You can see and download the slides at Slideshare (German). As I promised to write a detailed post about ARIA enhanced tab navigation for the Webkrauts web standards advent calendar (think of a German version of 24 ways) you will be able to enjoy an English tutorial soon. Never mind the references to Chris in the slides — I had to choose an example from my flickr pictures, and I believe there are too many presentations already with kittens.

The conference was surprisingly innovative: I half expected a crowd of suits as the event was co-organized by the Austrian Ministry of Health, Family and Youth, instead there were many young faces and a fair percentage of women. Things I have learned (and tweeted about) include:

• As of January 2009, websites sponsored by the Austrian Ministry of Health will only receive funding when they are accessible. That doesn’t come as a surprise as a European Ministerial Declaration in 2006 announced that accessibility and best practices could become mandatory in public procurement in 2010.
• Artur Ortega showed examples of Dirk Ginader’s accessibility features for Yahoo! Finance, including two input fields where the labels were dynamically updated after a currency was chosen. So a screenreader read “convert pound sterling to euros” instead of “convert currency to currency.”
• One reason for JavaScript enhanced HTML controls for Flash objects like Yahoo! video is that the Flash object cannot get tab focus when the wmode param is set to opaque or transparent. Still without that param it is impossible to tab into a Flash object in Firefox 3. Or did I overlook something?
• Designer Maria Putzhuber quoted an interesting delusion: 70% of designers believe that visitors are almost always able to maintain orientation while in fact just 10% of the visitors are able to achieve this. What do you think is the reason?

Deutsche Fassung

Now a few more details about BITV 2.0 became public, through a parliamentary request of all things! (PDF, 465 KB) It’s interesting to see how much some of the instruments of the Equality Act for People with Disabilities targeted at the private sector totally failed, while the Federal Government sees some things differently than the European Commission, like the use of accessibility criteria as a differentiation instrument in public procurements. Still there are many positive developments, and some details on the BITV working group in particular. I figured because of the topic the details would be most interesting to a German speaking audience, so I wrote about it in the namics blog and would kindly ask you to comment there.

The first model is rather technical. There are checklists for the criteria of WCAG 1.0, sometimes with a detailed discussion why and how something is tested. Tests can be automated or conducted by experts. Still there is no guarantee that passing the tests will result in accessible, easy to use websites. This approach is output-driven, but not tested with real users. The complex nature of the tests make them incomprehensible for clients who have to rely on the claims of their agency.

Examples for a technical approach are the German Federal Ordinance on Barrier-Free Information Technology (BITV), the French General Reference for Accessibility of Administrations (RGAA), or the European Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM).

The second generation is user-centered. Web development is a process, and in the end there should be an accessible website that does the job: users can find information, accomplish a task, buy stuff. This is contextual accessibility. Besides expert reviews and conformance inspections this approach involves testing with disabled users to provide evidence for accessible sites. Often these accessibility laws go beyond WCAG and recommend best practices, demand accessible authoring tools according to ATAG, or provide considerations for choosing a content management system.

Examples for contextual and holistic accessibility laws are the British Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites (PAS 78; PDF, 906 KB), the Guidelines for Swedish Public Sector Web Sites, or the Dutch Web Guidelines.

In their paper about Accessibility 2.0, Kelly et al. pointed out a few other flaws of the WCAG approach. For example the guidelines should be the result of a transparent, evidence based process. Therefore we need more research like that of the German Aktion Mensch, a study about the accessibility of Web 2.0 applications. Automation should be de-emphasized. Accessibility as the ultimate goal for users should be acknowledged, also the role of context and the relevance of diversity. We need to develop best practices and make sure they find their way into education. A new WCAG version is a chance to bring contextual accessibility into legislation, standards, and policies.

I will address that in a Web Standards Project meeting tomorrow in London. What are your suggestions? Are you familiar with the details of the Dutch or Swedish guidelines? How about the accessibility laws in your country? Are they technical or contextual? Who is involved in creating those policies? Kelly’s paper lists a lot of publications about disabled users — are your aware of any others?