[WG: Accessibility] FW: [DG: User Experience] Here comes trouble

[Richwine, Brian L]

I'm not sure this made it to our list. -Brian
________________________________________
From: O. Nagy [on215 at hermes.cam.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Oszkar Nagy [oszkar at caret.cam.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 1:17 PM
To: Richwine, Brian L
Cc: Sakai UX
Subject: Re: [DG: User Experience] Here comes trouble

Great!

I share your views in putting accessibility considerations before things
get too established, I think we still have a good chance to get things
right in this area.

The people who worked on front-end code so far had all have a good sense
for accessibility issues, Fluid helped a lot as well, but I think there
is still a long way to go.

I think there are a number of ways we could start making this happen:

Incorporating and articulating any high level guidelines into (such as
the one you provided) the Accesibility section of Sakai 3 UX development
guidelines
(http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/3AK/Sakai+3+UX+Development+Guidelines+and+Information)

Looking at, and evaluating problematic areas in Sakai 3 UI code,
starting from simple things like buttons, forms, tabs etc. A process of
standardising markup, CSS and JS of these elements has already started,
and it would be good if accessibility problems would be filtered out in
this process, so when these elements get replicated by developers,
accessibility issuess already have been dealt with. I could easily
imagine a JIRA ticket for each UI component, listing all the problematic
areas, then all these issues could be prioritised for releases. If there
are resources to pick up one or two of these JIRAs even better.

Making a list of urgent and obvious problems affecting overall
experience, and creating a list of very easily fixable but outstanding
problems would be beneficial as well I think, as I am pretty sure there
are developers who can deal with issues like these very quickly.

A couple of videos demonstrating current state on a screen reader or
similar would probably demonstrate how badly we need to do these things.
The ability to perceive things from another perspective is a great tool
to push forward IMHO.

Let us know what are your thoughts on this, I am sure many people here
will listen with open ears.

Also if any help is needed to perform any tasks related to this don't
hesitate to ask, we'll try to do our best to help.

Oszkar


On 07/01/2010 17:02, Richwine, Brian L wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm writing as a lead of the Accessibility Working Group. We'd love to get involved with the Sakai 3 UI development to help with making Sakai 3 have the best user experience possible for people with disabilities and users of adaptive technologies. We have been talking among ourselves about the best way to do this, and it seems that a good move would be to announce ourselves here and our desire to help.
>
> Traditionally, the Accessibility WG's largest role has been to conduct accessibility reviews on Sakai releases. But, since the reviews started only a few weeks before the code freeze dates and much of the design is already set, the best we could hope for would be that some of the easier fixes we identified would get fixed for the next release. We hope that by getting involved in the early stages of Sakai 3's design, accessibility concerns can be identified and the addressable issues fixed before they get too cemented into the design.
>
> We'd love to discuss the best way for us to get involved. We'd be happy to participate in the UI development efforts, consult, perform accessibility evaluations and testing on designs, write simple accessibility checklist/guidelines/style guides for developers, provide accessibility awareness, etc. We are excited that great things can be achieved towards making Sakai 3 accessible. Improvements in handshaking between browsers and adaptive technology, improvements in adaptive technology itself, the emergence of technology features like the WAI-ARIA guidelines, accessibility features getting included in more UI/JavaScript libraries, and a larger established base of techniques make it easier than ever to achieve accessibility even in complex web applications.
>
>> From our experience in reviewing accessibility of Sakai 2.x, the group has prepared a list of accessibility improvements that could be achieved in Sakai 3. They can be found here:
> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/2ACC/Accessibility+Improvements+that+Could+Be+Seen+in+Sakai+3+over+Sakai+2.x
>
> Sincerely,
>    Brian Richwine
>
> Brian Richwine
> Adaptive Technology Support Specialist
> Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
> Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis
> http://iuadapts.indiana.edu
> (812) 856-4112
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: sakai-ux-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [sakai-ux-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of carl.hall at et.gatech.edu [carl.hall at et.gatech.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 4:11 PM
> To: sakai-ux at collab.sakaiproject.org
> Subject: [DG: User Experience] Here comes trouble
>
> For those of you that follow the k2 list, this isn't news [1], but it's good to announce one's self I'm told.
>
> Beginning just a couple of days ago, Stuart and I have changed our focus from strictly k2 concerns to implementing UI bits, screens, elements, etc.  Our focus will be to get UI designs implemented and doing any needed plumbing work required to get that functionality finished.
>
> We've read through the development guidelines and have followed the UX list for a bit.  We're planning to start on version 0.1 issues first then continue on, but are certainly open to suggestions for tasks.  We're no strangers to the dev approach being used but don't hold back if we slip something up.  We're all here to get this done and greatness will be achieved!
>
>
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/sakai-kernel/browse_thread/thread/52cd1444020920d3#
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