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E-Access Bulletin, July 2011:
Prospects for international copyright treaty;
Seven steps to web accessibility.
From: "Dan Jellinek" <dan[bat]headstar.com>
Date: Thu, July 21, 2011 17:59
++
E-ACCESS BULLETIN
Access To Technology For All, Regardless Of Ability- ISSUE 139, July 2011.
A Headstar Publication.
http://www.headstar.com/eab/ .
Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details at the end).
++Issue 139 Contents.
01: Lack of Interoperability ‘Is Biggest Accessibility Barrier’
- But open standards being ignored, analyst warns.
02: Open University Media Player Passes Accessibility Test
- Prototype works for deaf and dyslexic users, says developer.
03: Online Book Details Seven Steps To Web Accessibility
- Guidance on basic measures all site owners should include.
News in Brief:
04: Access Denied – European web access law campaign; 05:
National e-Learning - online qualification in web accessibility;
06: Smart Prize – awards for disability apps.
Section Two, The Inbox – Readers’ Forum:
07: Wrong Price – software cost and development barriers; 08:
Patient Inspiration – health records collaboration.
Section Three: News Analysis - International Law.
09: Prospects Brighten For Copyright Exception Treaty – after
years of wrangling, an international treaty on allowing
accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across
borders is edging closer. Dan Jellinek reports.[Contents ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Lack of Interoperability ‘Is Biggest Accessibility Barrier’.The biggest barrier to making make the web more accessible to
disabled people is interoperability, Sandi Wassmer, member of
the UK government's e-Accessibility Forum, told delegates at e-
Access '11 conference in London last month
(
http://www.headstar.com/eaccess11).
Interoperability is “about having disparate and diverse devices
that all communicate with each other,” Wassmer said. “To use
a non technical way of explaining it, a postage stamp is
interoperable. We have a system that everyone agrees upon
around the world. The stamp makes sure your letter gets from
here to where it's going. It's a system which is different in each
country, but it is interoperable on a global scale.”
Without interoperability, inclusive design – creating websites of
value to everyone - will fail, she said. “We can design
inclusively all we want, but if I have one device that does one
thing and you have another that does something different, if
we don't achieve interoperability, we won't be able to connect.”
The key to interoperability is the use of the open standards
created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its
accessibility arm, the Web Accessibility initiative (WAI),
Wassmer said. However, although the consortium’s Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are fairly widely
followed by web designers and developers, two other key sets
of guidelines - the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
(ATAG) which cover software used to create web content such
as content management systems, blogs and social media; and
the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG), which cover
software that displays web content such as web browsers and
media players, have not yet been widely adopted, she said.
Instead, the market is allowed to dictate how features are added
to web browsers or social media networks, for example.
“People don't really care about [ATAG and UAAG] as it is a
case of market forces. To me, this is really what needs to be
resolved before we can have an inclusive web.”
Meanwhile a range of new government initiatives relating to
access to ICT by disabled people were announced at the
conference by Minister for Culture, Communications and
Creative Industries Ed Vaizey and his senior digital inclusion
policy adviser, including a new online forum to discuss key
issues with government. For coverage from our sister
publication E-Government Bulletin, see:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=951And for Sandi Wassmer’s slides and other presentations and
transcripts from e-Access ’11, visit:
http://www.slideshare.net/group/eaccess-11-presentations- Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=609+02: Open University Media Player Passes Accessibility Test.An online video and audio player being developed by the
Open University (OU) for its students and the wider learning
community has successfully passed through a round of
accessibility testing including testing with deaf and dyslexic
users, E-Access Bulletin has learned.
The generic media player, currently viewable as a ‘work in
progress’ in alpha or prototype format (
http://embed.open.ac.uk/demo?theme=ouice-dark ), is being
developed to allow the distance-learning university greater
control over the technology used to access it extensive bank of
podcast material (
http://podcast.open.ac.uk).
The OU’s 200,000 students are likely to begin using the player
on the university’s virtual learning environment by the end of
this year or the start of next, according to Nick Freear, a web
developer in the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology. It
will also feature on ‘OpenLearn’, an open educational
resources portal where anyone can access hundreds of online
learning materials for free (
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk ).
Accessibility features of the media player including the ability
to add captions for video, and developers will be able to
change the look and feel for use on their own websites, Freear
said. The player is built on Flowplayer, an open source flash
player which works on both desktop and tablet computers such
as the Apple iPad, with HTML and Javascript additions, he
said.
Eventually the source code for the accessible player might be
opened up, Freear said. “but that’s down the line.”
- Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=611+03: Online Book Sets Out Seven Steps To Web Accessibility.An ‘online book’ setting out the first seven steps that any
website owner or developer should take towards making their
site accessible to people with disabilities was unveiled last
month by the OneVoice for Accessible ICT Coalition, an
umbrella group of accessibility and technology organisations.
'The First Seven Steps to Accessible Websites' (
http://www.onevoiceict.org/tools/tools/seven-steps )
was launched at the recent e-access 11 conference, co-hosted
by the coalition with E-Access Bulletin publisher Headstar
(
http://www.headstar.com/eaccess11).
The seven were chosen as the most important first practical
steps that should be taken by most websites, and are all
relatively easy to implement, the book’s author Peter
Abrahams, Accessibility Practice Leader at Bloor Research,
told the conference.
The steps are grouped into two types, Abrahams said.
Steps 1, 2 and 3 are ‘setting the scene’ steps. Step 1 is to do a
quick accessibility check of a website: “We provide a
methodology for doing that to give you an indication of
whether your website is very accessible, reasonably accessible,
partially accessible, or is an absolute nightmare. “ Step 2 is to
publish an accessibility policy, and Step 3, is to provide a way
for people to give feedback on any problems encountered.
The next four steps represent a few basic technical features
that are most important for accessibility, for example helping
people who navigate the web using keyboard only or blind
people using text to speech screen-readers, he said.
Step 4 is providing a ‘jump to content’ link to allow people to
jump over all the menus, adverts and “rubbish” that can clutter
up a page and go straight to the main content. Step 5 is ensuring
the tab sequence – jumping from link to link using the tab key
– is logical; Step 6 is ensuring that pictures and links have
alternative text; and step 7 is to ensure that text sizing works.
The book’s own website features a page for each step with
background, information about implementation, links to good
and bad examples, and instructional videos with closed
captions, Abrahams said. Future plans include similar steps for
accessibility of other technologies such as smartphones; and
the building of an online community to discuss the continual
refinement and development of the project, he said.
- Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=613++News in Brief:
+04: Access Denied: A proposal for a European law onaccessible websites has been published by the European
Disability Forum, an umbrella group of disability organisations
across Europe, as part of a new campaign on web access,
‘Access Denied!’ Joining forces with AGE platform Europe,
the European Blind Union and ANEC, the European consumer
voice in standardisation, the forum is calling for the European
Commission to propose binding EU legislation to ensure that
public websites and websites delivering basic services of public
interest are made accessible as soon as possible. The
commission is due to make an announcement on the
accessibility of public sector websites and ‘websites providing
basic services to citizens’ later this year:
http://www.edf-feph.org/Page_Generale.asp?DocID=13854&thebloc=18320
Short Link:
http://bit.ly/oH4yOF+05: National e-Learning: What is claimed to be the first
national qualification in web accessibility to be delivered
through an online training course is to be launched in the
Autumn by the Equality and Human Rights Commission,
AbilityNet and BCS (the Chartered Institute for IT). To register
your interest to participate in a pilot study for ‘Digital
Accessibility – Web essentials’, contact:
accessibility[bat]abilitynet.org.uk
06: Smart Prize: A new European contest to promote the
development of smartphone applications designed to improve
the lives of disabled and older people has been launched by
the Vodafone Foundation. The Smart Accessibility Awards will
share a 200,000 euro prize fund between the best smartphone
app in four areas: social participation, including access to
social media; independent living, for helping users with
everyday tasks such as opening a door; mobility, for enabling
users to travel freely or use location services; and wellbeing,
for applications which improve the users' health. Entries must
be in by 15 October to be evaluated in November, with 12
finalists selected to present their application to a jury in
Brussels in December at a live final, where the four overall
winners will be chosen:
http://developer.vodafone.com/smartaccess2011/Short link:
http://bit.ly/nrp4aE[Section One ends].
++Section Two: 'The Inbox'
- Readers' Forum.
++Section Two: 'The Inbox'
- Readers' Forum.
Please email all contributions or responses to:
inbox[bat]headstar.com .
+07: Wrong Price: Our long-running debate on the price of
access technology continues with a message from Allan Milne,
Lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of Abertay
in Dundee,
“I too agree that £800 for a screenreader is ridiculous, although
I accept that the development costs are high and the current
take-up population is low,” Milne says.
“I am voting with my money and moving from 25 years of
Microsoft to Apple; I pay exactly the same as any other buyer
and have free, out-of-the box accessibility through their built-
in VoiceOver screenreader. I have already got my iPod Touch
and am now in the throes of getting a Mac Book. However I
would point out that Apple themselves are not perfect and
somewhat hypocritical in that their iTunes software is entirely
inaccessible when used with a Windows screenreader, and they
do not have an accessible category for their apps.
“The other major issue I have is that as a software engineer,
even with accessibility software the development environments
are themselves often barely accessible, placing another barrier
to blind people like myself trying to help ourselves by building
accessible applications.
“Desktop and mobile platforms can be a great vehicle for
enablement so come on computer hardware and software
companies, get your acts together.”
[Further responses please to inbox[bat]headstar.com].
+08: Patient Inspiration: Jonathan Fisher, a reader from Surrey,
writes in to say he will be spreading the messages from new
work being developed by accessibility consultant and academic
Dr Howard Leicester, who wrote in our last issue about his
project to develop standards for more accessible patient
records.
“What a greatly absorbing set of topics are dealt with in the
latest bulletin,” Fisher writes.
“As a member of my local hospital’s disability access group,
Ashford and St. Peter’s Foundation Trust, I am motivated to
pass on the comments about patient information. I will be
forwarding this bulletin to employed colleagues of this group.
“Like so many things, it seems to me that there are too many
folks out there all trying to invent their own shaped wheel. As
Surrey is a neighbouring county to Kent, it makes sense to me
to try and promote collaboration.”
[Further responses please to inbox[bat]headstar.com].
[Section Two ends].
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++Section Three: News Analysis
- International Law.
+09: Prospects Brighten For Copyright Exception Treatyby Dan Jellinek.
The prospect of agreement on an international treaty to allow
accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across
borders, giving people with print disabilities wider access to
books, has brightened following a recent meeting of the World
Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
At a specially-extended June session in Geneva of the
organisation’s standing committee on copyright and related
rights (SCCR), WIPO member states agreed to merge
previously separated formal positions on the issue into a single
draft document, clearing the way for treaty negotiations later
this year, E-Access Bulletin has learned.
Before the meeting, discussion of the issue had been
fragmented between four draft texts developed separately by
the World Blind Union; a grouping of African countries; the
EU; and the US. In the run-up to the June meeting, the WBU
had facilitated the merger of these documents into a single new
draft.
“That was a big success, as countries were no longer defending
their own proposals,” Dan Pescod, WBU Vice Chair, told E-
Access Bulletin this month. “We are pleased with the text –
negotiation by committee is always a compromise, but we are
80% of the way towards an acceptable final text of a law.”
Areas of compromise in drawing up the single text include a
softer wording on the relationship between the new copyright
exception law and contract law, Pescod said. “We wanted
something that made it very clear that contract law could not
undermine copyright exceptions, but it has been left somewhat
open to interpretation in the new text as currently worded,” he
said. “It has left it to member states to decide how they address
this issue, whereas the WBU does not want any rights-holder to
be able to draw up a contract which removes the copyright
exception.”
Another ongoing area of debate is the issue of which
organisations will be permitted to send digital files across
borders under the copyright exception, Pescod said.
Some rightsholder groups want a system of formal
requirements to determine who can become such ‘trusted
intermediaries’, and also which books can be sent and which
ones can’t, he said. But the WBU would prefer a less formal
system whereby ‘authorised entities’ would not have to be pre-
approved, or gain fresh permission each time for individual
titles.
The discussion now moves on to the next SCCR meeting on 21
November, where the detail of the final text could be decided,
and a decision taken as to whether it will become a full
international treaty or simply a ‘recommendation’.
The EU has been the biggest block on creation of a full treaty
(see E-access Bulletin, April issue
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=581 ), with strong
pressure from rightsholders in countries including France to
resist any systematic exceptions to copyright law.
But this would represent double standards, Pescod said. “In the
very same committee meeting this June, WIPO Member States
agreed that a treaty on the protection of audiovisual
performances should be concluded. We do not think print
disabled people deserve a lesser solution.”
And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=615[Section Three ends].
++Sponsored Notice: Accessify Forum
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Celebrating our sixth birthday next month, you’ll find
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The site has recently been redesigned and the forum system
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So whether you’re looking to learn more about accessibility,
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http://www.accessifyforum.com/[Special notice ends].
++End Notes.
+How to Receive the Bulletin.
To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, email
eab-subs[bat]headstar.com
with 'subscribe eab' in the subject header. You can list other
email addresses to subscribe in the body of the message. Please
encourage all your colleagues to sign up! To unsubscribe at any
time, put 'unsubscribe eab' in the subject header.
Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
dan[bat]headstar.com .
Copyright 2011 Headstar Ltd
http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including
this copyright notice are included, and as long as people are
always encouraged to subscribe with us individually by email.
Please also inform the editor when you are reproducing our
content. Sections of the bulletin may be quoted as long as they
are clearly sourced as 'taken from e-access bulletin, a free
monthly email newsletter', and our web site address:
http://www.headstar.com/eabis also cited.
+Personnel:
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Editorial advisors: Kevin Carey, Tristan Parker.
ISSN 1476-6337.
[Issue 139 ends.]
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