Web accessibility is concerned with the ability of people with a range of disabilities to be able to access Web resources, including both physical and mental impairments. This may refer to several components of accessibility, which could be broadly classified as: accessibility to (1) content, i.e. Web resources; (2) accessibility through browser functionality; (3) accessibility to Web authoring tools. On this basis, the W3C has developed a framework for supporting Web accessibility. In the UK Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) sectors, the JISC is responsible for ensuring that Web accessibility standards and guidelines are provided and for use in JISC-funded project activities which have a Web presence. JISC calls for project funding bids should be designed with accessibility in mind. This subject is consequently of interest primarily to (a) JISC Programme Managers who will have a responsibility for the design of JISC calls; (b) those writing project proposals with the intention of submitting them as bids for funding from JISC calls.
Web accessibility
Last updated on 2 May 2013 - 3:32pm
The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) have developed a framework for supporting Web accessibility based on three components: guidelines for content (WCAG); guidelines for browsers (UAAG) and guidelines for authoring tools (ATAG). Since UAAG (the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines) and ATAG (Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines) are aimed primarily at those involved in developing browsers (and other forms of user agents) and authoring tools they will not be directly relevant to content providers. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, are the guidelines which will be of relevant to content providers. However content providers will need to be aware of limitations of the guidelines and the limitations of existing browsers and authoring tools. In addition it may not be feasible to ensure that all resources are fully conformant with WCAG guidelines. For example an institutional repository may contain many thousands of papers in PDF format. It will probably not be realistic to expect that all of these resources will be made accessible, which will include ensuring that images have alternative text, tables are linearisable so that they can be read by speaking browsers, etc. The BS 8878 Web Accessibility Code of Practice has been developed in the UK in order to provide an agreed approach to addressing the difficulties in implementing WCAG guideline. BS 8878 focusses on providing documented policies on the approaches which are being taken to enhancing Web accessibility and enables the extent to which WCAG guidelines are being used to be defined. JISC Programme Managers who have a responsibility for the design of JISC calls may wish to include a statement on support for access to web sites by people with disabilities. This information will be incorporated here on an on-going basis as this topic area develops.
JISC Calls may state that project web sites should conform with WCAG A or AA guidelines. However such requirements may not subsequently be validated. Since WCAG requirements have, since the release of WCAG 2.0, been explicitly format-neutral, the guidlines should apply to all content hosted on a web sites and not just HTML resources. This will mean, for example, that MS Word and PDF resources hosted on a web site should be accessibile to people with disabilities, with, for example, images contained in such documents having some form of alternative text which can be procesed by speech readers. In reality it is difficult to achieve such conformance. The BS 8878 standard has been developed which provides a proigamatic and implementable standard which would appear to be more suited for use in project work. It should be noted that BS 8878 is not a rival to WCAG: rather BS 8878 provides a context for use of standards such as WCAG. However whilst knowledge of WCAG Guidelines should now be fairly widespread to date there seems to be little or no adoption of BS 8878 by JISC-funded services and projects. As described in an article entitled Accessibility Rules As Alphagov Becomes Betagov published in September 2011 the UK Government the forthcoming 'beta' version of the new digital platform for UK government services is to be designed in compliance with British Standard BS8878 Web Accessibility Code of Practice. Léonie Watson, the project's Web accessibility consultant has said that "We’re aiming to conform to British Standard BS8878 Web Accessibility Code of Practice from the British Standards Institution. Among other things, this means we’ll be documenting all the accessibility related decisions we take throughout the lifecycle of the beta site".
There will be a need to understand the scope to which WCAG guidelines should apply. For example does a policy on WCAG conformance apply only to HTML pages for a repository or should it also apply to PDF files hosted in the repository? BS 8878 will help in providing a standardised way in documenting such policy issues. However at present there do not appear to be many examples of use of BS 8878 which can help inform others of how BS 8878 can be used.
