[WG: Accessibility] BSI 8878 Web Accessibility Code of Practice Observations

[Richwine, Brian L]

Observations on:
"BS 8878:2010: Web Accessibility - Code of Practice - DRS." BSI Standards Draft Review. Web. Accessed 29 June 2010. <http://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/489> (registration required).

I noticed the British Standards Draft of the "Web Accessibility - Code of Practice" standard was coming to an end of a period for comments and decided to take a quick look at it out of curiosity.

The draft accessibility statement we have for Sakai 3 appears to meet the code of practice's recommendations for use of web accessibility guidelines as found in Section 6. In draft it states organizations should produce their web products in accordance with the WCAG guidelines and that the authoring tools and content management systems uphold ATAG. The document notes that at the time of its writing, no single web-authoring tool that supports all ATAG Priority 1 checkpoints is known of. It also states that rich internet applications (RIAs) should be developed using relevant specifications such as WAI-ARIA and WCAG 2.0's informative techniques.

In Section 6.2 it mentions Section 508 of the USA Disabilities Act in stating that products that conform only to Section 508 likely have a base level of accessibility but are likely to have accessibility issues that impact the usability of one or more groups of users. It goes on to point out that organizations should instead check for the conformance to WCAG guidelines.

An interesting piece is section 6.1.3 on User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) where it states that given the reality that some combinations of assistive technologies and web browsers for the various operating systems do not keep pace with the UAAG that the organization should consider creating work-arounds for known accessibility issues and to test their web products to ensure these work-arounds provide a usable and accessible experience on the target range of web browsers, operating systems, and assistive technologies.

Another interesting section is Section 6.3 where it states the need to ensure any tool the web product includes which allows users to specify their needs (their accessibility preferences) is able to export these settings for interoperability to other accessibility preference systems and gives as an example the BBC ATK system which exports settings using IMS AccessForAll. In appendix K, it mentions the European Unified Approach for Accessible Lifelong Learning (EU4ALL: http://www.eu4all-project.eu/) project is designing a framework for the delivery of accessible lifelong learning in Higher Education in Europe: as part of that work the project is implementing ISO/IEC 24751 and parts of AccessForAll 3.0. AccessForAll is an accessibility preferences specification where machine-readable individual accessibility preferences can be used by systems to automatically respond to user's preferences and change presentation as needed.


Brian Richwine
Adaptive Technology Support Specialist
Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis
http://iuadapts.indiana.edu
(812) 856-4112

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