October 18-19, 2002
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, U.S.A

Saturday, 10.19 Workshops

Laboratory and Workshop Formats
Workshops and Labs demonstrating techniques and tools for accessible design — experts in graphic design, accessible design, and industry representatives in individual sessions.

Note: Each workshop is 90 minutes long unless otherwise noted.

Workshops

• Achieving Accessibility With Adobe Graphics and Desktop Publishing Products
  Greg Pisocky (Adobe)
• Automated Evaluation and Its Pitfalls
  Michael Cooper (CAST)
• Design for On-Line Learning with Flash MX
  Bob Regan (Macromedia)
• A Dialogue on the No Thresholds Campaign in the Netherlands
  Eric Velleman (Accessibility Foundation, The Netherlands
• Information Structure, Navigation and Accessibility
  Krzysztof Lenk (RISD)
• 'The People Have a Right:' Building an Intentions-Based Portal
  Sarah Bourne (Commonwealth of Massachusetts)
• Section 508 and Beyond: Web Accessibility for More People, More Situations
  Shawn Lawton Henry (UIAccess.com)
• Websites, Accessibility, Section 508, the ADA, and Section 504: Understanding the Legal Requirements
  Kathy Gips with Rachel Tanenhaus (Adaptive Environments)

Achieving Accessibility With Adobe Graphics and Desktop Publishing Products

Greg Pisocky (Adobe)

10:00-11:30am (Session 1)
2:30-4:00pm (Session 2)

The issue of accessibility of information technology for people with disabilities has been in the forefront due to the federal government's enactment of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The need to produce accessible electronic content extends beyond the needs of government users and represents a major initiative on the part of the private sector as well.

Adobe Systems is a major supplier of software used by graphics professionals to create content in a variety of popular formats such as HTML and PDF. This seminar will illustrate techniques graphics designers can use when working with such popular Adobe publishing and web products such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe PageMaker, and Adobe GoLive to generate content that is accessible to users of assistive technology such as screen readers for the blind.

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Automated Evaluation and Its Pitfalls

Michael Cooper (CAST, home of Bobby)

12:30-2:00pm

Web accessibility depends on the interaction of a number of factors — the semantic structure of the page, the visual design of the page, the coding used to represent the structure and design, the browser begin used, and any assistive technologies. Accessibility guidelines help page authors to understand and negotiate these issues. Guideline violations often appear on sites as a result of mistakes and design compromises. To maintain accessibility it is important to fix these problems quickly. Automated evaluation significantly speeds up the process of finding guideline violations and is now heavily used. At the same time, automated agents lack the capabilities of humans and can only find a portion of the problems on the site. This presentation describes the benefits and concerns of automated evaluation and presents strategies for incorporating automated evaluation into the design cycle.

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Design for On-Line Learning with Flash MX

Bob Regan (Macromedia)

10:00-11:30am (Session 1)
12:30-2:00pm (Session 2)

As online learning becomes an increasingly important practice within community and technical colleges, course developers must ensure that learning objects and course web site are accessible to individuals with disabilities. Many community college systems, such as the California Community College system, have adopted policies on web accessibility. This session looks at the guidelines and techniques related to the development of accessible learning objects using Flash MX. Reviewing examples from practice, this session will look at how to ensure content is accessible to people with visual impairments, people with mobility impairments and people with hearing impairments. The session will review several example learning objects using common assistive technologies used by individuals with disabilities to access the web. Techniques for optimizing the accessibility of eLearning content will be presented related to the delivery of navigation, animation and interactive elements.

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A Dialogue on the No Thresholds Campaign in the Netherlands

Eric Velleman (Accessibility Foundation, The Netherlands)

12:30-2:00pm

Eric Velleman will talk about about the strategy and methods of Drempels Weg (No Thresholds). He and a team of Ambassadors (four people with different kinds of disabilities) recently completed an innovative, year-long campaign with industry to secure commitments to make their websites accessible. The Department of Health, Welfare and Sports sponsored the campaign to get companies to sign agreements of commitment in public to make their sites accessible. Over 100 companies signed on in a highly successful campaign characterized by extraordinary national visibility.

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Information Structure, Navigation and Accessibility

Krzysztof Lenk (RISD)

NOTE: this session is now FULL.

10:00am-4:00pm (all day)

Three design processes are critical in building accessible web sites:

1. mapping the information structure;
2. building the navigation reflecting this structure;
3. rapid prototyping of screen presentation of the structure and navigation.

This 5 hour workshop will explore these three processes using participant's personal data as a base.

This workshop is open to 15 participants and will utilize a Mac computer lab.

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'The People Have a Right:' Building an Intentions-Based Portal

Sarah Bourne (Commonwealth of Massachusetts)

2:30-4:00pm

Massachusetts has taken to heart the quote from the state constitution 'the people have a right' and made it the core value of their intentions-based portal website. They went well beyond the minimum requirements of legal obligations. Their commitment was not only to align with the most comprehensive standards for web accessibility for people with disabilities but also to address access issues for people using different technologies, including both older technologies (e.g., slower modem connections) and newer technologies (e.g., hand-held devices), as well as issues of computer literacy. Ms. Bourne, the Director of the Portal, will review their policy on layout and design, navigation, graphics and sound, content that requires additional software, and file size. With insight earned in the experience of building and managing a highly visible and complex portal site, she will offer practical information on how to make it happen and how best to avoid the pitfalls.

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Section 508 and Beyond: Web Accessibility for More People, More Situations

Shawn Lawton Henry (UIAccess.com)

NOTE: this is an all-day session requiring pre-registration.

10:00am-4:00pm (all day)

By integrating accessibility into your web design and development process you can efficiently create web sites and web applications that work effectively for more people in more situations. For some, web accessibility is clearly a requirement (such as under Section 508); for others, it's just good business.

Join us for hands-on experience of the usability problems encountered by an aging population and people with disabilities when interacting with web interfaces – problems also encountered by people without disabilities in various situations. Learn how to develop visually appealing, dynamic, interactive web sites without sacrificing accessibility. Participants in this workshop will understand:

• how functional and situational limitations impact web interaction, through hands-on experience
• benefits of designing accessible web pages and applications, including the legal, social, and organizational impetus
• how to use standards and guidelines such as the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards under Section 508, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

We'll review the basics and cover specific web accessibility problems and best practice solutions that benefit all users, with and without disabilities. In addition to learning 7 simple things you can do today to make your web pages more accessible, you'll see how to code accessible:

• Style sheets (CSS)
• Navigation, such as tabs and "fly-out" menus
• Forms for data entry
• Data tables and layout tables
• Multimedia and Flash

This workshop goes beyond the minimums for Section 508 and shows how to make your web pages "transform gracefully" to work better for customers who have images turned off to speed download time, for elderly customers with low vision who are using large fonts to make text readable, and for customers who are blind or (not blind and) driving a car and using a voicing browser. You'll also learn about techniques for evaluating web accessibility, and get to use free tools for testing accessibility.

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Websites, Accessibility, Section 508, the ADA, and Section 504: Understanding the Legal Requirements

Kathy Gips with Rachel Tanenhaus (Adaptive Environments)

10:00-11:30am (Session 1)
2:30-4:00pm (Session 2)

Confused about which laws require websites to be accessible and what exactly is required? You are not alone. We will clarify who has to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 508 exemptions, what the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act require of public school districts, municipalities, state government agencies, businesses, post-secondary schools and others. Plus we'll help you to understand where to find reliable resources for on-going information.

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