Validation Resources and Articles

Validation Resources and Articles

 Writing Code in Your Posts
 Fixing Your Website
 Mark Freeman's Many Links to Validation Resources
 Squarefree's Bookmarketlets (JavaScript for web page testing)
 Walidator.com
 Understanding How HTML Validators Work
 You Call That Web Site Testing?
 What Every Web Site Owner Should Know About Standards: A Web Standards Primer

Usability is achieved by

Usability is achieved by:
• Focusing on understanding users; their tasks, goals, models and context
• Clearly define success; organizational goals and user goals
• Design to meet specific and measurable goals
• Design iteratively
• Evaluate early and often

Progressive Enhancement

Progressive Enhancement

People have the right to obtain information and services from web sites regardless of the technologies they use. The key to effective implementation of universal accessibility lies in designing sites to serve the widest possible audience and the broadest possible range of hardware and software platforms, from adaptive technologies to emerging technologies.

In the past, the graceful degradation approach was used to ensure the widest possible audience was being served. The graceful degradation approach involves designing a Web site for one or more target configurations, then including functional but degraded support for other configurations. The graceful degradation approach works well when designing a basic template, but it can be problematic since it tends to limit the introduction of emerging technologies and enhanced interface options to ensure compatibility with adaptive technologies and other configurations.

As a result of these limitations, there has been a shift in recent years away from the graceful degradation approach towards the progressive enhancement approach for embedded multimedia and other Web page enhancements. The progressive enhancement approach involves designing Web content for the least capable configurations first, and then introducing a series of enhancements based on the capability of each client’s configuration. This approach is an improvement over graceful degradation because it encourages the introduction of emerging technologies and enhanced interface options without compromising the support for less capable configurations.

INDUSTRY STANDARDS

INDUSTRY STANDARDS


W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

The (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C's primary activity is to developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. W3C's standards define key parts of what makes the World Wide Web work.

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guideline)

WCAG defines the requirements for making Web content accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning difficulties, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech difficulties, and others. Adhering to WCAG will make your Web content more usable to many other users, including older users. It will also enable people to access Web content using many different devices - including a wide variety of assistive technologies and mobile technologies.

WCAG 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. The guidelines do not include standard usability recommendations except where they have specific impact on accessibility.

WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)

WAI-ARIA is a technical specification that provides a framework to improve the accessibility and interoperability of web content and applications.

Aspects of traditional HTML make accessible support of dynamic content difficult:
Accessibility relies on abstracting semantics from both content and presentational information. Extracting semantic cues from current HTML content is typically unreliable as the cues are limited to tag elements names.

HTML allows content to be repurposed for presentational formatting without providing a way to convey semantic information. A common example of this content formatted with tables rather than style sheets.

When combined with script and CSS, HTML can be repurposed to create dynamic custom components without providing a means to convey semantic information to native accessibility architectures designed to support dynamic GUI content.
HTML lacks the ability to attach meaningful metadata about document structure.
HTML elements commonly used for repurposing produce custom components that are not keyboard accessible.

Authors of JavaScript-generated content do not want to limit themselves to using standard tag elements that define the actual user interface element such as tables, ordered lists, etc. Rather, they make extensive use of elements such as DIV tags in which they dynamically apply a UI through the use of style sheets and dynamic content changes. HTML DIV tags provide no semantic information. For example, authors may define a DIV as the start of a pop-up menu or even an ordered list. However, no HTML mechanism exists to:

• Identify the role of the DIV as a pop-up menu
• Alert assistive technology when these elements have focus
• Convey accessibility property information, such as whether the pop-up menu is collapsed or expanded
• Define what actions can be formed on the element other than through a device-dependent means through the event handler type (onMouseover, onClick, etc.)
• In short, JavaScript needs accessibility architecture to write to such that a solution can be mapped to the accessibility frameworks on the native platform by the user agent.

Section 508 Introduction

Section 508 is a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which requires that electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the Federal government be accessible to people with disabilities. On August 7, 1998, the President signed into law the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, which includes the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. Section 508 was originally added to the Rehabilitation Act in 1986; the 1998 amendments significantly expand and strengthen the technology access requirements in Section 508.

Section 508 applies to Federal departments and agencies.  Because the Section 508 standards will be incorporated into the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), agencies' procurement of accessible technology will be subject to the same stringent compliance and enforcement mechanisms as other parts of the FAR.

There is an administrative complaint process which becomes effective six months after the Board issued its final standards. It enables any individual with a disability to file a complaint alleging that a Federal department or agency has not complied with the accessible technology standards in a procurement made after that date. The complaint process is the same as that used for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, for complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of disability in Federally-conducted programs or activities. It provides injunctive relief and attorney's fees to the prevailing party, but does not include compensatory or punitive damages. Individuals may also file a civil action against an agency.

Federal agencies which provide information to the public or to their employees through Web sites must ensure that such sites are available to all persons with internet or intranet access, including persons with disabilities.

Section 508 in no way replaces or otherwise limits the rights or remedies available under any other existing Federal law that protects the rights of people with disabilities. As part of the Rehabilitation Act, it clarifies and strengthens the Federal government's existing obligation to ensure that technology is accessible to people with disabilities.

The principles of Section 508 are also enforced within other countries.  For example, Ireland has legislated ‘The Disability Act, 2005’; ‘The Equal Status Act, 2000’; ‘The Employment Equality Act, 1998’.  New Zealand has also legislated ‘The Human Rights Act 1993’ and ‘Human Rights Amendment Act 2001’.