Web Accessibility for Print Illiteracy

[email protected] Accessibility

for Inclusionhttp://a11y.in

Web Accessibility for Print Illiteracy

A11yPi

alleppey



What is accessibility?



• “Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is accessible by as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the 'ability to access' and possible benefit of some system or entity. Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive technology.” [Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility]



• “Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.”[Web Accessibility Initiative: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php]



Widening Accessibility



Print Illiteracy

8% 15% 19%3%

61%49%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Adults

Youth

Print Illiteracy (2006)

Adults 27% 34% 37% 18% 74% 58%

Youth 8% 15% 19% 3% 61% 49%

Algeria Egypt India Iran Mali Senegal

Sourced from: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/literacy.htm



Print Impaired!

• Current focus is on people with disabilities

• Largest audience with accessibility issues are people who are print illiterate/impaired

• These are people who are not comfortable with text (i.e. reading and writing text) but who have good ears, eyes and cognition.



a11yPi

A C C E S S I B I L I T y

11

Print illiterate

A11yPiPronounced as Alleppey

Alleppey is a name of an area in Kerala, India, where the land in backwater area is made accessible for agricultural and livelihood by building small dikes around the rice fields and thereby keep the salty sea water at a safe height!



Approaching Accessibility



Accessibility For Print Impaired

Extending W3C guidelinesto include Print Impaired

peoples needs

Semantic WebCommunity driven interpretations,

re-narrations and dynamic renditions of content based on the level of print-impairment of the user and

available relevant content

Facilitative



ExampleAyodhya Verdict



Ayodhya Verdict

[8132 Pages][Only in English]

Inaccessible because

i) it is a technical document

ii) very lengthy

iii) difficult to understand



Ayodhya Verdict

[8132 Pages][Only in English]

A short summaryof the verdict in

a regional language by a

lawyer

Derivative 1 [D1]

Derivative 2 [D2]

More Accessible

i) Less Technical

ii) Shorter Length

iii) Easier to understand

Solution: Users can manually link a document to other documents and say that D2 is a derivative work of D1.

The link can be as specific as possible. E.g. <title> in the <header> in D2 is linked to the 3rd paragraph in D1. A subsequent search of Ayodhya verdict allows a plug-in to recommend D2, or use D2 during the rendering of D1

Manual linking works well e.g. Wikipedia



ExampleA joke on xkcd.com



Derivative 1 [D1]

Derivative 2 [D2]http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1015/Shibboleet-XKCD-s-clever-code-word-explained

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

List_of_shibboleths

Susan sends joke by email to friends

Nadin – who also received the link from Susan, sends a mail to

pointers that help clarify some of the connotations and implied

meanings in that joke.

A11yPi

<derivativeref-url: http://xkcd.com/806/box7: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1015/Shibboleet-XKCD-s-clever-code-word-explained/>

Derivative used by a browser plug-in



Structuring Content



Structuring Content

Current Structure

Web Page

Embedded Links

Structuring with A11yPi

Semantic structure of document revealed

through ‘nodes”

Each node can be referable

D2

This can then be picked up as a recommendation for a specific

impairment/need/context profile of a user.



Existing Tools



"Google Sidewiki"Sidewiki appears to

be community annotations.



Google translator, when translating an

url, has a feature that allows one to provide for a better translation

of any sentence on the translated page



TED videos lets people to provide sub-

titles in other languages



Wikipedia has a feature that allows

one to voice narrate a wiki page! - in addition to making translations in parallel language

specific wikis .



• All examples identify a sub-unit of a media-element in the page(e.g. Google translator and TED videos allow identification of a sentence in a page)

• What is the a11yPi protocol (that is akin to html for the web) that becomes the meta web which defines the replacement/alternative/accessible substitutions?



<HTML 5><Dynamic Web Injection>

Jump to Demo



Assume this elementHas an ID A1C

Assume this is an a11yPi conforming page

Another site defines/embeds a derivative for this A1C with

attributes that identify a specific context:

(derivative A1C:lang-Hin,geo-

loc:india-lko)

0

Anand who is from Lucknow and reads Hindi, using his chrome-extension

a11yPi, goes to the original site and sees the video.

He will see the video dynamically substitute the derivative work.

0





markup for image as lang:kn and geo:karnataka

<img id="img1" src="fire_engine.jpeg" forurl="index.html“ forid="assoc1" rec="lang:kn;geo:karnataka">

Text as recommended for language kannada (lang:kn)

<p id="kn" forurl="index.html" forid="div1" rec="lang:kn">



<p id="hi" forurl="index.html" forid="div1" rec="lang:hi">

Documents

Web Accessibility for Print Illiteracy