Missouri Alternative Communication Resource Directory

E-Mail and Web Accessibility

For many people with disabilities, e-mail and on-line information through the internet have bridged communication gaps and made access to information easier. As with any new communication form however, access to e-mail and web sites may be problematic for some people with disabilities. The following suggestions are designed to make it easier for everyone, with or without disabilities, to access e-mail and web sites more efficiently.

E-Mail

Sending and Receiving E-Mail

Generally speaking, sending and receiving e-mail messages is a fairly easy process regardless of the internet application used. E-mail messages typed and sent are typically accessible to all individuals, even those using computer adaptations and/or peripheral devices. Since the e-mail message itself is plain text, if you insert text from a document (using a cut/paste method) into the e-mail message, it is also sent in plain text. As a result, the recipient, regardless of system adaptations, is usually able to receive the communication.

Attachments

If you attach one or more files to an e-mail message, the receiving party may have a variety of problems accessing the attachment. An attachment sent as a word processing file (Word, WordPerfect) requires the recipient to have appropriate software to open the file. Even though most word processing software has options for converting text from one application to another, opening an attachment with these options can be difficult or impossible. Frequently, if an attachment in a specific application can be opened, the file will contain extraneous code in addition to text and the original formatting is lost. Other attachments sent as a database, spreadsheet or presentation application file can be very difficult to access since the receiver must have that application on their computer. If you are using a different version of the software than the sender, you may not be able to open the file or may lose formatting when you open.

Tips on sending attachments

When practical, cut and paste text into the e-mail message itself. This will eliminate compatibility issues with applications. If it is impractical to cut and paste text, usually because the text is too long or formatting needs to be transmitted also, consider the following:

Web Accessibility

Standards

There are two major national standards/guidelines available related to web accessibility. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed web accessibility guidelines that can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10. The W3C Guidelines have been adopted for use by a variety of public and private entities internationally as their standards for web access. In addition, the Access Board promulgated rules for implementation of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which include standards for web accessibility. Section 508 applies to federal agencies and as a result, these standards must be used by federal agencies to ensure their web accessibility. The Section 508 standards for web access can be found at http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm.

The W3C Guidelines and Section 508 standards for web access are similar but not identical. A good comparison and discussion of the similarities and differences can be found at http://www.jimthatcher.com/sidebyside.htm.

Missouri state law requires state agencies and public four and two year colleges and universities to make their information technology, including web sites, accessible. To implement this law, Missouri is adopting a set of web access standards. More information can be found at http://www.oit.mo.gov and http://www.at.missouri.gov. Technical guidance can be found at http://www.oa.state.mo.us/dmd/guidelines/. These standards are a slight modification of the Section 508 standards.

Tips of Web Accessibility

What are the most common accessibility issues?

What are text equivalents for non-text elements?

A text equivalent is a method of assigning a text description to an image, or other non-text element. This is the single most frequent accessibility problem with web pages. Non-text elements include anything that is not text; however, the most common non-text elements lacking a text equivalent are:

Why is flicker frequency important?

If any portion of a web page flickers between 4 and 59 frames per second the possibility exists of causing some individuals with photosensitive epilepsy to have a seizure triggered by the flicker, flash, or blink, particularly if the flash has a high intensity and is within certain frequency ranges. Since the rates of many animations depend on the speed of the computer and the severity of the effects, your safest way of approaching this topic is to avoid using any animations or flickering completely. The most common flicker problems include:

How do I make accessible electronic forms?

Forms on a web page require additional attributes for each field called a label to be accessible to users of assistive technology. Examples of form fields that require a label are:

There are also many recommended attributes to make using forms easier to users of assistive technology such as logical tab indexes, field sets, and legends.

What are table headers and scopes?

To understand the process of making tables accessible, it is easiest to cover the basic parts of a table first. Each cell in a table is defined by a < TD > tag. This cell conveys no relationship to any other cell in the table unless one is defined. Making a < TD > cell into a table header < TH > means that that cell describes other cells in the table, but does not say if it describes the cells below it, or to the side. Adding a scope to that header, such as scope="row" or scope="col", defines if the header is for a row header for describing cells to the right of the cell, or a column header which describes cells below it. Each time a header cell is defined, a scope should be used as well.

When do I need to use headers and scopes?

There are two types of tables. One type is used only for positioning and layout, which is used for looks only. The other type is a data table, which displays data in a logical layout. Data tables require additional markup to define cell associations to make it accessible. To tell if your table is a data table or not, pick a few cells out of the table one at a time and cover up the rest of the document. If that cell makes complete sense without reading any other information, it is a layout table and does not require any additional markup.

Data tables require both headers and scopes defined or another method of relating cells to the other cells in the table.

Why shouldn't I save my PowerPoint presentations as web pages?

Microsoft PowerPoint is frequently used for presentations. When a PowerPoint presentation is kept in the PPT file format, it is perfectly acceptable to have a link provided to that file on a web page. However, when the "Save as web page" feature in PowerPoint is used, the resulting web pages are highly non-accessible and there is currently no easy way of making them accessible. Note: providing both formats is acceptable so long as a link to both is provided on all pages that link to the web presentation.

If a presentation must be displayed as a web page, utilize the Save As, and choose Outline/RTF as the file type. Open the generated document and copy and paste the content into a web page editor. This will display an organized outline of almost all of the content in the presentation. Images, tables, and charts are not contained in the outline view and must be added separately and then made accessible.

Why shouldn't I use the FrontPage Hover button feature?

The FrontPage Hover button feature automatically creates an image rollover effect based on the text you provide, and the options you select. This is commonly used to provide a " mouse over " effect. There are two major accessibility problems with this feature. First, FrontPage does not automatically assign an alt tag to the images used in the rollover. Second, due to the way it is coded, the images that are commonly used as links can only be navigated by the mouse, and not the keyboard.

Testing your Website for Accessibility

Test the web site informally on your own and see how well you are able to navigate and access all the information on the web page:

There are several web-based tools you can use to test your website for accessibility. The four evaluation tools described below test for compliance with national access standards or guidelines. Each will also test your web page for browser compatibility. Another alternative for testing your website is through the use of a text-only browser. By accessing your website with a text-only browser, you will be able to experience first-hand many of the most frequent access barriers if your site is not fully accessible.

A-prompt is a tool which identifies potential accessibility problems and provides guided editing to correct the problems.http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/

Bobby

Bobby can be accessed at http://bobby.watchfire.com. Bobby is a web-based tool used to analyze web pages for accessibility. Bobby analyzes web pages for compatibility to different web browsers, and automatically tests for compatibility with national access standards. To analyze other browser specifications, you can use the Advanced Options feature in Bobby. After submitting your web page, Bobby will display the results of any accessibility and/or browser compatibility errors found. Remember, you must submit the URLs for all pages of your web site for review.

WAVE is an online accessibility assessment tool that flags any items on a Web page which should be examined for potential accessibility problems, and provides a description of what the problem might be. http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

W3C HTML Validation Service

W3C HTML Validation Service tests HTML documents for compliance with W3C HTML recommendations and other HTML standards. As with Bobby, W3C HTML Validation Service is a free public service located at http://validator.w3.org/ Again, remember you must submit each URL of every page you want to be tested. W3C HTML Validation Services will display the results of all incompatibilities with W3C HTML 4.0. This service provides an excellent explanation about the errors in the web document by showing the source input. The service will let you know whether or not the document will validate as a HTML 4.0 Transitional.

Text-Only Browser

LYNX is a text-mode browser used on many platforms including UNIX, VMS, and Windows that allows text-based, non-graphical environments to access the web. Lynx was originally conceived and developed by Academic Computing Services at the University of Kansas and is distributed under the GNU Public License, and is free for anyone to use as long as it is kept in public domain. You can get information about Lynx and install on your system by accessing http://lynx.browser.org (NOTE: Compiling and installing Lynx can be a time-consuming effort and you will need an understanding of DOS and how to create batch files.)

Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Accessibility

The Web Access Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) maintains an extensive list of resources for assistance in evaluating web sites for accessibility issues. The site contains four separate resource areas: Evaluation Tools, Repair Tools, Filter and Transform Tools, and Other Sites of Interest. These tools are available at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html.

Evaluation Tools are those tools that analyze a page or site and then return a report or rating. Some listed tools do not focus on accessibility, but on HTML or CSS. This is the largest list of resources from this site.

Repair Tools are those that help the author make the site more accessible.

Filter and Transform Tools assist web users rather than authors or designers.

Other Sites of Interest is simply additional noteworthy items.

Although the information is copyrighted, the W3C allows all information to be used freely as long as credit is given to W3C.