I was originally scheduled for Nick Tunney's Building 508 Compliant Web 2.0 Apps but he was unable to make it to the conference. Nor did he have his slides for his presentation handy. Sandy Clark filled the slot by giving her presentation on Accessibility and RIAs.

Most of Sandy's talk was not overly positive. There are many problems with using RIA technolgy (AJAX, Flash, Flex). They mouse movements and dependency on drag and drop can hinder disabled users. Dynamic page refreshes don't always let screen readers know the page has changed. They may not have distinct URIs which can interfere with functioning of the back button on the browser.

Much of the US Government is under restrictions to be Section 508 compliant. There is also the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to take into consideration. It states that content must follow the POUR principle - it must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Both specifications are under revision at this time.

It seems that none of the current RIA technologies are 508 compliant. HTML 5 is likely to make HTML more compatible by adding new features and attributes but it isn't there yet.

There is hope in that a set of guidelines is out to help define how apps should be 508 compliant. It is called ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Apps. It strives to define roles, properties, and ways to provide keyboard navigation for web objects and events.

At the very end one of the audience members mentioned the Functional Accessibility Evaluator. Abrief description for the website:

The Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) analyzes web resources for markup that is consistent with the use of CITES/DRES HTML Best Practices for development of functionally accessible web resources that also support interoperability.

In conclusion it seems that things are being worked on but have not been widely implemented yet.

Posted by jhusum - 11:36 PM - General - Comments - Link to this entry