Disabilities and the Web
Persons with disabilities face a variety of challenges when accessing the Internet. The Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) has always been on the cutting edge providing assistive technologies for using web resources. Technologies available include:
- adaptive peripherals, including optical character recognition/speech output systems, Braille translators and embossers, keyboards, and switches
- specialized adaptive software
- supportive instruction
- assistive devices for the hearing impaired
DRES recently receive a $50,000 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration for taking assistive technology to the next level. Over the next year, Jon Gunderson will lead a team in developing and releasing an accessibility extension for Firefox. Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. is Director of IT Accessibility and the development team will include Sandy Foltz and Mark Berning. The Firefox Accessibility Extension extends the features of the open source Firefox web browser to support people with disabilities and web developers trying to evaluate the functional accessibility features of their website.
Features for People with Disabilities
The extension provides a means to:
- navigate the structural content of web resources
- modify styling to meet their perceptual needs
- configure keyboard shortcuts
- access alternatives to images and other non-text content.
Additionally, the extension can be used in conjunction with other open source assistive technologies like the Orca screen reader for GNOME to provide enhanced speech and refreshable Braille access to web resources within an open source solution.
Functional Web Accessibility Testing
The Firefox Accessibility Extension provides features web developers need to easily test their web resources for:
- the use of structural html markup, and many other accessibility techniques including the proper use of text equivalents for images and other non-text content (embedded objects),
- use of Cascading Style Sheets for styling content and
- validation of html for interoperability.
The Firefox Accessibility Extension in combination with the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) provides developers and disability access advocates powerful tools to understand or interpret the manual check warnings in the reports of other web accessibility analysis tools.
Compliance with W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
The Firefox Accessibility Extension provides additional features for Firefox to fully comply with the W3C User Agent Web Accessibility Guidelines requirements, which also serves as an example to other browser developers that accessibility features can be implemented.
About the Award
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a philanthropic organization and the
Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC) are a project of the Foundation's Program in
Research in Information Technology (RIT). The
2007 Mellon Awards honor not-for-profit organizations for leadership in the collaborative
development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities,
and cultural-heritage activities. Co-worker Hadi Bargi Rangin accepted the award on behalf of the
University of Illinois.
