Testing for Accessibility
Institute: BCS
Event Date: 12/09/2006
Event Time: 18.00 for 18.30 - 20.30
Event Venue: Birmingham Medical Institute
Event Location: Harborne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 3AF (entrance to car park in Highfield Road)
CPD: 0.5 CPD units/hour
The UK government set a target to make available all public services on-line by the end of 2005. As part of this e-government transformation, they are committed to ensuring these services are socially inclusive and can be accessed and used by disabled people. As a result, they have mandated that all public-facing websites meet the W3C WAI "AA" guidelines, but many government web teams are struggling to comply with this requirement. In 2004, a report by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) revealed that more than 80% of public Web sites failed to meet the minimum standards for disabled web access. In response, the DRC published PAS78 earlier this year to help website owners understand accessibility and specifically how they should include accessibility when commissioning a web development project.
Vanessa Donnelly, User Experience Managing Consultant, IBM User Experience Design Centre, Warwick, who helped write PAS78, will provide an overview of accessibility, what it and why it matters. More specifically her talk will look at the different ways in which a development team can test for accessibility. From automated test tools to accessibility user evaluations, deciding on the best testing method for your project is not always an easy decision. This talk aims to provide you with the information you need to plan accessibility testing into an overall quality plan.
IBM's Human Ability and Accessibility Center is at http://www.ibm.com/able
Web Links:http://birmingham.bcs.org/Accessibility.htm
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