OZeWAI @ OZCHI 2009

Roger HudsonWeb Usability

Carrots and Sticks

10 Years On

Web use today

Social Networking: 16 sites

Search: 12 sites

Technology: 11 sites

Buying & selling: 9 sites

News: 7 sites

Banking: 7 sites

Porn: 5 sites

Govt services: 4 sites

Most visited site categories

(from the top 100)

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

Accessibility: Better or Worse?

5 Most visited corporate sites(Australia)

WAVE Home page errors

Non-W3C content on home page?

JavaScript used on the home page?

Google Australia

4 No Yes

ebay Australia

20 Yes Yes

NineMSN 52 Yes Yes

News.com.au 21 Yes Yes

SMH 14 Yes Yes

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

5 Most visited Government sites(Australia)

WAVE Home page errors

Non-W3C content on home page?

JavaScript used on the home page?

ABC 1 Yes Yes

Bureau of Meteorology

3 No Yes

NSW Govt 14 No Yes

Vic Govt 5 No Yes

Qld Govt 11 No Yes

Source: Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/)

Different Disabilities

Sight 34%

Physical 20%

Intellectual 4%

Psychiatric 5%

Acqd Brain Damage 5%

Some ABS stats

Source: ABS Disability, Ageing and Careers survey

Intellectual disability 56%

Physical disability 17%

Hearing loss 14%

Visual loss 9%

Autism 3%

Source: Jaye Johnson, “Students with Disabilities in Post Secondary Education. Issues and Trends For a New Decade”

Of Year 12 Students with a disability, percentage of different disabilities

Cognitive and learning disorders?

“The incidence of learning disability in Australia, as in other western countries, is suggested to be 10% to 12% of the population, with 4% being severely affected”.

Learning disabilities

Carrots and sticks

Speak softly & carry a big stick

Shout& a Small twig

Regulators

Universality: Web for all?

It ain't 1999: Party or no party

More web content technologies

WCAG 1.0 –

Technological prohibition

Killing Bambi

Technological Technological diversitydiversity

WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Support

WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Support 1.Content works with assistive

technologies

2.User agents are available and don't discriminate

WCAG squib

Technology cross-roads

Prohibition

Acceptance

NZ Guidelines WCAG 2.0, Level AA

• Do not rely on scripts, applets and other programmatic objects (e.g. Flash, Silverlight and Javascript)

• Do not provide content in document formats other than HTML (e.g. PDF, RTF, Word, Flash, etc)

Source: NZ Government Web Standards, http://www.webstandards.govt.nz/technical/

Time for a rethink

Sticks don't always work

Incentives not barriers

“Carrots are better than sticks” New Scientist, Sept 2009

Look to the future

Embrace WCAG 2.0

Forgive the sins of the past

Assistive TechnologiesNot content Technologies

Conformance requirements

Compliance statements

Developer resources

Educate assistive technology users

Gov 2.0For everyone?

Thank you

Comments please

Roger Hudson

Email: rhudson@usability.com.au

Web: www.usability.com.au

Blog: www.dingoaccess.com