Scenario Girl

Aging, Cognition & Deafness

Published by scenariogirl August 12th, 2008 in Accessibility and Events. 6 Comments

Some of you may already know that I worked as an Auslan sign language interpreter for many years prior to working on the web. It was a brilliant job that presented me with so many experiences I would have never otherwise had, interpreting all kinds of things from flower arranging to colt castration, dental hygiene for animals (using the head of a dead dog) to job interviews, work place training and medial appointments.

Initially I was worried that over time I’d lose touch with the language, culture and connection I had as I moved to an online environment. So it’s very cool to find myself in a place where I’ve been able to connect such diverse professions into something deeper than either could have been on their own.

Good things come to those who wait

Fingers crossed, I’ll be presenting a panel at South by South West next March with two friends I greatly respect and have the huge honour of working with through WaSP’s International Liaison Group: Henny Swan and Glenda Simms.

The panel is called Aging, Cognition & Deafness: The Quirky Corners of Web Accessibility, and this is what we want to say:

Bored with accessibility? Over AJAX, ARIA and yet another Jaws demo for dummies? Struggling to find a challenge in checklists? Join us in discussing the quirky corners of web accessibility where we’ll look at technical approaches to aging, deafness, cognitive disabilities and more.

During the panel we hope to cover questions such as:

How does deafness impact on access to online information?
Are subtitles enough to provide accessible content to the deaf?
What techniques can I apply to make my site more accessible to the deaf?
What sort of research has been done around people with multiple disabilities?
Which WCAG criteria do I need to be aware of?
Are there different considerations in user testing sites with deaf/aged/cognition users?
Why are clinical cognitive disabilities less important than functional cognitive disabilities in web design?
What design techniques can improve the usability of online forms for older users?
Can rich media projects like SecondLife be accessible?
How could I increase the readability of a web page for a person with dyslexia?

If you think it sounds interesting, give us your vote… Even if you can’t make it over to Austin next year, hopefully it’ll ensure I do ;)

Coming Out

Published by scenariogirl May 10th, 2008 in Accessibility. 6 Comments

‘Coming Out’ is a fantastic short film signed in BSL (British Sign Language) with subtitles and a great twist at the end.

The premiere of this film was at last January’s London Deaf Film Festival. The film went on to win a Clin d’Oeil European Video Award in Paris, and last weekend won best foreign film voted by the audience at the Viittomakielinen filmifestivaali, a deaf film festival in Finland.- Via Grumpy Old Deafies

I’d love to know what you think of it…

(Length of film: 6 minutes)

They Should Know So Much Better

Published by scenariogirl May 9th, 2008 in Accessibility and Site Reviews. 10 Comments

Evaluating the accessibility of a site is an involved process that takes time and can’t always be automated.

Yes there are some helpful tools available, but many times it’s a matter of looking at the code, the interface or the content and evaluating a site manually. Sometimes things are so painfully obvious, it takes half a nanosecond to see that there’s a problem and wow, it’s so big it’s a joke.

Given that it’s 2008, most of these sites are around ten years old. But every now and then there’s a new kid on the block and, well… don’t you just wish someone had told them boy bands died out in the 90’s…?

Three months ago I was sent a link to the relaunched UTS Interactive Multimedia course site. I’ll give you the link in a second, but before I do, let me issue this warning: If you suffer from seizures, don’t go there sister.

The Home page has been designed with an “interesting” Flash animation that strobes colour at a rate I’m guessing is much faster than 3 blinks per second.

It absolutely astounds me that a design like that has made it into a redesign in 2008. Worse still, I emailed the department as soon as I saw it and advised them that the flashing seemed quite a high rate and pointed them to the appropriate WCAG checkpoint 7.1, a Priority 1 issue. Even in WCAG 2 this is a Level 1 failure (success criteria 2.3.1).

Unfortunately nothing has been done in the last three months. Can a Flash animation be that important that it is retained, despite the fact that it has the potential to induce seizures in site users? And what message is this sending students of The Interactive Multimedia course?

The Trouble with Tools

I’ve yet to find a web tool that is able to measure the flicker rate of a .swf file. This is a problem. In conducting accessibility reviews, it’s usually obvious when a flicker rate is unsafe, but it’s always better if you can provide evidence. With Gifs it’s easy as there are a number of good tools around that can conduct a flicker test. But with Flash files, you need the .fla file to check frame rates. So in a situation like the one I’ve just described, without the source file, it’s pretty difficult to get an accurate measure.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words…

I’m probably not doing myself any favours in writing this post. I’m three subjects off completing my Masters of Interactive Multimedia at UTS, so criticising the department’s new website isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done this week. But it’s clearly not the smartest thing they’ve done this year either.

I’m completely astounded that it made it into the design in the first place. I know the people involved in the redesign and it amazes me that they either don’t know or don’t care. Including a design feature like that says so much about the departments knowledge or position on website accessibility.

But as they say, a picture tells a thousand words, so how many words is a flickering Flash animation worth?

Free Online Mobile Web Course

Published by scenariogirl May 3rd, 2008 in User Experience and mobile. Closed

How’s this for an excellent free online course?

An introduction to the W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices

Run by the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative, the course runs for four weeks from May 26 to June 30 and provides lectures and hands on exercises for anyone wanting to learn more about designing and developing mobile friendly, accessible web content.

More information can be found on the course overview page, including a course outline, instructor details and other important stuff.

If you think you might be interested, check out the free sample course or go straight in and register.

Places are limited to the first 100 people, so if this is your area, don’t leave it too long to register.

I’ll be there, will you?

Update

All places in the course have been filled, they went quickly, and I’m really happy to see 15 Australians on the list. So it will be interesting to see if we’re able to build a bit more momentum around building for an accessible mobile web. I hope so!

iPhone Text Accessibility Plan

Published by scenariogirl May 2nd, 2008 in Accessibility. 6 Comments

AT&T in The States has just released an iPhone data plan developed specifically for the deaf. It’s unclear why they weren’t organised enough to do this at the time of the iPhone launch, but my suspicions are that community pressure may have ‘encouraged’ them.

The Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) was designed with input from the community and provides more affordable access to communication services that the deaf and hearing impaired are likely to want.

For $40 USD, iPhone TAP customers will recieve:

Unlimited SMS messages
Unlimited data usage (email and web)
$.40 per minute pay-per-use voice
Visual VoiceMail

As AT&T are the exclusive providers of iPhone data services in The US, it’ll be interesting to see what ~~Telstra~~ Optus (thanks Jim!) and any of the other potential providers come up with when the iPhone is released in Australia this June.

Overall, it looks like a pretty reasonable deal, but I’m left wondering whether or not Apple will come out with an expensive hands free device / iPhone stand so that the Deaf can actually sign into it when video calls become available. We’ll have to wait and see…

The Apple site also provides some information on current iPhone accessibility features as well as a (pdf) Voluntary Product Accessibility Information document with more detailed accessibility information, including iPhone TTY access.

UPDATE
In order to qualify for the AT&T plan, the customer must submit an (pdf) application form which must be certified. The form states:

Certification of disability is required to process iPhone TAP applications. Applications received without certification will not be considered for enrollment in the iPhone TAP rate plan.
Certification of Disability Instructions:

A certifying agent must be a qualified health care professional, audiologist or hearing health professional, speech or language therapist/specialist, representative of an institution, agency or non-profit 510c3 organization actively engaged in work in the disability area specified by the applicant. A certifying agent must have direct knowledge or documentation of the applicant’s condition or functional limitation. Examples of certifying agents include licensed physicians and/or surgeons operating in the scope of their licenses, Vocational Rehabilitation Agency Counselors, Teachers, Audiologists, credentialed Therapists, Directors of independent living centers, or local, state, or national chapter presidents of associations of/for persons with disabilities including but not limited to: The National Association of the Deaf, Hearing Loss Association of America, AG Bell, Association of Late-Deafened Adults or Telecommunication for the Deaf, INC.