Background Research
Voice Browsers and Screen Readers
Learn to Use: Download and test several free and shareware browsers for blind users in order to gain an understanding for how they work. Find a machine with JAWS (or try the trial version) to see how it handles browsers.
Standards Testing: View different sites -- both non-compliant and compliant -- to see what level of CSS1 and CSS2 is actually supported in voice browsers and, thus, how much of the "talk" about XHTML/CSS is just hot air. Questions: Do voice browsers really have trouble with nested tables? Are "alt" attributes the only answer (as some think)? How do screen readers handle visibility and positioning?
Aural CSS: Test the new CSS support for voice browsers, including audio commands, voice changes, speed/pitch/direction attributes, and so on. Questions: Do the current voice browsers actually handle the new specifications for aural CSS? If we define multiple style sheets -- print, screen, aural, etc. -- do the voice browsers handle them correctly? Is the DOM supported?
Site Validation
Testing Methodology and Tools: Generate a list of necessary standards tools that check a site's conformance to published specifications, including Bobby, CSS Validator, and XHTML Validator. Develop an algorithm for testing sites for Ease-of-Use and Compliance using both automatied tools as well as manual methods of testing how accessible a site is for a user that is blind.
Accessibility Comparisons: Using the methodology defined above, compare 20 popular websites using an accessibility scale. Produce a matrix displaying how well each site satisfies the proposed criteria.
Visual Comparisons: Using various browsers and browser versions, compare how each of the 20 sites is rendered and discuss the tradeoffs of accessibility and browser-availability.
Prototyping
Redesign Three Sites: Demonstrate how adherence to accessibility conventions and W3C standards does not limit creativity by reprogramming three of the sites from the test group. If carbon-copies are not possible, create "improved" versions that are also accessible, easy to navigate, and user-friendly.
Secondary Benefits Analysis: After designing prototypes, analyze the benefits that people-conscious design will offer beyond accessibility. Candidates: code elegance, ease of modifying layout, faster development, bandwidth savings.
Search Engines
Google Layout Redesign: Take Google and update the initial search screen and the search results screens so that they comply to standards and are more accessible.
