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Web Accessibility for Municipalities How to meet compliance requirements and better engage all your citizens July 2013
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Web Accessibility for MunicipalitiesHow to meet compliance requirements and better engage all your citizens
July 2013
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Overview
It’s all about municipal website accessibility
• Part 1: Why make your municipal website accessible?
• Part 2: When do you have to make it accessible?
• Part 3: What makes it accessible?
• Part 4: How to make it accessible?
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Accessible websites needed for people with disabilities
• 15% of the world's population, or 1 billion people, live with a disability1
• They are the world's largest minority2
• Individuals spend on average 8 years living with a disability2
1 World Health Organization, World report on disability, http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2011/WHO_NMH_VIP_11.01_eng.pdf2 United Nations Factsheet on Persons with Disabilities: http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18Note on 2: applies to countries with life expectancies over 70 years, such as Canada
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Canada’s disabled population: increasing with age
• 56% of seniors over 75 have a disability1
• Today 1 in 7 Ontarians have a disability
1 Public Health Agency of Canada, The Senior Audience: Large, Growing and Diverse http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/publications/public/various-varies/afcomm-commavecaines/3-eng.php
Source: 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey
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Reach a growing and affluent group
• By 2031, 6+ million Ontarians either be living with a disability or will be over age 55, accounting for 40% of all income1
61 Government of Ontario, Why Accessibility is good for Ontariohttp://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/documents/en/mcss/accessibility/Ont_InfoGraph-EN.pdf
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Why change? The case for accessibility
Save money• Lower cost to serve through better access
to information and services• Comply with Ontario government legislation
to avoid fines of upwards of $100,000 per day1
• Savings from improved server performance and decreased site maintenance2
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1 9th Sphere, Ontario Website Owners Must Know – Make Your Website AODA Compliant http://www.9thsphere.com/blog/aoda-compliance/ 2 Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/Overview.html
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Why change? The case for accessibility
Engage your citizens• Enable persons with disabilities and older users to interact with you
online instead of more costly ways (offline)
Provide better information• Accessible websites have better search results1
• Make it easier to inform your citizens of community events and issues
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1 Government of Ontario, Making your website more accessible http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/publications/accessON/accessible_websites/make.aspx
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Legislation
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)
• AODA – Ontario Regulation 429/07 Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
• Customer Service Standard came into effect January 1, 2012
• Applies to municipal websites
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Legislation timeline – when you need to comply
111 Ontario MEDTE, Make your website accessible, http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/accessibility/info_sheets/info_comm/website.aspx
• Applies to public sector organizations, businesses and non-profit organizations with 50+ staff1
Type of Content Compliance Requirements Deadline
New public websites and web content
WCAG 2.0 Level A 2014
All public websites and web content posted after January 1, 2012
WCAG 2.0 Level AA Excludes captions and pre-recorded audio descriptions
2021
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What is a “new” website?
121 Ontario MEDTE, Making your website accessible, http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/documents/en/mcss/accessibility/iasr_guides/website_en.pdf
• A “new” website is1: o A website with a new domain name (e.g. www.newbusiness.ca)o A website undergoing a “significant refresh”:
• Changing more than 50% of the content, design or technology of the website
Content Design TechnologyCreating, rewriting or reorganizing more than 50% of the site’s content, such as graphics, text, widgets, etc.
Changing more than 50% of the design elements, such as layout, navigation, placement and style.
Changing more than 50% of the web publishing platform/model such as the content management system (CMS), Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) or HTML structure.
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What is an accessible website?
A website that is designed based on 4 principles1
1. Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presented to users in a way that are easy to perceive
2. Operable: User interface components and navigation must be functional and useful
3. Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must be easy to comprehend
4. Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies
141 W3C Web Accessibility Initiativehttp://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
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Principle #1: Perceivable
Information and user interface components must be presented to users in a way that is easy to perceive.1
• Barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities:o Information conveyed solely with coloro Large pages or large imageso Multimedia with no captionso Audio-only prompts (beeps) for important information (warnings, errors)o Non-text objects (images, sound, video) with no text alternativeo Text entryo Content formatted using tables or CSS, and reading order not correct when linearized
(for example when CSS or tables not rendered)o Information conveyed only using CSS (visual formatting)
151 W3C Web Accessibility Initiativehttp://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
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Principle #2: Operable
User interface components and navigation must be functional and useful.1
• Barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities:o Mouse required for interaction and navigationo Scripting required to operate contento Special plug-in requiredo Missing or inappropriate page titleo Inconsistency between focus (tab) order and logical document content
sequenceo Non descriptive link label
161 W3C Web Accessibility Initiativehttp://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
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Principle #3: Understandable
Information and the operation of the user interface must be easy to comprehend. 1
• Barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities:o Long words, long and complex sentences, jargono Content spawning new windows without warning usero Blinking, moving, scrolling or auto-updating content
171 W3C Web Accessibility Initiativehttp://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
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Principle #4: Robust
Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.1
• Barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities:o Invalid or unsupported markupo Scripting required to generate content
181 W3C Web Accessibility Initiativehttp://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
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Examples of conformance
• A school board has posted a video on its website to explain their adult learning programs; the video is captioned for people with hearing loss1
• Textual equivalents provided for images – used for screen readers
• Label, underline or differentiate hyperlinks for those who are colour-blind
191 Government of Ontario, The Accessibility Standard for Information and Communications http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/accessibility/info_comm/index.aspx
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Examples of conformance
• Larger text and images, or the ability to enlarge text and images (screen magnification)
• Clickable areas made larger to assist those who cannot maneuver a mouse easily
• For content pages with time limits, users should be able to turn off, adjust or extend the time limit unless the limit is essential and would invalidate the activity
201 Government of Ontario, The Accessibility Standard for Information and Communications http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/accessibility/info_comm/index.aspx
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Examples of conformance
• Include a mechanism to allow users to identify definitions of idioms, jargon and abbreviations
• Use consistent navigational mechanisms on web pages – content appears and operates in predictable ways
• Website content should be “conversion ready” – content must be readily convertible into an accessible format
More information can be found here: WCAG 2.0
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AODA Compliance Wizard
• This Government of Ontario tool helps you determine your municipality’s compliance requirements
• Free to use
• Takes less than 5 minutes to complete
• AODA Compliance Wizard
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AODA Compliance Wizard
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Accessibility compliance tips
241 Government of Ontario, Make your website accessiblehttp://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/accessibility/info_sheets/info_comm/website.aspx
Tips from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Trade And Employment (MEDTE), the ministry responsible for the implementation of AODA1:
• Talk to your organization’s web developer about complying with the requirements
• Use MEDTE’s Making your website more accessible guide to help you work with web developers, whether they are in-house staff or external contractors
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Accessibility compliance tips
• Review the software used to support accessibility on your website• You may need to repair the software to meet the WCAG 2.0 requirements
• Make your web content accessible at Level AA now• Reduces the amount of changes you’ll have to make to your website down the
road• May reduce requests you receive for accessible formats or communications
supports
251 Government of Ontario, Make your website accessiblehttp://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/accessibility/info_sheets/info_comm/website.aspx
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Resources to help you comply
• The Government of Ontario:o Accessibility Standard for Customer S
ervice: employer handbooko A Guide to the Integrated Accessibility
Standards Regulation, Section 14, Accessible Websites and Web Content
• W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0:o 12 guidelines that are organized
under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust
• Free Tools:o Achecker: checks single HTML pages
for conformance with accessibility standards
o ChromaNope: simulates how a website looks to one with a form of colour-blindness
o WC3’s markup validator: checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML documents
o Juicy Studio: tests the readability of a website
o Complete list of web accessibility evaluation tools from WC3
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Want to learn how the City of Kingston improved its municipal website with the help of Intelliware?
Check out:
www.intelliware.com/intelliware-launches-hosted-portal-solution-for-municipalities/
