I wrote a quick post on the lack of accessibility of Recovery.gov back in February. Jim Thatcher has now done an in depth study of that site as he recently did with WhiteHouse.gov. As I noted before, the Recovery site is surprisingly inaccessible. I'll let you read Mr. Thatcher's evaluation yourself, but I think there is one feature on recovery.gov that really shows how low a priority accessibility is on this site. The keyboard-only link to WhiteHouse.gov is a JavaScript based link that requires a followup mouse click to function. That sort of defeats the purpose now doesn't it?Go read Mr. Thatcher's Accessibility of Recovery.gov in full, it's worth the time.

Jim Thatcher has written what I hope will be the first of a series on the Accessibility of the White House Web Site. About a month ago I wrote a quick accessibility note about the new recovery.gov site. A pretty site, but not particularly accessible. As I summed it up then, "I see this site as a wonderful opportunity... missed." I wasn't pleased with my initial mechanical testing of recovery.gov, but I haven't had the time to follow up. Fortunately, Jim Thatcher has now taken the time do a quick audit of WhiteHouse.gov. It looks like the White House site isn't any more accessible than the Recovery site appears to be. The two sites share the same problems with the skip links, and the same poor use of headings. Serious accessibility issues with simple solutions. Another opportunity missed.

The obvious followup question to 9 Reasons Why Accessibility Matters is "How do I do that?" It's not really as difficult as it might seem. Answer these nine questions, and see how your site's accessibility can be improved.

1. Can you navigate your site easily? Are links and navigation obvious and intuitive? Look at it as if you'd never seen it before, would you understand how to get around quickly? Are your links visible or invisible?
2. Does your site use skip links? It should. This allows members of your audience to quickly jump over blocks of content to get to what they came for. This will benefit keyboard only navigation, various accessibility tools, and readers who use magnification or zoom a lot.
3. How much contrast does your site have? Use something like the Colour Contrast Analyser to see how your site rates. Good contrast can open up your site to people with a wide range of vision issues who otherwise might not otherwise be able to access it.
4. Is your site valid and standards compliant? A valid and standards compliant site will much more consistently displayed across browsers and accessibility tools. It's not a guarantee, but a good start. Try doing a site test to see where you stand with your site. I use tools like the ones on this list to do this sort of work.
5. How does your site look without CSS? Does it still make sense? CSS is a very powerful tool, but it can be abused. Screen readers and even your RSS feeds are going to display your site without CSS. If you use CSS to change one type of content to look like another, for instance to make a paragraph look like a unordered list, it's going to still look like a paragraph in your RSS feed.
6. Did you define your default language in the HTML element of your web page? This simple addition to you code let's people know what language to expect.
7. Did you define ALT text for your images? ALT, or alternative text, atributes will describe your images to your audience members that aren't viewing your images. Maybe they're using a screen reader, or maybe they just are saving download time while on dial-up. Without ALT text, they might not even notice they missed an important image.
8. Did you use headings to identify navigation lists? Using a H2-H6 heading before a navigation list will help with screen readers and with keyboard navigation. It helps break up the site into identifiable regions so that navigation is more intuitive. If you don't like the way these headings look, then change their appearance with CSS. This will allow you to keep the appearance you like, but keep the improved navigation too. Update: 52% of screen reader users navigate by headings whenever possible - WebAIM Screen Reader Survey .
9. Does your H1 heading at least partially match your page title? A simple thing, but it can significantly improve a viewers ability to identify where the are on your site, and to navigate. It also should improve your search engine results.

These items won't guarantee a perfectly accessible site, but they'll move you nine steps in the right direction. If you're interested in discussing how to improve the accessibility of your site, or accessibility in general, leave me a comment. Getting me to discuss accessibility is never a problem. To paraphrase Shrek, it's getting me to shut up that's the trick. Update: Thank you to Aankhen for checking my work.  Both of the errors you caught should now be corrected.

Why does making your site accessible matter? First let’s give a definition of accessibility, I like Jim Thatcher’s best. “Basically, technology is accessible if it can be used as effectively by people with disabilities as by those without.”

1. 12.8 percent of adults (21-64) are disabled in some way. Bjelland, M.J., Erickson, W. A., Lee, C. G. (2008, November 8). Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (ACS). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics (StatsRRTC). Retrieved April 7, 2009 from www.disabilitystatistics.org
2. 8 to 12% of males of European origin have a color deficiency. Accessibility and the Web
3. 5.5 million people have obstructed vision because of cataracts. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
4. 4.2 million people have impaired vision because of corneal dystrophies. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
5. Worldwide, 42 million people are blind. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
6. Approximately 17 percent (36 million) of American adults report some degree of hearing loss - NIDCD Health Information
7. Only 1 out of 5 people who could benefit from a hearing aid actually wears one - NIDCD Health Information
8. 5% of people have javascript turned off - W3 Schools
9. Internet Explorer 6 still has a 17% browser share - W3 Schools

Using IE6 isn't a disability, but it does fall into the realm of accessibility. Choices you make on your site platform and design can limit who has access to your site. Identify your links with only color? Did you eliminate 12% of the male population from seeing those links? Use sound without captions? Did you just remove 36 million Americans from your viewing audience? How many people do you remove from your audience if your site requires the use of a mouse and not just a keyboard? These all add up, and they add up quickly. Each accessibility problem you have removes people from your audience. Maybe the real reason that you haven't become a famous blogger is that the right people just haven't been able to see your site yet.

Interested in 9 Ways to Make Your Site More Accessible?

Jim Thatcher has written a post on CAPTCHA accessibility. A must read if you're working in the accessibility field.

The whole CAPTCHA issue is a can of worms. They are appearing more frequently by the day, whether to sign up for email accounts or to play games. To avoid spam (they assert) some have added CAPTCHAs to the process of commenting on Blog entries. The letters stand for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".

Celebrating a Newly Discovered Ability

Also, because this event was on accessibility, I needed my presentation to be ultra accessible. I needed a way to caption the presentation for those participants who were Deaf and hard of hearing. A transcript would be provided for those who were deaf-blind.

Glenda doesn't just write about accessibility, she requires it. She isn't just an expert in accessibility, she's also our target audience. Go listen to what the word accessibility means to her.

I was asked by a friend to take a look at recovery.gov yesterday. To be honest, I was disappointed. While it is a pretty site, it isn't nearly as accessible as it should be.

Here's a few things that I see that should really be fixed.

1. Content is not organized using headings as it could be. That would improve the ability of screen readers to navigate.
2. Color contrast is low in a number of areas. Difficult for the partially sighted to read.
3. No default language is defined.
4. Form controls need to be associated with labels.
5. In-line images are used as bullets rather than controlling with CSS. This can be awkward for screenreaders
6. The very clever looking sliding timeline at the bottom of the page is not keyboard navigable, making it unaccessible to anyone using a traditional browser without a mouse. I do see that it's replaced with a table version if you have JavaScript disabled, which is a nice touch, but  that doesn't cover everyone.
7. Skip Links should be fixed to work in Internet Explorer, and made visible at least on focus. (added (4/22)

There are some other minor issues, but those six bullet points cover the important ones I see. There is an accessibility page, but unfortunately it's been mostly used to make a political statement.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive agenda to empower individuals with disabilities in order to equalize opportunities for all Americans.

A wonderful goal, but that's not what accessibility pages are for. This is to explain accessibility functionality in general, and specifically for the site. There is a bit of that at the end, but not enough. This site should be a perfect example of accessibility. Don't say that you want to "empower individuals with disabilities", do it. Empower individuals with disabilities by giving them the means to access the information on your website. I see this site as a wonderful opportunity... missed.

The City University Web Team has produced what they call an executive summary of the WCAG 2.0 in less than 100,000 words. It's a very well done summation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 that is significantly under 100,000 words. That's more than I can say about the original, which at least feels much longer than that. If you're trying to explain WCAG 2 to anyone, letting them read this would be a great place to start.

I've logged close to thirty hours in Internet Explorer (IE) 8 in the last few weeks doing browser testing. The more I use it, the more I think to myself "why would you use Internet Explorer?" There are other, better choices. Here's a quick roundup of what's out there to choose from. Internet Explorer: Each version gets better, I'll grant you that, but that's about all I'll grant you. Even the soon to be officially released IE8 isn't going to stand up to Firefox, Opera, or any of the others listed below. It's a step ahead for IE, but not a big step. Improved security, improved rendering, improved standards compliance... sounds good, doesn't it? Let's look at it another way. The last place runner in the race for the perfectly compliant browser has made huge gains on his competitors... but hasn't caught any of them. Internet Explorer 8 will remind you of Internet Explorer 7. In fact it looks just like it.  As with other Microsoft programs, you have no choice of themes. It does have a few add-ons for functionality, most notably the web developer toolbar which has now been built into IE8. It is supported on the Windows operating system (OS) only. It does not support mouse gestures, a method of executing common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by moving the mouse the current web page, without using the toolbar or keyboard. Firefox: It has good web standards compliance and quick loading times. It's highly adaptable. I see just over 6,000 add-ons available on their site, and about 600 themes. Some of these would be for older versions, but it's till a high level of support for changing function and appearance to suit the user. It is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Several add-ons are available which add mouse gesture functionality. Opera: This may be the hidden gem of the browser world. It's highly web standards compliant, quite fast, and comes with a lot of the features people add to Firefox built in. Mouse gestures, bookmark synchronization, RSS feed previews, and speed dial are all standard. It even allows for custom theming to change the appearance to suite you. It is supported on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD operating systems. Flock: Like social media like Flickr, MySpace, and Twitter? Flock has the benefits of the base installation of Firefox, with all the social media functions you'll need. It's based on their Firefox browser, but with social media in mind. Set it up and it will keep you connected to all of your social sites.  It has themes and add-ons available, but comes standard with a blog editor, photo upload functionality, feed reader, media bar and more. It currently doesn't support mouse gestures, even with an add-on, but it's a relatively new browser and I expect that to come allow later. Chrome: Produced by Google, Chrome is one of the fastest browsers you could choose. Along with good web standards compliance, that makes it a nice choice for the everyday Internet user. While it might not have the add-on base that Firefox does, it has everything the average user needs in a nice presentation. While it doesn't have theme capability, it actually doesn't really need it. Made in a very minimalist style, very little of the browsers is actually visible. What you see is the web page you want. Personally, I really like the ability to turn a tab into a solo page by just dragging it off the page. A very clever option. Currently only available on the Windows OS. Safari: Originally for the Mac, Safari is now available for Windows as well. With the good standards compliance in both versions, this browser advertises itself as the "fastest browser on any platform". While you could argue that other browsers have now surpassed it, you can't argue that it is very fast. While it doesn't come with much in the way of appearance customization, its clean appearance goes along way toward making up for that. While it isn't my favorite choice, it surpasses IE on just about every way measurable. That's not the whole list. There are other choices available. Take a look and I'm sure you'll find a browser with the features you want. Whether it's minimalist styling, hundreds or thousands of add-ons and themes, extremely fast loading, or all of the social media functionality you could want, there is a browser out there that has it. Give them a try, you'll find the one you that's right. Maybe you'll find more than one.

I've been working on comparisons of the WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0, and Section 508. I thought a few of my readers might find the results interesting, so I've posted it. Due to theme limitations, I found it easier to give it its own page. Go take a look at the Accessibility Comparisons. Please note, this project isn't finalized. The document will be updated as I have time. This work is based on Comparison WCAG and Section 508 Web - http://www.jimthatcher.com/sidebyside.htm