Functional Web Accessibility at Illinois

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

---

Overview

• Functional Accessibility Evaluator

• Mozilla/Firefox Accessibility Extension

• Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office

• HTML Best Practices

---

Web Accessibility

• Departmental web resources

• Instructional web resources

  • Course management systems

  • Instructional content

• Administrative Web applications

---

Issues

• Who are the developers?

  • Professional

  • Clerical

  • Instructors

• Purchased technologies

---

IBHE Initiative on Accessibility

---

Functional Accessibility Evaluation Tool

• Navigation/Orientation

• Text Equivalents

• Styling

• Scripting/Automation

• Standards

---

Mozilla/Firefox Extension

• Functional testing

• Making hidden visible

• Providing disability access features

  • Keyboard navigation

  • Styling options

  • Conditional content rendering

---

Accessible Web Publishing Wizard

• Instructors are not web developers

• Instructors don't know about accessibility

• More instructional materials on the web

• There are a lot of instructors

---

Size of the Problem

---

Knowledge of Office Accessibility Techniques

---

Accessible Design Model

• Default markup uses universal design techniques

• Authors do not need to know about accessibility

• No extra time involved with creating accessible materials

---

Goals of the Project

• Accessible HTML by default

• No knowledge of accessibility or HTML

• Prompt users for accessibility information

• Automatically generate text equivalents

---

Informative Image: Maps

---

Informative Images: Tables and Charts

• The best way to use tables and charts with PowerPoint is to create them using PowerPoint

• Creating them in PowerPoint makes it easier for the Wizard to convert the slide later

---

Features

• Text and graphical

• Keyboard support (Accesskeys)

• Text tables for charts

• Navigation controls

• Orientation information

• Valid HTML

---

Next Steps

• Improve Word table support

• Improve Excel headings support

• Text equivalents for graphics

  • Images of tabular tables

  • Organizational charts

• Improved styling options

• SVG output?

---

Best Practices

---

Acknowledgements

• National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)
  (Grant# H133G030079)

• Division of Rehabilitation – Education Services

• Trace Research and Development Center
  (NIDRR Grant# H133E980008)

• College of Applied Life Studies

• University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

---

How do I get it?

Google for

"Microsoft Office Accessibility"

or

"Powerpoint Accessibility"