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Accessibility and Mobility and Web Development

May 31, 2014 — JaZahn

Mobility and Accessibility are not new technologies that have come up. They are not extras that some of us need to tack on to what web developers do.

They are an essential part of web development and should be considered as basic skills.

Accessibility is not hard. It used to be, it really used to be, but with HTML5, it’s actually quite simple. Simply a small part of the HTML5 spec, something web developers should know. Mobility was a hot new topic 6+ years ago. Now it’s expected that the applications you build are in some way available on a mobile platform.

It is an expectation.

Why is this not the reality? Why are web developers still making applications the same way they were 10 years ago? It partly has to do with web development being a “full stack” profession for so long. Traditionally, the front end has been small and the back end has been “the application”. The direction of the web is putting more of the application on the front end, so developers that are considered full stack have to now know more than basic HTML and the minimal JavaScript it takes to do some validation. JavaScript has become huge, for large applications, it requires its own framework.

I don’t think that’s been adequately realized by the web development community yet. The future of the web is a partnership, where the applications are separate. the back end an API, the front end the “actual application” that gets the data it needs from the API. As such, people are turning more to micro frameworks for the back end, and away from what had become the staple Rails clones — and much further away from the even larger, more complex frameworks.

SPA-Architecture I’m not sure if Single Page Applications are truly “the” future. But they are the now. It is important to stay on top of this, as this industry is constantly changing. But one thing is for sure, if you’re a business fully invested in back end developers, you’re hitting a problem where you feel like you need to hire “UI specialists” when you really need either 1) for back end developers to beef up their front end development skills or 2) to hire developers focused on front end “development” (as opposed to graphic designers).

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Accessibility, I’m Still Wrong!

April 15, 2014 — JaZahn

A while ago, I talked about the legal requirements for academia web development. I pointed to Section 508 because it was “just another section” of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Section 504 was DEFINITELY required.

I was wrong.

Upon further inspection, we are ONLY under Section 504 because Section 504 is a matter of civil rights, while 508 is “just a guideline”. Section 504 (or title III of the ADA (American’s with disabilities Act of 1990)) is what people reference when filing suit. 508 is not directly enforceable outside of government agencies. Even then it can be trumped by 504.

So when doing things in academia, using 508 is useful in that it will get you 90% of the way there, but that 10% can still get you under 504. The trick is it’s not clearly defined. It’s left very ambiguous. This is probably a good thing from an accessibility standpoint because it can remain technology agnostic.

So stick to WCAG 2.0 AA.

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Custom Slides and Github Hosting

January 16, 2014 — JaZahn

So I was putting together a presentation on Accessibility for my department. I knew very little about accessibility, so I read as much as I could and watched every youtube presentation I could find on the subject. A lot of them were total crap, but a few from some of the google io conferences were really great. They had working examples and code rendered inline to the slides.

I thought this was great so I went looking for what they did for this and found that (for at least the 2011 and 2012 io conferences) they have provided a slide template that is geared just for that.

The 2012 one is reasonably nice: https://code.google.com/p/io-2012-slides/

So I altered this, “forked it” and dumped it into my github: https://github.com/jazahn/axs-slides

That in itself is pretty cool, but then I thought, hey, I want to put these somewhere people can get at them. So originally I had them on my public web space for work, but it was sort of annoying to git commit, git push, log in to the server, git pull. Logging in can be an annoying step for my work if I’m not at work and need to VPN.

Artie had a cool idea of using github pages (http://pages.github.com/). Because these slides are all static, I don’t even have to worry about what server these are running on. All you have to do for this is create a gh-pages branch and anything in that branch will automatically be hosted. So what I did was create that branch, set it as the default branch, and removed the master branch (to avoid confusion and simplify). After altering my remotes, now I just have to git push from my dev environment and it’s automatically put on the server:
http://jazahn.github.io/axs-slides

Very cool.

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Web Accessibility Under the Law for Harvard

September 22, 2013 — JaZahn

What is required? Harvard is required to adhere to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (The most important Section of which is 504, but that doesn’t directly apply to web development).

The best way to understand the requirements of Section 508 is to read through the text of it. Specifically 1194.22 and by proxy, 1194.21. It should only take a few minutes. It’s not as bad to read through as the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). And, more importantly it’s not as comprehensive.

Once you get the highlights, WebAIM has provided a handy checklist. WebAIM is an open consortium that exists just for discussions such as this, similar to what OWASP is for Security. From the spec, (a) through (j) are reasonably straightforward. (k) needs to be understood, as “text only versions” seems to be a common accessibility misconception and isn’t necessary if all of the other items are taken care of.

(l) is a biggie because it requires a different approach to javascript than 99% of js writers do. What it means is to make all interfaces possible to navigate without a mouse, in a way that’s readable to screen readers. That just means following the spirit of (a) through (j) as it pertains to your interface. This seems borderline impossible when you look at things you’ve built and try to add it in after the fact, but is much more reasonable when you design it from the start with this in mind.

Which seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to best practices. These things need to be thought about from the start, not thrown in last minute. So I think the solution for this is to spread information around. Not try to force this into existing projects, but bring them up as new projects / rewrites begin. It’s a lot to think about, I think the trick is to introduce the topics slowly but consistently into our culture until it becomes something we all know and just do without having to be told.

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Is Harvard Required by Law to Comply to Accessibility Standards?

September 21, 2013 — JaZahn

Simple answer: Yes.

I have been looking all over for an answer to this. Is there actually a law that defines what we (Harvard University) need to follow in terms of web accessibility? If you search for accessibility law (in the US), you’re basically only going to find references to Section 504 and Section 508.

These are “sections” of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. So all sections (amendments) are equally applicable.

From the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Brochure:

The Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education enforces regulations implementing Section 504 with respect to programs and activities that receive funding from the Department. The Section 504 regulation applies to all recipients of this funding, including colleges, universities, and postsecondary vocational education and adult education programs. Failure by these higher education schools to provide auxiliary aids to students with disabilities that results in a denial of a program benefit is discriminatory and prohibited by Section 504.

This brochure is linked from the Accessible Education Office’s page on student’s rights.

What this means as far as what is required is a bigger question, and not one I want to write up right now.

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