Making the Web Truly Accessible
Purpose of this site
The World Wide Web is one of the main communication media for all people, regardless of physical or mental impairment. However, the current state of the Web makes it hard for individuals who are blind, visually impaired, or deaf to browse websites and gather the information they are looking for, and often the very endeavor of navigating a site is brutal or impossible.
Recent developments in Web accessibility standards as well as protocols for the implementation of site front ends have brought us to an environment in which it is not only possible but often more elegant to design sites that are equally accessible across the various types of disabilities. With this project, I aim to explore design issues that plague Web surfers who are blind or deaf and, by advocating the adherence to Web standards and discipline in coding, offer suggestions for making the Web a better place for everyone.
The underlying idea of universal Web design:
Engineering a web resource to be universal -- not just "accessible" in a standards-compliance sense -- leads to better overall design for everyone, regardless of visual, mental, or other differences. "Universal design" simply requires a paradigm shift: instead of coding a site to look good on a screen and then throwing in the latest CSS2 validation hacks, the designer from the beginning conceptualizes a site that is not only usable but user-friendly in all scenarios. Is creativity stifled? No -- neither better nor worse, only different.
Avenues to research
- Current State of Things: One idea I have is to use JAWS and other screen readers, text browsers, and captioning devices to test popular websites to gauge their current level of accessibility. I may also use Bobby and the W3C's validating software to collect data for the UNC-CH system of official and student websites in order to demonstrate the disastrous condition our University websites are in.
- Clever Site Redesigns: Having examined several popular sites, I aim to take a subset (perhaps 3, including the UNC homepage) and redesign them to comply with current Web standards to demonstrate that to do so not only gives access to more individuals but also leads to greater robustness of design and implementation.
- Seminar: Using the results I find from my research and the techniques I learn, I hope to give a Web Accessibility seminar or workshop series for budding Web developers on our campus to, at a minimum, help them become more aware of the problem and the solutions available to make their sites more accessible.
- Google Redesign: I am very interested in attempting a VI-oriented redesign of Google. A different avenue could be creating a portal search engine that allows the user - namely, the user that is blind - to choose his preferred search engine. Once the query results are obtained, they will be displayed in a format that is easy to browse using a screen reader.