Crowdsourcing Accessibility: Can Accessibility be fixed for free with

Community Help? Terrill Thompson

tft@uw.edu@terrillthompson

http://terrillthompson.com

The Web Accessibility Puzzle…

… has many pieces

• Web developers must understand and practice accessibility

• Web authoring tools must make it possible (and easy) to create accessible content

• Assistive technologies and browsers must support accessibility standards

• Policy makers must demand accessibility (and policies must be enforced)

Another important piece…

Just Do It!Make it accessible

ourselves

Crowdsourcing

The act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

-Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Success Story: TED Open Translation Project

As of November 19, 2010:• 4192 volunteers• 79 languages• 12,815 subtitles

TED’s Tool: DotSub.com

UniversalSubtitles.com• 3097 videos captioned• Download in various caption

formats, including .SRT for uploading to YouTube, or

• Embed a YouTube player on any web page with captions uploading captions to YouTube not required)

• Example

Crowdsourcing Web Accessibility

Serotek C-SAW

• "Community-Supported Accessible Web“• http://help.samobile.net/C-SAW.html• Requires a subscription to the System Access

Mobile Network: http://help.samobile.net/Intro.html

• Can be accessed through System Access To Go, which is free: http://www.satogo.com

How C-SAW Works

• On an inaccessible image, use Alt+L to label it with alternate text

• On an inaccessible form field, use Alt+L to add a label

• Insert + S stores your labels to a master database, available to all users

Similar, Past Efforts

• Web Visum– http://webvisum.com/– Firefox plug-in – Community driven tagging and page enhancements.– Automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving

• IBM Social Accessibility Project– http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/socialaccessibility– Provided a tool to facilitate collaboration between

“screen reader users” and “volunteers”– Included rewards for volunteers (e.g., rankings)

FixTheWeb.net

As of November 19, 2010:• Still in BETA• 77 reporters• 199 volunteers• 146 websites reported• 14 owners informed• 14 owners

acknowledged• 9 owners fixed

Greasemonkey

• Firefox extension that allows users to run scripts that modify HTML web page content every time a specified page is loaded

• http://wiki.greasespot.net• User script repository: userscripts.org• Scripts tagged “accessibility”:

http://userscripts.org/tags/accessibility• My scripts:

http://terrillthompson.com/gmscripts/

What Can We Do With Greasemonkey?

• Add alt to images• Add labels and fieldsets to forms• Add headings• Add ARIA landmarks• Add other ARIA markup• Add custom HTML controls for inaccessible video

players (APIs permitting)• Rewrite inaccessible dynamic menus to make

them accessible• Etc….

Considering the Potential

• Fix the problem now – provide immediate access

• Demonstrate accessibility solutions to the site owner or developer

• Teaching tool for kids learning web design – Learn about HTML, Javascript, & DOM– Learn about accessibility– It’s fun!