W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.0 Compliance at Illinois

The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 has become a national and international standard for making Web resources accessible to people with disabilities and will soon be the primary means to comply with Federal Section 508 and Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA). To meet these new standards, version 2.0 of the Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) has been developed to analyze websites with dynamic and highly interactive content, and support the accessibility techniques available in W3C HTML5 and Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) 1.0 specifications to make dynamic content accessible. A new extension for Firefox called AInspector Sidebar has also been developed to allow UX designers, developers, and people making purchasing decisions to get immediate accessibility feedback on any page they are browsing.     This session will present the results of analyzing over 400 University of Illinois websites (e.g. over 14,000 pages) using FAE 2.0 to see where Illinois is complying and areas in where it needs to improve in WCAG 2.0 implementation. The session will demonstrate the basics of how to use the new FAE 2.0 technology with AInspector Sidebar for Firefox to identify accessibility issues within websites and a webpage. An important part of the presentation will be to start a discussion on what types of resources and training are needed for Illinois to fully comply with the WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA requirements.

Presenters: Jon Gunderson is the coordinator of assistive communication and information technology accessibility in the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) at the University of Illinois. He is currently responsible for computer and information technology accessibility issues for students, faculty, and staff with disabilities at Illinois. Before his present position, he was a visiting assistant professor in a Rehabilitation Services Administration-sponsored engineering training program at DRES. He leads the development of the Accessibility Inspectors for Firefox and Firebug and the Functional Accessibility Evaluator service. He also led the development of the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office. Contact Jon Gunderson at jongund@illinois.edu.  

Nicholas Hoyt is a user interaction designer and software developer for the open source web accessibility evaluation tools being developed at the University of Illinois. He designed the user interface and software for FAE 1.1. His current activities include the interaction design and usability testing of AInspector Sidebar and FAE 2.0. He is also the software developer for AInspector Sidebar.