+++E-ACCESS BULLETIN.
- ISSUE 42, JUNE 2003.

Technology news for people with vision impairment
(http://www.e-accessibility.com).

Sponsored by RNIB (http://www.rnib.org.uk)
and National Library for the Blind (http://www.nlbuk.org).

NOTE: Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details
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++ISSUE 42 CONTENTS.

01: Accessible web modules for local government
- national project gains 2.9 million pounds.

02: Wish-list for digital television
- survey finds viewers want flexibility.

03: RNIB relaunches web site
- two-year project brings service up to date.

04: Further education guidance published
- help with student access to technology.

News in brief: 05: Driving advice - training standard; 06: Interactive
awards - new access category; 07: Village people - Birmingham
events.

Section two: 'The Inbox' - Readers' forum.
08: B-sites - are the A-sites accessible? 09: Fulbright award - US
research request.

Section three: Analysis - access checkers.
10: The human factor: Derek Parkinson report on why automated web
accessibility checkers can never replace a designer's knowledge and
judgment.

Section four: Opinion - e-democracy.
11: Karl Marx and the technology gap: in the rush to use new
technologies to improve the workings of democracy, the opposite may
be achieved if sections of society are left behind and disenfranchised,
says Kevin Carey.

[Contents ends].


++SECTION ONE: NEWS.

+01: ACCESSIBLE WEB MODULES FOR LOCAL
GOVERNMENT.

From March next year, all UK local authorities will be able to use a
centrally-developed set of accessible web site components, following
the release of 2.9 million pounds of government funding for the Local
Authority Websites National Project
(LAWS - http://www.laws-project.org.uk).

LAWS will develop web site technology that can handle public
transactions in hundreds of service delivery categories, based on an
architecture that encourages councils to build in usability and
accessibility from the outset.

The project, which is being co-ordinated by West Sussex County
Council (http://www.westsussex.gov.uk), will produce a series of
modules that are easy to distribute and install. It will also formulate
and share best practice guidelines for accessible design, and identify
accessibility issues where more work is needed.

"It is important for designers of online services to think through what
they're trying to achieve. LAWS will provide an information
architecture that should encourage this," said project director Roland
Mezulis of West Sussex. "Designers should be thinking about the
easiest way to navigate through a site to a given point, not just about
what colour combinations to have," he said. According to Mezulis,
specific challenges include designing accessible transactional services
such as online payments, and how to present content stored on legacy
systems in accessible formats.

The new national LAWS project builds on earlier work by the
APLAWS project (http://www.aplaws.org.uk - see also E-Access
Bulletin issue 29, May 2002).


+02: WISH-LIST FOR DIGITAL TELEVISION.

The ability to change the text size and colour balance of the
electronic
programme guides would be the most useful accessibility function to
build in to interactive digital television services, according to a
survey
of more than 200 vision impaired people published by the RNIB last
month.

Speech output for all functions was also favoured by 165 of the 204
respondents, while a similar number called for audio described
programming and fewer functions.

One survey respondent said: "I'd like a screen-reading function (like
JAWS for a PC) on all text-based screens so that I can use my TV
similarly to the way in which I use my PC." Another said: "If this one
device could have a selection of interfaces (visual or otherwise),
text,
sign language, audio (speech) output and variable settings then all
users could customise it to their personal needs."

A third respondent looked forward to an age of technology
convergence: "In the long run I'd like one machine that serves as an
entertainment centre, PC and communications device, so that
everything I currently do with a PC, telephone, TV, stereo, video,
DVD player and so on could be housed in one bit of kit with one
screen, one set of speakers and one keyboard, mouse or remote control.
I've got too much to plug in right now!"

The survey was stage four of a five stage research programme
conducted by Sylvie Perera of the RNIB Scientific Research Unit. The
first three parts provide an overview of the issues; an assessment of
the
use of smart cards as a way for people to save personal viewing
settings; and a usability assessment by partially sighted people. The
final stage attempted to create a design specification for some of the
requested functions.

To download the report see:
http://www.tiresias.org/itv/intro.htm .


+03: RNIB RELAUNCHES WEB SITE.

The RNIB is to relaunch its main web site (http://www.rnib.org.uk)
next week, to make it more user-friendly for visitors with impaired
vision.

According to website manager Margaret O'Donnell the previous site,
which went live in 1995, had grown too large and as a result contained
out-of-date information and had layout inconsistencies between
sections. "Before, we had a big maintenance problem with 20,000
HTML files on the site and a team of only three people." To combat
this, a new accessible content management system has been installed,
which has also been applied to the RNIB's intranet.

The new site, which has been two years in the making, will also be
easier to navigate with assistive technologies. "Better-structured
documents will make it easier to read or scan with screen readers,"
O'Donnell said. Staff have also been trained in how to write for text-
to-speech software, and other web accessibility issues including plain
style and the avoidance of jargon.

The site will include information on accessing technology, with fact-
sheets and resources.


+04: FURTHER EDUCATION GUIDANCE PUBLISHED.

Guidance for further education providers on how to overcome access
difficulties faced by students, including access to technology, has
been
published by further education technology information service Ferl.

A series of 13 papers covers topics ranging from the basic legal
requirements of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001
to practical guidance on how to make the most of a disabled person's
education (http://fastlink.headstar.com/ferl1).

Other papers include ways to improve online assessment; assistive
technologies; learning platforms and the learning experience.


++NEWS IN BRIEF.

+05: DRIVING ADVICE: The British Computer Society is to create
an online noticeboard for issues relating to the accessibility of the
European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), a standard training
course for basic computer skills (see E-Access Bulletin issue 40, April
2003, story 02). From September the service will offer advice and
information on ECDL participation by people with disabilities,
including different levels of vision impairment:
http://www.ecdl.co.uk .

+06: INTERACTIVE AWARDS: This year's British Interactive Media
Association awards for technology innovation have added a new
accessibility and usability category in association with the RNIB, to
coincide with the European Year of People with Disabilities. The
closing date for entries by companies and individuals is 30 June:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/bima1 .

+07: VILLAGE PEOPLE: The British Computer Association of the
Blind is holding a special seminar alongside this year's annual 'Sight
Village' exhibition at Queen Alexandra College for vision impaired
people in Birmingham from 15 to 17 July
(http://www.qac.ac.uk/sightvillage). 'Sight village plus' on 18 July
will
cover computer security and measures that can be taken to protect
personal data:
http://www.bcab.org.uk .

[Section one ends].


++SECTION TWO: 'THE INBOX'
- READERS' FORUM.
- Please email all contributions or responses to inbox@headstar.com .

+08: B-SITES: Leesa Lavigne, a web designer and computer operator
for the State of Maine in Canada, wrote in with some concerns about
the National Library for the Blind's new 'A-Sites' accessible web sites
portal (see E-Access Bulletin, May 2003, story 03).

"I was really excited when I saw the listing of accessible sites and
couldn't wait to pass it on to other State of Maine workers as an
example. But the first site I visited, 'Cats Online' in the 'Animals
and
wildlife' category (http://www.cats.org.uk), was lacking the alt text
for
the navigation buttons and for most of the images on the pages.

"Close but not quite . . . keep trying. We really need a resource like
that but someone has to maintain quality control. I will check out some
of the other sites that are listed. Maybe this one was just a fluke."
[further responses to inbox@headstar.com].


+09: FULBRIGHT AWARD: Jenny van Tinteren, currently head of
accessibility solutions with the government's jobs service JobCentre
Plus (http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk), is about to embark on a UK
civil service Fulbright scholarship in the US (see
http://www.fulbright.co.uk).

She will be researching the impact of section 508 of the US
Rehabilitation Act, which requires public sector bodies to purchase
accessible systems, including whether improved on-line access has
increased the take up of government services.

By the end of the scholarship period Jenny aims to produce an
accessibility handbook for project managers, including tips on how to
involve users in system building and a best practice report containing
case studies that could be applied to UK's Department of Work and
Pensions.

She is keen to hear from any E-Access Bulletin readers who may have
suggestions or useful contacts for her to follow up in the US. Please
email them to her directly at jvantinteren@yahoo.co.uk or telephone:
0114 291 1766 .

[Section two ends].


++SECTION THREE: ANALYSIS
- ACCESS CHECKERS.

+10: THE HUMAN FACTOR
by Derek Parkinson  derek@headstar.com .

A growing number of web sites proudly demonstrate their commitment
to accessibility by displaying logos for automated accessibility
checkers such as Bobby (http://bobby.watchfire.com), WAVE
(http://wave.webaim.org) or A-Prompt
(http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca).

Jostling together at the foot of home pages, these banners can give the
impression that sites are as accessible as any reasonable person could
expect. But an automated checker is no panacea. Broadly speaking,
they tell a site designer where changes may be needed, and more
advanced products will offer some options for solving the problems,
but they don't assess the overall coherence of a site, and some aspect
of accessibility simply cannot be mechanically assessed.

This is partly because most checkers base their site analysis on
recognised standards such as the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI -
http://www.w3.org/WAI), and the standards themselves don't offer a
simple recipe for accessibility. "It's important to remember that WAI
is
only a set of guidelines, not rules, and not a checklist," says Julie
Howell of the RNIB. "For example the guidelines will recommend that
images on a site are linked to text descriptions, but that doesn't
guarantee that the descriptions will be clear or useful," she says. "I
think most people would agree that checkers are never good enough on
their own."

To be effective, checkers must form part of a wider process that
includes an informed person acting on their recommendations.
"Checking for accessibility is a bit like spell-checking a document.
The
spell-checker can make best guesses of misspelled words based on
patterns that it knows. However, it takes a human to make the final
decision," says Wendy Chisholm, head of the evaluation tools working
group at WAI.

Does this mean that a capable web designer using a checker will
always produce a more accessible site? Well not necessarily, according
to recent research from Stanford University in the US
(http://fastlink.headstar.com/stanf1). In one of the first studies of
its
kind, the team gave experienced web designers two groups of sites to
work on, making changes to the first using only their own knowledge;
and to the second using only prompts from three widely used checkers,
Bobby, LIFT (http://www.usablenet.com), and Validator
(http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator).

The modified sites were tested by vision impaired volunteers and the
results compared. Perhaps surprisingly, this particular study found
that
in many cases, sites modified using a checker were no more accessible
than unmodified sites or sites modified using only the designer's
knowledge. "Results suggest that the three automated evaluation tools
were not very effective in helping designers to improve web site
usability and accessibility," the study concludes.

There are , however, several ways to improve on this disappointing
performance according to the experts. "More research needs to be done
to make the guidelines and the tools themselves more usable," the
Stanford report says. "Guidelines are often too long or too vague for
designers without a human-factors background to understand. Thus,
designers experienced difficulties interpreting them, which in turn
interfered with their ability to implement appropriate changes".
According to Wendy Chisholm several international groupings are now
working to harmonise test criteria. "In the next year, expect more
agreement on the tests that are needed to evaluate content and more
agreement between tools," she says.

There are further advantages to be gained by integrating accessibility
testing more tightly into the content production process. "I wasn't
surprised by the results of this study. There's a big gap between
identifying what's wrong and understanding what changes need to be
made," says Helen Petrie, Professor of Human Computer Interaction at
City University in London. "If a designer coding web pages is the only
person responsible for making changes, there are difficulties. This is
a
job more suitable for the author. The author has a better understanding
of what the content should mean," she says.

Perhaps the greatest danger ahead is the lazy assumption that
automated tools can somehow replace human involvement in
improving accessibility. "By all means use these tools, but remember
they are only one part of the toolkit," says Julie Howell. "Use people
with disabilities in the testing cycle, and if you can, consult with
people before you start." Where accessibility is concerned, the human
factor is key.

[Section three ends].


++SECTION FOUR: OPINION
- E-DEMOCRACY.

+11: KARL MARX AND THE TECHNOLOGY GAP
by Kevin Carey  humanity@atlas.co.uk .

The Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) has begun to show an admirable
interest in the subject of e-democracy, defined as the use of
information and communications technologies to enhance citizen
participation, as opposed to e-government which is supposed to
enhance the government's services to citizens.

Now although Marxism is an almost completely discredited political
theory, some of its social theories still hold good and are based on
historical analysis rather than malicious cynicism. Two such
observations are: that in periods of change, the rich benefit more than
the poor so that the gap between the two groups widens; and that the
faster the change, the wider the gap.

These truisms apply to economic and technological development. In
economics, for example, they are demonstrated in the fact that
although the government has had a serious and sustained anti-poverty
strategy since 1997, the gap between the rich and the poor in the late
1990s actually widened because of the rate of economic growth.

There is no reason to believe that technological development will be
any different, and if the government wants to use technology as the
basis for citizen participation in democracy then we are on very shaky
ground.

For a start, as the government uses on-line consultation instead of the
tedious face-to-face method, it shortens consultative periods. This, in
turn, cuts out trusted intermediaries for consumers, such as the RNIB
or Action for Blind People. Instead of consultative documents being
passed from officers to elected trustees and from them to their
constituencies, with a reverse flow back up to officials, officers of
interest groups might have to take snap decisions on behalf of citizens
in order for an organisation's views to be included. The whole system
of civil society we built up in the 20th century is in danger of
crumbling in less than a decade.

Second, the use of the home computer for local referenda and other
kinds of votes will bias the results in favour of computer owners - in
other words, the rich and powerful. If a council wants to know people's
thoughts about a planning proposal to build a chemical factory, for
example, who is going to be most effective in the lobbying and where
do you suppose the factory will be built?

Third, most people make their views known through the ballot box.
They may not vote in such great numbers as we would all like, but
collectively we lay down a democratic mandate for a council or the
government. How will the poor and the disabled figure when mass
straw polling can be conducted through the broadband PC, digital
television and the text message?

As if these concerns were not enough, there is still considerable
reluctance on the part of the government to guarantee access by blind
and vision impaired people to digital broadcasting through the
Communications Bill currently working its way through the House of
Lords (see http://www.communicationsbill.gov.uk). It is only after
ferocious campaigning by the RNIB that the matter has even
grudgingly been put on the agenda.

At the very least we should insist that all democratic processes should
use every available channel, including land line phones. We should
also remember that although home computer-based technology is
important, access to broadcasting has never been more crucial for all
of
us in an age of technology convergence and e-democracy.

[Section four ends].


++END NOTES.

+HOW TO RECEIVE THIS BULLETIN.

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Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
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Copyright 2003 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including this
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+PERSONNEL:
Editor - Dan Jellinek  dan@headstar.com
Deputy editor - Phil Cain  phil@headstar.com
News editor - Derek Parkinson  derek@headstar.com
Reporter - Mel Poluck  mel@headstar.com
Editorial advisor - Kevin Carey  humanity@atlas.co.uk .

ISSN 1476-6337

[Issue ends.]