the Web

There is an experimental website in development that will allow people to report websites that fail on accessibility. Using a “crowd-source” methodology, Fix the Web will allow “web users with disabilities to report accessibility problems by linking them with thousands of tech-savvy volunteers.” A trial version of Fix the Web has been launched and the full service is expected to be launched later this year.

According to the report, “the project’s initial goal is to sign up 10,000 volunteers to cover 250,000 websites a year.” They hope to sign up 1.5 million volunteers worldwide.

The Fix the Web website provides this description: “We can do this if many more disabled people report issues they are having with websites, so we need to make this very simple (less than one minute of time). We want thousands of volunteers on hand to take these problems forwards with website owners. Volunteers will increase their own knowledge and skills in the process – you don’t need to be an expert in e-accessibility.”

Kindle 3: Better Accessibility, But Still Not Perfect

As reported by us last year and this year, there has been an ongoing set of concerns regarding the accessibility of Amazon’s popular e-book reader, the Kindle. Troubles for the product were made widely public when the US Department of Justice spanked several large US colleges for requiring students to adopt the products for class use and in so doing unintentionally discriminated against people with disabilities since the first and second versions of the product were not accessible to students who were blind or had visual impairments.

According to E-Access Bulletin, the third version of the Kindle is better than the first two, but still not without problems. They report:

The Kindle 3, developed by the online retailer Amazon, features a display with improved contrast and an audible menu facility, ‘Voice Guide’, enabling users to select an e-book using sound and activate the device’s text-to-speech ‘Read to Me’ feature. The Kindle 3 also features a display with 50% improved contrast between the text and background, improving the readability of text for partially sighted users.

“The Voice Guide does improve the accessibility of the device significantly”, RNIB Principal Manager of Digital Accessibility Robin Spinks told E-Access Bulletin. “However, certain functions are not yet possible, for example, being able to browse the electronic bookstore using text-to- speech and being able to select, purchase and download book content from the device [using Voice Guide], rather than having to do that from a computer.”

To subscribe to this free monthly E-Access bulletin, email eab-subs@headstar.com with ‘subscribe eab’ in the subject header.  Portions of this blog entry are Copyright 2010 Headstar Ltd.

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Image licensed through Creative Commons – by Horia Varlan

“The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which requires that smart phones, television programs and modern communications technologies are accessible to people with vision and hearing loss, has now passed both chambers of Congress and is headed to the President’s desk. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.”

According to the news release, among the highlights of the bill:

When signed into law, this legislation will give individuals with vision or hearing loss improved access to television programming, smart phones, the Internet, menus on DVD players, program guides on cable TV, and more. Specifically, it will:

• Mandate mobile phone companies to make web browsers, text messaging, and e-mail on smart phones fully accessible.
• Restore and expand requirements for video description of television programs, in addition to requiring cable companies to make their program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss.
• Ensure people with vision loss have access to emergency broadcast information.
• Provide $10 million in funding each year for assistive technology for deaf-blind individuals
• Ensure that Internet-enabled mobile phones are hearing aid compatible.

For more information, see the PR Newswire and the Washington Post articles.

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Image licensed through Creative Commons – by liewcf