Main Points Delivered at the First European eAccessibility Forum

by Destry Wion  ::  published 14 March 07    

Right after attending the eAccessibility Forum in Paris, I had to write a synopsis about it at work, it was my obligation back to the Web department for having been sent on the company’s dime. The synopsis turned out to be 16 pages (including pictures), and though I doubt many of my colleagues read it, I did get two positive responses. One was a single-word, “wow” (via e-mail), and the other was a person asking if I had experience as a professional writer. I don’t mind saying it, that’s the kind of feedback I like to get.

I originally intended to do a similar article here as a post Forum follow-up, but the eAccessibility Forum Proceedings have since come online so I am taking the short and easy way out by simply providing a list of main points I felt were particularly relevant or otherwise noteworthy.

Again I’ll point out the Forum Proceedings, and I suggest you check them out if you want more details about the individual talks because I’m not going to cover that in this article; however, to prime a little interest for you, speakers included Richard Schwerdtfeger (IBM), lead of the W3C/WAI Accessible Rich Internet Applications milestone which has been getting a lot of attention; Christian Heilmann (Yahoo UK), a prolific proponent of Web accessibility who I happened to see swapping business cards with Miguel Ganzález-Sancho, Director General of the European Commission’s Society of Information, eInclusion Unit (sheesh, what am I, a tabloid?); Michael Cooper, contact and lead of the W3C/WAI/WCAG, who had some interesting things to say about the future of the WCAG and the industry of accessibility; and Julie Howell (Fortune Cookie UK), who drafted the UK‘s Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites, otherwise known as the PAS-78. There were, of course, a lot more presenters than that, and all interesting.

I would also like to point out that the forum was made especially rich with the attendance of people of varying ages and physical abilities, both co-presenting demonstrations and in the audience. There were plenty of seeing eye pooches on hand too.

So, without further delay, here are the main points I found to be relevent or particularly interesting from the day’s events.

List of Main Points

Items are in no particular order.

  1. Prepare accessibility guidelines for your company and use them religiously in project development. Routinely review the guidelines and keep them current with changing trends, references, and laws.
  2. Development of company guidelines should begin with a foundation on international standards, which are then mapped to any regional authorities, labels, or methodologies, and finally structured in such a way to be practical for the company to use (easy to understand and aimed at the kinds of products the company produces).
  3. Real user testing—and not simply the use of automated tools—should be a fundamental and mandatory part of the accessibility development process. At the very least this means performing simulation tests as real people with disabilities would use products, but even better is to actually test products with people having disabilities. (Hence, company guidelines should also define real user testing protocols.)
  4. When a real accessibility success story is realized, write it up in a polished article and publish it for the world to see. This is something considerably lacking in the Web right now and perhaps one reason why accessibility still bears the black label. Stories of accessibility successes like a positive return on investment are not only good for the industry, but may be good for your company’s public image too. Oh, and if your company doesn’t have a business blog, this is one good reason you should start one — the success stories.
  5. Begin Web projects the right way, by starting with accessibility and then finishing with aesthetics, not the other way around. In other words, don’t begin with a visual design and then shoehorn the code into the design. Ultimately, use visual pleasantries correctly, sparingly (though not Spartanly) and with reason.
  6. Be proactive about accessibility. Don’t be driven by customer frustration, and don’t wait until legislation requires you to do it. Furthermore, being accessible improves the Return on Investment of a Web sight substantially, so the sooner a Web site is accessible, the sooner the returns are realized.
  7. Begin thinking about accessibility for mobility. The use of handheld devices is expected to increase substantially in all markets as telecommunications technology improves, and as more mobile devices enter the market aimed at user with disabilities. Again, don’t wait to be driven by customer frustration.
  8. It is inevitable that a new accessibility industry will arise, and accessibility professionals will emerge in response. These people will have clearly defined roles in a Web team just like the front-end developer and the graphic designer. Companies who recognize this, and who define and fill accessibility roles in their Web teams will be ahead of the growing trend.

In closing, a big thanks to Bernard Ourghanlian at Microsoft France for providing me with the hard-to-find English version of Microsoft’s guide for producing accessible Web sites. Don’t laugh, people, it’s one of the most succinct white papers I’ve seen on the subject, and it takes into account the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology, which is a key topic in my next article.

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