Determination and evaluation of web accessibility

The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; however, access to the web and its many applications cannot be taken for granted. Web accessibility encompasses a variety of concerns ranging from societal, political, and economic to individual, physical, and intellectual through to the purely technical. Thus, there are many perspectives from which web accessibility can be understood and evaluated. In order to discuss these concerns and to gain a better understanding of web accessibility, an accessibility framework is proposed using as its base a layered evaluation framework from Computer Supported Co-operative Work research and the ISO standard, ISO/IEC 9126 on software quality. The former is employed in recognition of the collaborative nature of the web and its importance in facilitating communication. The latter is employed to refine and extend the technical issues and to highlight the need for considering accessibility from the viewpoint of the web developer and maintainer as well as the web user. A technically inaccessible web is unlikely to be evolved over time. A final goal of the accessibility framework is to provide web developers and maintainers with a practical basis for considering web accessibility through the development of a set of accessibility factors associated with each identified layer

Determination and evaluation of Web accessibility

The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; however, access to the web and its many applications cannot be taken for granted. Web accessibility encompasses a variety of concerns ranging from societal, political, and economic to individual, physical, and intellectual through to the purely technical. Thus, there are many perspectives from which web accessibility can be understood and evaluated. In order to discuss these concerns and to gain a better understanding of web accessibility, an accessibility framework is proposed using as its base a layered evaluation framework from Computer Supported Co-operative Work research and the ISO standard, ISO/IEC 9126 on software quality. The former is employed in recognition of the collaborative nature of the web and its importance in facilitating communication. The latter is employed to refine and extend the technical issues and to highlight the need for considering accessibility from the viewpoint of the web developer and maintainer as well as the web user. A technically inaccessible web is unlikely to be evolved over time. A final goal of the accessibility framework is to provide web developers and maintainers with a practical basis for considering web accessibility through the development of a set of accessibility factors associated with each identified layer

Supporting collaborative grid application development within the escience community

The systemic representation and organisation of software artefacts, e.g. specifications, designs, interfaces, and implementations, resulting from the development of large distributed systems from software components have been addressed by our research within the Practitioner and AMES projects [1,2,3,4]. Without appropriate representations and organisations, large collections of existing software are not amenable to the activities of software reuse and software maintenance, as these activities are likely to be severely hindered by the difficulties of understanding the software applications and their associated components. In both of these projects, static analysis of source code and other development artefacts, where available, and subsequent application of reverse engineering techniques were successfully used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the software applications under study [5,6]. Later research addressed the maintenance of a component library in the context of component-based software product line development and maintenance [7]. The classic software decompositions, horizontal and vertical, proposed by Goguen [8] influenced all of this research. While they are adequate for static composition, they fail to address the dynamic aspects of composing large distributed software applications from components especially where these include software services. The separation of component co-ordination concerns from component functionality proposed in [9] offers a partial solution

Supporting collaboration within the eScience community

Collaboration is a core activity at the heart of large-scale co- operative scientific experimentation. In order to support the emergence of Grid-based scientific collaboration, new models of e-Science working methods are needed. Scientific collaboration involves production and manipulation of various artefacts. Based on work done in the software engineering field, this paper proposes models and tools which will support the representation and production of such artefacts. It is necessary to provide facilities to classify, organise, acquire, process, share, and reuse artefacts generated during collaborative working. The concept of a "design space" will be used to organise scientific design and the composition of experiments, and methods such as self-organising maps will be used to support the reuse of existing artefacts. It is proposed that this work can be carried out and evaluated in the UK e-Science community, using an "industry as laboratory" approach to the research, building on the knowledge, expertise, and experience of those directly involved in e-Science

Blindness and Online Interaction: Beyond Design Standards

The use of internet and other communication technologies has become predominantly common in the life of normal sighted users. In order to have a fair level of equality in the society, blind people must also be able to use these facilities with equal ease and effectiveness. Recent studies showed that the usage and acceptance rate of online applications among the blind community is not up to the expectations. The aim of this article is to investigate the accessibility issues faced by blind people during online interaction like eGovernment portals. Results showed that a WCAG compliant eGovernment website failed to satisfy the requirements of a sample of blind users. This article is part of on-going research aimed to uncover accessibility problems that could be faced by blinds during online interaction and are not addressed in accessibility standards. It attempts to understand cognition and perception thoughts of a blind user while interacting with a web-based environment. Keywords: Blindness, Web Accessibility, WCA

Design and Development of a Prototype for a Web-Based Interface for Online Material for Tanzanian Youth

 prototype of a web-based interface for an online database was developed to be used by youth organizations in Dar-es-Salaam. A participatory approach involving secondary students in the identification of user interface requirements, in designing and testing the prototype was used. A questionnaire was designed and manned in seven secondary schools in Dar-es-Salaam to estimate the Internet usage. Interviews were conducted to countercheck the questionnaire responses. The interview and the questionnaire helped to come up with a set of user requirements for the web-based interface of an online information search. From thespecifications of the user requirements the author was able to create a youth-friendly web based prototype that can be used by youth groups in Dar-es-Salaam

Supporting Collaborative Grid Application Development within the eScience Community

Collaboration by use of common artifacts is at the core of e-science. A recent enabling technology is the Grid, which ties together heterogeneous computation and data resources through the use of middleware, linking the techniques and resources to infer higher-level knowledge. This article presents results from research and development of Grid technology for semantic interoperability between scientific artifacts on the web. The research employs the ‘industry-as-laboratory’ approach to software development. This means development of theory and models through successive implementations, their deployment in pilot studies and subsequent evaluation studies. The research is exemplified through the case of the OSCAR project, which is directed to the domain of bioinformatics

Acessibilidade em ambientes informacionais digitais

Web accessibility and the availability of digital information content are analyzed from the perspective of Inclusive Digital Information Architecture. This methodology is focused on improving the quality of life of the users with special needs by facilitating their participation in digital information environments.Investigación sobre la accesibilidad web y la disponibilidad de la informacional digital desde la perspectiva de la Arquitectura de la Información Digital Inclusiva para diferentes públicos. Dicho enfoque busca la inclusión de usuarios con necesidades especiales en ambientes informacionales digitales, buscando mejorar su calidad de vida

Evaluating accessibility of Malaysian public universities websites using AChecker and WAVE

Websites become essential means for most universities to communicate, exchange of relevant information and enable transactions among their stakeholders.Therefore, website accessibility accessible website is crucial to students to ensure equal access to of the university's information regardless of their physical disabilities and other possible limitations.This study reports the web accessibility of 20 Malaysian public universities based on AChecker and WAVE.The results suggest a relatively low level of compliance to the guidelines as specified in WCAG 2.0 and Section 508. Among the aspects that deserve immediate attention are the provision of text alternatives for any non-text contents, keyboard accessibility and colour contrast.Other concerns such as navigation, adaptability, input assistance, compatibility, empty link and empty heading can be further improved. Regardless of low conformance, most websites extensively integrated some of the accessibility features as set out by Section 508.Overall, this study offers meaningful insights, particularly to web developers for better compliance with the standards while designing their websites

Acessibilidade web para pessoas com deficiência visual : propostas para o site do LEA-MSI da Universidade de Brasília

Monografia (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução, Línguas Estrangeiras Aplicadas ao Multilinguismo e à Sociedade da Informação, 2016.Este trabalho tem o objetivo de verificar se o site do curso LEA-MSI da Universidade de Brasília levou em conta algum parâmetro de acessibilidade em sua concepção para atender de forma satisfatória as pessoas com algum tipo de deficiência visual. Além disso, proponho um modelo para o site com a finalidade de consertar os erros encontrados e torná-lo mais acessível. A análise e o reparo foram feitos por meio dos graus de conformidade das WCAG 2.0 que visam tornar a web um espaço mais igualitário para os usuários com deficiência. A pesquisa se faz relevante, pois, segundo o censo de 2010 divulgado pelo IBGE, mais de 45.6 milhões (23.91%, da população brasileira) possui algum tipo de deficiência, sendo que desses, 18,8% apresentam deficiência visual, 3,44% tem deficiência visual severa e há mais de 500 mil pessoas cegas. Isso demonstra a importância e necessidade de incluir a acessibilidade no mundo digital, uma vez que a web se tornou um dos principais meios de comunicação que existe atualmente e que deveria ser uma ferramenta acessível para toda a população, incluindo as pessoas que possuem algum tipo de deficiência. Assim sendo, a acessibilidade na rede seria um meio de disponibilizar a cada usuário interfaces que respeitem suas necessidades e preferências.This work aims to verify if the website of the course LEA-MSI, from the University of Brasília, took into account any accessibility guidelines in its confection to attend in a satisfactory way people with some kind of visual impairment. Furthermore, a model for the website is proposed in order to fix the errors that were found and make it more accessible. Analysis and repairs were done through the WCAG 2.0 conformance degrees, whose goal is to turn the web a fairer space to people with disabilities. This research is relevant because according to the 2010 census released by the IBGE, more than 45.6 million (23.91% of the Brazilian population) has some type of disability, of these, 18,8% have visual impairment, 3.44% have severe visual impairment and over 500,000 people are blind. This demonstrates the importance and need to include accessibility in the digital world, since the web has become one of the major means of communication that currently exist and it should be an accessible tool for the entire population, including people who have some kind of disability. Therefore, accessibility on the network would be a means to provide each user with interfaces that meet their needs and preferences