Today’s topic is the most frustrating part of this course module for me. On the other hand, it seems to be one of the most exciting parts for others. Understanding that it is such a challenging task to integrate many technologies (e.g. Google map, RSS feed, etc.) into one place, how about accessibility issues for this amazing technological mixture?
One of the most interesting features of the web 2.0 is the mix and match with rich multimedia. This type of 3d internet or virtual reality allows users to interact with applications easily and full of fun unlike the former generation of the internet. For users with visual impairment, however, this even creates barrier (to information access) for them. As a result, W3c has developed a suite of documents to ensure that this group of people will not be left out.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI- ARIA) syntax for making dynamic Web content and custom UI controls accessible. It is a stopgap and hopefully short-term solution, because accessibility is not an integral part of the widget. Rather, authors have to do quite some additional hacking to ensure that the widget type (checkbox, password field, et cetera) and widget state (checked, open, closed, et cetera) are properly exposed. This W3C’s WAI-ARIA Features Will Enable Accessible Dynamic Web Sites usable to people with disabilities
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2006JulSep/0247.html
For developers or information providers such as Google, although they are aware of these accessibility standards and guidelines
http://labs.google.com/accessible/overview.html
, many applications have not been fully implemented. Nonetheless, there are some groups of web developers are trying to improve features of these applications and share their expertise such as:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/keyboard-accessible-google-maps/
Hopefully in the future, there would be more accessible web applications for both content providers and regular consumers!
Tags: accessibility, ARIA, google map, mashup
