How the web continues to fail people with disabilities

The digital divide is most often understood as that between the IT haves and have-nots. However, if there is one minority group that can be, and often is excluded from the world wide web, even if they have a computer, it is disabled people. The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Act 2001 (SENDA) extended the provisions within the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 regarding the provision of services to the education sector. Yet accessible web design, dependent on professional coding standards, adherence to guidelines, and user testing, remains rare on the web. This paper examines the background to professional coding standards, and adherence to guidelines, in an attempt to find out why the web continues to fail people with disabilities. It begins by examining the progress of the transition in the 1990s from old style HTML to strict XHTML. It applauds the vision behind that transition, charts its progress identifying the principle constituencies that it involves – and how well each has played its part. It then focuses on the further problem of the requirement for user testing to iron out anomalies not covered by standards and guidelines. It concludes that validating XHTML code is desirable, but that user testing also needs to be undertaken. It identifies the complex and heterogeneous network of interrelated concerns through which the needs of disabled web users remain unheeded. To support its argument, the paper details the results of two studies – 1) of the homepages of 778 public bodies and blue chip companies, which found only 8% of homepages validated against any declared Document Type Declarations (DTD), and 2) a wider research project on employment websites which also included disabled user testing and a number of focus groups and interviews with disabled users and web development companies

Combating e-discrimination in the North West - final report

The Combating eDiscimination in the North West project examined over 100 websites advertising job opportunities both regionally and nationally, and found the vast majority to be largely inaccessible. Professional standards, such as using valid W3C code and adhering to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, were largely not followed. The project also conducted interviews with both public and private sector web professionals, and focus groups of disabled computer users, to draw a broader picture of the accessibility of jobs websites. Interviews with leading web development companies in the Greater Manchester region, showed that there is a view there should not be any additional cost in making websites accessible, as the expertise to create a site professionally should be in place from the start, and that accessibility will follow from applying professional standards. However, through the process of trying to create a website for the project, with such a company, it was found that following professional standards is not sufficient to catch all the potential problems, and that user testing is an essential adjunct to professional practice. The main findings of the project are, thus, that: • Most websites in the job opportunities sector are not following professional standards of web development, and are largely inaccessible • Professional standards of web development need to be augmented with user testing to ensure proper accessibility

Raising awareness of the accessibility challenges in mathematics MOOCs

MOOCs provide learning environments that make it easier for learners to study from anywhere, at their own pace and with open access to content. This has revolutionised the field of eLearning, but accessibility continues to be a problem, even more so if we include the complexity of the STEM disciplines which have their own specific characteristics. This work presents an analysis of the accessibility of several MOOC platforms which provide courses in mathematics. We attempt to visualise the main web accessibility problems and challenges that disabled learners could face in taking these types of courses, both in general and specifically in the context of the subject of mathematics