Accessibility Evaluation for Cloud and Mobile Applications

What is accessibility?

The extent to which people with disabilities can independently use, navigate, acquire information from, and interact with the site or app that you have built.

Several resolutions in higher education legal cases define "accessible" as follows:

“'Accessible' means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability."

http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/requirements/legal-cases-by-issue/

Why is accessibility important?

Accessibility is a civil rights issue.

“The Web is an important medium for receiving information as well as for providing information and interacting with society. Therefore, it is essential that the Web is accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.” - the W3C

https://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/soc.html

Laws

Legal Cases in Commerce

  • AOL
  • Intuit, H&R Block
  • Equifax, Experian, Trans Union
  • Bank of America, Bank One
  • Fleet Bank, Washington Mutual
  • Charles Schwab
  • Southwest Airlines, JetBlue
  • Amazon, Ebay
  • Radio Shack
  • Sutter Health, Rite Aid
  • Target, Staples, ToysRUs
  • Hilton, Carnival
  • Disney, Ticketmaster, Netflix

http://www.karlgroves.com/2011/11/15/list-of-web-accessibility-related-litigation-and-settlements/

Legal Cases in Higher Education

  • Harvard and MIT
  • University of Phoenix
  • University of Cincinnati and Youngstown State University
  • University of Montana
  • Louisiana Tech University
  • South Carolina Technical College System (SCTCS)
  • Penn State University
  • University of California at Berkeley
  • Maricopa Community College District (MCCD)
  • Florida State University
  • Ohio State University, University of Kentucky
  • most of the above are from the last 5 years

http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/requirements/accessibility-cases-and-settlement-agreements/ and http://www.karlgroves.com/2011/11/15/list-of-web-accessibility-related-litigation-and-settlements/

Prioritization and Impact

  • New sites (in development) over old sites
  • Larger user base over smaller user base
  • High traffic over low traffic
  • Template changes that apply to many pages over changes that affect individual pages

Standards, Guidelines, Best Practices

Four Principles of Accessibility (POUR)

  • Perceivable
  • Operable
  • Understandable
  • Robust

 

Automated vs Manual Testing

Logging Compliance in CASA

CASA is the Community App Sharing Architecture
apps.ucla.edu

You can create sites and apps
that are both
beautiful and accessible.

 

Thanks!

Chris Patterson
chris@oit.ucla.edu
spiritcapsule [GitHub]
spiritcapsule [Twitter]