[gui-talk] Fwd: E-Access Bulletin, March 2010 - Exclusive: EU Set To Ditch Rules On Accessible Goods.

[Steve Pattison]

 From:    Dan Jellinek dan at headstar.com
 To:      eaccess at headstar.com

+++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
Access To Technology For All, Regardless Of Ability
- ISSUE 123, March 2010.

A Headstar Publication.
http://www.headstar.com/eab/ .

Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details
at the end).

++Issue 123 Contents.

01: Exclusive: EU Set To Ditch Rules On Accessible Goods.
- UK one of majority to back watered-down Equal Treatment
Directive.

02: Praise for Councils' Web Accessibility Progress
- "Astonishing" increase shown in report.

03: Technology Trust To Launch Online Hub For Social Good
- Network aimed at sharing learning from social IT projects.

News in Brief: 04: Mixed Messages - on accessibility from
Australian Government; 05: Free Surf - web learning days; 06:
Portable Talk - mobile DAISY book device.

Section Two: Special Report - Council Websites.
07: Better Than They Seem? The latest annual review of every
UK local authority website -Better Connected 2010 from the
Society of IT Management (Socitm) - seems to show that the
majority of council websites are still not fully accessible to
those with disabilities. However, a look behind the quantative
standards reveals a significant rise in levels of 'functional'
accessibility, reports Tristan Parker.

[Contents ends].


++Section One: News.

+01: Exclusive: EU Set To Ditch Rules On Accessible Goods.

The European Union looks set to backtrack on proposed
legislation that would have required accessibility to disabled
people of all manufactured consumer goods, from digital
televisions to washing machines, E-Access Bulletin has
learned.

A Brussels meeting this week is expected to confirm changes to
the draft Equal Treatment Directive (ETD), first proposed by
the European Commission in 2008 to ban discrimination in
access to goods and services, as set out in its full title: Proposal
for a Council Directive on implementing the principle of equal
treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief,
disability, age or sexual orientation
( http://bit.ly/9IFqXc ).

In its original form, the directive would have required that all
devices should be accessible, and for example could not be
controlled solely by touch-screen controls or visual displays
inaccessible to blind people.

Since 2008, however, member states have amended the text to
remove any specific requirement. Article 4, point 3 in the latest
set of amendments (available in pdf only at http://bit.ly/anrdqs
) says:"This Directive shall not apply to the design and
manufacture of goods". The new version says simply that
member states should take into account "measures to ensure
accessibility for persons with disabilities . [and] promote the
research and development of universally designed goods,
promote their availability and use, and promote universal
design in the development of standards and guidelines."
However, details of what forms such action should take are not
specified.

The new version to be discussed in Brussels is supported by a
majority of EU member states including the UK. A small
number of states, including Austria, have spoken out against
the reduced proposals however, and for the directive to
become law, unanimous agreement will have to be reached.

Carine Marzin, European campaigns officer at the Royal
National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), told E-Access
Bulletin that continued reliance on the goodwill of
manufacturers to deliver accessible manufactured goods to the
market will not solve the problem. "In practice, nothing will
change if member states are not willing to address this issue
through legislation," Marzin said. "This is a unique opportunity
to end the discrimination that many disabled people experience
when trying to access goods, an opportunity that we can't
afford to miss."

For its part, the European Blind Union (EBU) says failure to
implement the accessibility proposals as originally drafted
could jeopardise trade with areas outside of Europe which may
have more stringent rules in place (see EBU response in
Microsoft Word format at:
http://bit.ly/bowvGU ).
In the US, for example, a proposed law aims to force
manufacturers to create accessible consumer technology
products (see E-Access Bulletin, issue 122 -
http://bit.ly/cRZVrs ).

A joint campaign to oppose the UK's position on the ETD has
now been launched by a group of UK disability charities:
http://bit.ly/d1EP2R ).

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://bit.ly/aKG4es


+02: Praise for Councils' Web Accessibility Progress.

UK local authority websites are "much more accessible now
than they've ever been", according to one specialist who
worked on the recent 'Better Connected 2010' review of every
local authority website in the UK conducted by the Society of
IT Management (Socitm) (
http://bit.ly/dltkU5 ).

Bim Egan, senior web access consultant at the Royal National
Institute of Blind People (RNIB), told E-Access Bulletin the
difference between council websites' accessibility this year
compared with 2009 is "astonishing". "A much bigger
proportion of [councils] are getting the message and are putting
processes in place to make their websites a lot more
accessible", she said.

Egan's comments come despite the fact fewer local authority
websites achieved formal compliance this year with Level A of
the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version
one (WCAG 1.0) - 32 compared to 36 in 2009. However, the
RNIB ran its own additional assessment of "functional
accessibility" which rated 187 councils (43%) as either
'satisfactory' or 'excellent' compared with only 136 councils
(33%) achieving the same levels last year.

Despite the progress, Egan said that over-reliance on PDFs
(files in Adobe portable document format), which are often
inaccessible to screen-readers and other forms of assistive
technology, is still a significant accessibility problem for local
authority sites.

"It wouldn't matter as much if so many councils didn't rely so
heavily on PDF format, but ... if it's not accessible, there could
be situations where people can't even find out what their
council tax is," Egan said.

For a full breakdown of the accessibility results of Better
Connected 2010 see section three, this issue.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://bit.ly/9N5KGG


+03: Technology Trust To Launch Online Hub For Social
Good.

A new online knowledge centre for organisations working in
the field of technology and social good is to be launched in
June by the charity Nominet Trust, E-Access Bulletin has
learned.

The trust (
http://bit.ly/aXFbxD ),
the UK's largest charitable fund for social IT projects, was set
up with £8 million from the UK's internet domain name
registry Nominet to fund UK-based and international internet-
related initiatives in the sectors of education, research and
development, safety and inclusion meeting the needs of the
young, the elderly, the disabled and sick, the disadvantaged,
and other vulnerable groups.

Its new online network, set to launch in June, will include a
monitoring centre tracking all its investments and allowing
funded bodies to submit quarterly reports online; and a
'knowledge centre' allowing groups to network. It aims to
become the biggest hub for best practice sharing in its fields of
funding, trust chairman Jonathan Welfare told E-Access
Bulletin at last week's Digital Inclusion conference in London (
http://bit.ly/aFvYk7 ).

Nominet Trust has been investing since February 2009 with 36
grants made to date, totalling £1.9m. Its smallest grant so far
has been £1,000 to a primary school in Derbyshire to help
produce a pamphlet on the potential dangers of the internet
designed by its pupils and disseminated to other schools
throughout the county by the education authority; and the
largest has been £0.5 million to the charity UnLtd ('unlimited')
( http://bit.ly/cKD3Qy ) which in turn funds smaller social IT
projects across the UK.

One of the trust's first grants in April 2009 was made to the
British Computer Association of the Blind (BCAB), to fund
remote technical support people with impaired vision. Other
funded groups include Screenreader.net, creator of free text-to-
speech software 'Thunder'; ACE Centre Advisory Trust, for
SpeechBubble, a comparison web site for disability
communications aids; AbilityNet, for a project supporting
accessible digital educational materials; and Citizens Online,
for a project logging and fixing website accessibility problems.

Any group can apply for a grant at any time, with new funding
decisions made quarterly.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://bit.ly/beZNon


++News in Brief:

+04: Mixed Messages: Australian government websites will be
required, by 2015, to conform to the latest version of the
international World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.0, the country's
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities has announced:
http://bit.ly/cTUNu7
However, the decision will not receive legal backing unless
supported by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Additionally, IT consultant Tom Worthington notes on his blog
that the web page publicising the announcement itself fails to
comply with basic accessibility standards:
http://bit.ly/bwYWQU

+05: Free Surf: Making a Google search and accessing the
British Museum's website are some of the internet skills being
taught to blind and visually impaired people at a series of 50
free 'web learning days' taking place around the country over
the next four months. Organised by charity Screenreader.net
with a £70,000 government grant, the sessions will use the free
Thunder screen-reader software to demonstrate how computer
users with impaired vision can surf the internet:
http://bit.ly/cJipz4

+06: Portable Talk: Talking books in DAISY (Digital
Accessible Information System) format can now be transferred
directly from CD to a portable device, without the need for a
computer. The Victor Reader Stream CD Edition, developed by
HumanWare, allows visually impaired and blind users to copy
talking books and other audio onto the device for mobile
access using a single button:
http://bit.ly/a2NZTC

[Section One ends].


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++Section Two: Special Report
- Council Websites.

+07: Better Than They Seem?
by Tristan Parker.

At first glance, the accessibility results of this year's Society of
IT Management (Socitm) 'Better Connected' review of all UK
council websites ( http://bit.ly/dltkU5 ) would suggest that
online access to local government for disabled computer users
and others using assistive technology is still not a priority.

This year, for example, fewer local authorities achieved level
'A' of the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,
version one (WCAG 1.0 http://bit.ly/cmbc4g ) than last year -
32 compared with 36 - and for the second year running, no
council achieved the more stringent level 'AA'.

But appearances can be deceptive, and these figures do not tell
the whole picture, according to Bim Egan, senior web access
consultant at the Royal National Institute of Blind People
(RNIB: http://bit.ly/a5Jz3i ).

Egan, who carried out assessments for the Better Connected
report, told E-Access Bulletin that websites which failed to
achieve even the basic WCAG level 'A' standard, are not
necessarily completely inaccessible to people with disabilities.

WCAG is, by and large, a quantative assessment of various
aspects of a site, whereas for the second year running, the
RNIB also carried out additional qualitative assessments on
council websites to achieve a wider picture of online
accessibility. These checked for 'outcome' factors such as
"whether or not users could navigate, use and communicate
with the site relatively easily if they had assistive technology
needs or special needs", Egan says.

These tests used their own 0-3 rating system, with 0
representing a frequent absence of accessibility and 3
representing a site that was functionally fully accessible. Based
on this system, 187 councils (43%) were rated by RNIB as
satisfactory or excellent, compared with 136 councils (33%)
last year.

This seems encouraging, but why is this not reflected in the
WCAG 1.0-based system? "We never believed that conformity
tests were a real measure of accessibility", said Egan. "It's not
just what you do, it's how you do it, and conformity tests
basically check for things like headings being used, and not
how good [the websites] are."

Overall the findings suggest that council websites have
improved their functional accessibility, says Egan, while
sometimes embracing new technologies and techniques in such
a way that conformity levels with standards have dropped.

So what are these new techniques that have hampered
conformance to standards?

Not for the first time, JavaScript - a common programming
language used in website pages - is one culprit. The use of
JavaScript often leads to increased difficulty in navigating a
webpage when using assistive technology or a keyboard, for
example providing 'hidden' content that may not be picked up
by some assistive technologies. Although JavaScript can
sometimes actually be used to increase accessibility - by
providing additional information to the user, for example - by
and large, it is a recurring problem for accessibility
conformance.

"The main thing that affects conformity testing for WCAG 1.0
is that a lot more sites are putting in a lot more functionality,
and a lot of that functionality is reliant on JavaScript," says
Egan. "If we hadn't had JavaScript to check, we would have
seen quite a considerable improvement in Level A
conformance."

Egan also warns that should the Better Connected website
review team adopt WCAG version 2.0 (the latest version of the
guidelines) for its assessments next year, further changes will
need to be made to ensure that basic standards are met. "If
we're looking at WCAG 2.0, the message is that councils are
going to regret putting so much information into PDFs", she
says.

PDFs (files in the Adobe 'portable document format', used
widely by local councils and other public bodies) are often not
fully accessible for screen-readers and other assistive
technologies. There are ways of creating accessible PDFs using
new versions of the format that can provide text tags for
pictures, for example, but councils still tend to use the older
inaccessible versions.

"It wouldn't matter as much if so many councils didn't rely so
heavily on PDF format," says Egan, "but ...if [the PDF is] not
accessible, there could be situations where people can't even
find out what their council tax is."

Despite these concerns, Egan is keen to emphasise the increase
in accessibility demonstrated by the RNIB's qualitative
assessments. "This is my fifth year of working on Better
Connected and the difference is astonishing. Council websites
are much more accessible now than they've ever been," she
says.

Perhaps surprisingly, Egan also believes that stronger legislation
is not the best way to achieve further improvements, preferring
instead to champion those that are succeeding and encourage
them to lead by example. "I don't think more legislation is
going to do it" she says. "We've had some pretty horrendous
threats, like losing the '.gov.uk' domain, and I don't know
what else can be done to encourage sites to become more
accessible other than showing by example and rewarding and
applauding the ones who do it right. Let's give more airtime to
them, so that the people who've got it wrong and their councils
are forced to do something about it."

She urged those who have not achieved good accessibility
ratings of any kind so far to rise to the challenge. "Those
websites who've not achieved WCAG 1.0 or got a rating of 1
or 2 on our own [RNIB] rating system should not feel
discouraged - I'd prefer that they felt challenged", says Egan.
"Accessibility isn't where you're at, it's the road you're
following."

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://bit.ly/aQQNiy

[Section Two ends].


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++End Notes.

+How to Receive the Bulletin.

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Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
dan at headstar.com .

Copyright 2009 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including
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Please also inform the editor when you are reproducing our
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is also cited.

+Personnel:
Editor - Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Editorial advisor - Kevin Carey.

ISSN 1476-6337.

[Issue 123 ends.] 

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
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Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782