Web Professional Minute

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

We?’ve been covering the topic of Web accessibility in depth and for today?’s podcast, I am reaching out to Brent Norris, Web developer from the Aloha state for some closing thoughts on this important topic.

Yesterday, I summarized my thoughts on the lessons learned regarding the interviews that we?’ve conducted on this topic of Web accessibility and our own efforts to improve the WOW Technology Minute website. In short, I stated that we?’re making progress in the areas of improving our understanding of the importance Web accessibility topic as a profession and thanks to the community we have tools and resources to address this issue head on.

As a result of our recent efforts to update our own knowledge base on the topic, it?’s also clear that in addition to being the right thing to do, Web accessibility makes great business sense and resources exist to readily document this as a business case.

With our own WOW Technology Minute Web accessibility project in mind for example, we?’ve been able to demonstrate that with a little bit of time invested and some very easy to do processes, we can make small incremental improvements on our site that can have a big impact for those with disabilities.

For the ten minute audio response with Brent and his take on the “Top Ten” Web Accessibility Tips complete with explanations of the SEO relevancy, check out today’s WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Concentric offering small business and shared web hosting solutions.

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A transcription of this podcast will be posted within 24 hours.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you?’ve been following along with the podcast coverage on the topic of Web accessibility, than you?’re already aware that we conducted a number of interviews from some of the most respected experts on the topic within the Web profession. The goal of our coverage on the topic was two-fold. The first goal was to provide the members and subscribers of this podcast with some practical resources on the topic of Web accessibility that you can easily implement today. Secondly, our goal was to improve the accessibility and quality of the WOW Technology Minute website.

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to summarize what we?’ve learned through the process and to share my own perspective on the topic. For the complete 3 minute audio visit the WOW Technology Minute. website.

Thank you for listening and watching today?’s WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProTraining.org check it out at: Web Pro Training.

Transcript:

Web Accessibility Project and WOW Executive Summary
Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
If you?’ve been following along with the podcast coverage on the topic of Web accessibility, than you?’re already aware that we conducted a number of interviews from some of the most respected experts on the topic within the Web profession. The goal of our coverage on the topic was two-fold. The first goal was to provide the members and subscribers of this podcast with some practical resources on the topic of Web accessibility that you can easily implement today. Secondly, our goal was to improve the accessibility and quality of the WOW Technology Minute website.
For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to summarize what we?’ve learned through this process and to share my own perspective on the topic. For tomorrow?’s podcast, I?’ll be reaching out to Brent Norris, Web developer from the Aloha state of Hawaii who as you may recall, I asked to consult with me on the WOW Accessibility project.

First, I?’d like to acknowledge T.V. Raman Research Scientist at Google for the inspiration for the in depth analysis and the WOW Accessibility Project. I met and interviewed T.V. Raman at the Seventeen Annual WWW conference in Beijing last month on the topic of Web accessibility and was inspired by his “cup half full” perspective on the topic and his passion to educate others in a very logical and upbeat way about the need for and the benefits of designing with Web accessibility in mind.

Now for my thoughts:

In reviewing the past WOW Technology Minute interviews on the topic of Web accessibility, I?’ve learned the following:

•As an industry we are making progress in the areas of improving an understanding and appreciation of the needs for Web accessibility and as a profession we should be proud of that
•I also learned that the cup is half full but according to the experts its much bigger and that this is a positive thing for our profession in terms of oppotyinty and for the Web in general
•Thanks to wide variety of Web accessibility specialist and standards bodies we have more recommendations (national and international ) and tools to better understand and address the problem
•In addition to being the right thing to do for those that are blind, deaf and otherwise handicapped Web accessibility makes great business sense and resources exist to document that
•With just a little bit of time invested and some very easy to do processes even the busiest of the busiest in the Web profession can make a small and incremental change that can have a big impact

To put those statements into perspective, I?’d like to point out that I recognize that most Web professionals do not have the luxury of working for the enterprise. More than likely, the majority of you have clients and tight timelines and operate within the constraints of a small budget. As a result, Web accessibility although important is only a small part of your over all job responsibility. If you?’re like me, than you?’re most likely the developer, the designer, the content, the security and the marketing guru as well. I recognize and understand how difficult it must be to manage the complexity of your daily lives of managing a wide variety of demanding clients and to do?’s.

That said, I?’d like to ask that you consider incorporating some of the lessons learned into your daily Web professional lives. You?’ll feel better for having done so. I know that I have.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web Accessibility and the second in a series of interviews with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)and Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.

Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of */Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design at: UIACCESS.

For the complete four minute audio interview with Shawn on the topic of the W3C’s work on Accessible Rich Internet Applications check out today’s podcast at the WOW Technology Minute..

Today s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebmasterSurvivalGuide.

Transcript: WOW Technology Minute Web Accessibility Interviews with Shawn Henry, WAI and W3C

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage and the topic of Web Accessibility with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium W3C and Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group. Good afternoon Shawn and thanks again for the continued support of the web accessibility topic and this podcast.

SHAWN HENRY: Glad to be able to take this opportunity to continue sharing information about web accessibility.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much Shawn. Can you provide the listeners and the viewers of this podcast an overview of the W3C?’s work on accessible-rich Internet applications?

SHAWN: Absolutely. So this work applies to, largely to, dynamic html, sites with AJAX and other so-called Web 2.0 applications. And basically the issue is that Midas functionality is not available to some users with disabilities, mostly people who can?’t use a mouse and people who can?’t see and use a screen reader. For example, when websites use tree controls for navigation, that is often either not accessible or very tedious to access. So it may be accessible, but it?’s not very useable. Things like drag-and-drop, obviously, very difficult to do without a mouse. And then issues with updating the DOM, with AJAX Live Regions, with updating content on a page based on user actions. So these are some of the areas that we?’re focusing on.

So we have this specification called WAI AIA. It stands for Accessible-Rich Internet Applications. And this specification defines a way to make these user interface controls and dynamic content accessible. It primarily focuses on the, this level of technology. It has some features that are useful for simple sites, such as specifications for marking up regions of a page, like menus, primary content, secondary content, browsers and things like that. It is currently a draft. Many browsers, assisted technologies, Java Script tool kits and others have already begun to implement it. So we recommend that Web developers start now to learn about ARIA so that they can implement it appropriately and be ready and ahead of the game when that is finalized and when it comes out.

And one of the new bits of information, even for those who heard about ARIA several months ago, is that we previously had just the technical specifications and now we have material that developed, for developers. So there?’s a primer and there?’s a best practices guide. And all those are available from the WAI ARIA view, which you can find on the WAI website or if you just go to any search engine and type W-A-I dash A-R-I-A overview, it should take you right there.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you Shawn. Sounds like a terrific resource and we certainly thank you for continued support. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters and the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Shawn Henry WAI W3C. Thanks again Shawn.

ANNOUNCER: Today?’s minute is sponsored by the Webmaster?’s Survival Guide. When you need professional resources be sure to check out www.webmastersurvivalguide.com. There?’s something there for all skill levels and disciplines. And be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters, WOW, and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web Accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from an international perspective, I?’m on the phone with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative, WAI, World Wide Web Consortium and a Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.

Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of JUST ASK: INTEGRATING ACCESSIBILITY THROUGHOUT DESIGN. She?’s also presented for WOW in the past and is a great addition to this podcast.

Good Afternoon Shawn and thanks for agreeing to this interview and, of course, for your comments by email. Shawn, you commented on the WOW Technology Minute Web Accessibility Podcast with Brent Norris. Can you summarize your comments and can you provide us with the resources and the links that you mentioned in your email?

SHAWN HENRY: Yeah, first of all it?’s great to hear about your project to evaluate and improve the accessibility of the WOW Technology Minute website. I noticed the mention of Section 508, which is for US government procurement, and so I wanted to share some information about the international accessibility of web content accessibility guidelines. So it?’s an international accessibility standard, and that acronym is WCAG. WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and it applies to websites and web applications. It?’s from the World Wide Web Consortium, or the W3C, and that?’s the group that defines standards such as html, css, etc. Within W3C there?’s a group called the Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI, and that?’s the group that developed the accessibility guidelines. So WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, just as with other W3C web standards, are cooperatively developed with people around the world.

It?’s a little different from US Section 508. In fact, Section 508 was based largely on WCAG 1.0, but it?’s only a subset. So WCAG covers many more accessibility issues. It?’s much broader. Now WCAG 2.0 is close to being published. As of the 30th of April we now recommend that people start using the draft of WCAG 2.0, as we don?’t expect it to change very much before it?’s finalized, hopefully later this year.

There?’s several benefits to using WCAG 2.0. It applies to more advanced technologies, both current technologies, future technologies and non-W3C technologies like flash and PDF and other things. It has extensive supporting materials that gives you practical how-to examples as what you need to do as developers to implement WCAG and how to, technical implementation details as well as understanding the functionality that users need.

So that?’s just a little bit about WCAG 2.0, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and if you want to get some more information I?’d encourage you to go look at the overview document and that is at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20. And that will give you an overview of the documents. There?’s a link to a FAQ, there?’s a really useful resource called “How to meet WCAG 2.0” and it?’s a customizable, quick reference of all the requirements and the information you need. So that?’s a bit about WCAG 2.0.

BILL: Excellent Shawn, thank you so much for that international perspective, as well as those resources available. I?’m curious to know, you mentioned earlier in your email to me regarding valuation tools and business cases. Can you address that?

SHAWN: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to let you know that we have several, we have a wide variety of resources from the W3C WAI. And Brent?’s comment about evaluation tools and yours about business cases has brought up two of them that I wanted to share. One is, for evaluation tools, we have a database, and that lists over 100 tools, multiple types of tools, languages, etc. And that?’s all searchable. So that?’s a good resource for finding different types of evaluation tools.

Then we also have a document called “Developing a Business Case for your Organization.” And it goes into detail about the social factors, technical factors, financial factors, and legal and policy factors, involved in the business case.

BILL: And this is from an international perspective?

SHAWN: Absolutely. It?’s a very broad resource. It covers whether you?’re in education, whether you?’re in government, whether you?’re in the private sector, a big company, a small company, it covers all these different issues. And it?’s designed so that you as an individual can pick the aspects that are relevant to your situation.

BILL: Excellent.

SHAWN: The business case is a little different for everybody.

BILL: Yeah, fair enough. Sounds like a terrific resource, we thank you for that.

SHAWN: Yeah. So if you want to find that, or any of the other resources, those are at http://www.w3.org/wai/resources.

BILL: Thank you so much for that. Anything else to share?

SHAWN: Another thing I wanted to mention is an interesting aspect about making developers?’ jobs easier and getting more accessibility for less effort. And that is the role of authoring tools. So authoring tools include your html editor, content management system, anything you?’re using to create content on the web. And when those support accessibility, that makes developers?’ jobs easier. So we also have authoring tool accessibility guidelines. And we are encouraging vendors to meet those, to make developers?’ jobs easier. That?’s another thing that developers can do, is to ask their authoring tool vendor if they?’re doing everything they can to meet accessibility guidelines as well. So that we can all get more accessibility integrated into our work with less effort.

For those who are particularly interested in providing equal access to people with disabilities, another aspect of the authoring tools accessibility guidelines, is the fact that things like blogging software, and wikis and photo-sharing sites and things like that, are also authoring tools. So it?’s important that they are accessible, so that people with disabilities themselves can contribute to the web as well.

BILL: Yeah. Good point, thank you for bringing that up Shawn.

SHAWN: Great.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation, where Adobe is debuting Adobe TV. That?’s right, if you haven?’t already checked out Adobe TV, check it out today at http://tv.adobe.com. And also check out their e-seminar series for web professionals for the month of July and August at http://www.adobe.com/go/webeseminars.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation.

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Introduction to Dreamweaver CS3

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Come learn how Dreamweaver helps you create standards-based websites, that will look great across different browsers. We will create a new design from scratch, based on a Photoshop composite, using CSS-based layout. We will also show some of Dreamweavers robust site management functionality, and see how Dreamweaver can help you learn various Web technologies.
From Pixels to Playback: Adobe Photoshop to Adobe Flash
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Deliver professional grade SWF and FLV content that?’s as easy for users to view as it is for you to create, edit, and deploy.

Prototyping with Fireworks CS3
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Fireworks CS3 delivers robust new tools for rapidly prototyping websites and user interfaces. Learn how to use Fireworks? prototyping features to create a working, click-through prototype; create multiple pages and share common layers across pages; import native Photoshop and Illustrator files, complete with hierarchical layer structures, layer blend modes, and layer effects; add rich symbols from Fireworks? Common Library, and customize symbol attributes in the Symbol Properties panel; and intelligently scale bitmap and vector symbols to avoid distortion.

It?’s ALIIIIIIIIIVE!: A Print and Web Designer Guide to Interactivity with Adobe Flash
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Free the rich, interactive content inside your Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator images with Adobe Flash. Learn how these programs give you a leg up when creating interactive and animated content for mobile devices and the web.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web accessibility. If you?’ve been following a long with the series of podcast that you?’re aware that I?’ve enlisted the support of several industry professionals including that of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii to assist me with better understanding today?’s Web accessibility best practices and to align this podcast to those standards.

If you?’re listening to this series for the first time, I?’d like to suggest that you visit previous coverage of this series of podcast to better understand the rational, the business case and the Web accessibility tools that are available today.

For today?’s podcast, Brent recaps some of his findings and some of the recommended items for the WOW Technology Minute website. For the complete four minute audio interview check out today’s podcast at the WOW Technology Minute..

Stay tuned for future interviews with additional interviews with Brent and others from the international community.

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web accessibility. If you?’ve been following along with this series of podcasts than you?’re already aware that I?’ve enlisted the support from several industry professionals including Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii, to assist me with better understanding today?’s best practices and to align this podcast to those standards. If you?’re listening to this series for the first time, I?’d like to suggest that you visit previous coverage of this series of podcasts to better understand the rationale, the business case, and the Web accessibility tools and resources and links that are available today. For today?’s podcast I?’m on the phone with Brent Norris to ask him for an update of his analysis and his recommendations for the WOW Technology Minute website. Good evening Brent and thanks for agreeing to this call. And of course, for your continued support.

BRENT NORRIS: For sure. So we ran the tests and we found some errors. There were two major errors, form label errors. We also found doctype wasn?’t declared and we found a language attribute that wasn?’t declared and the XML RPC file, which isn?’t necessarily a viewable file or a file that folks are going to look at on the site, so that was pretty good. So we had a couple of goals to remove errors and reduce the number of warnings. So we did that. And the down and dirty method was to remove the search box and to change the pull-down menu for the categories, and this is within the context of WordPress, to a list instead of a pull-down menu.

BILL: Excellent, that?’s a great summary. So sounds like that?’s relatively straightforward. So does that mean we?’re complete with the process?

BRENT: Well, we don?’t have any more errors. You know, it?’s an interesting point. There?’s errors, there?’s warnings, there?’s exclamation points, there?’s lots of different levels of accessibility. Then we?’ve got Section 508 compliance. One of the things that we can still do, of course, to meet that Section 508 compliance is to provide what?’s called a synchronized caption or synchronized transcript that runs along with the video or audio that we provide.

BILL: That certainly seems to make a lot of sense. The Adobe visual communicator product that we?’re currently using has the functionality of adding the transcription service to its functionality in flash that incorporates audio, video, images and the transcription all in one neat product. So certainly that?’s something we could do pretty straightforwardly. And then I suppose if I?’m understanding this correctly, it certainly seems to make a lot of sense, to have a separate, independent, downloadable audio component as well.

BRENT: Good question. Yes, there?’s actually, like you said, with visual communicator there?’s an opportunity to provide transcript, in context, synchronized with the audio. That?’s great. Adobe partnered up with HiSoftware, which is one of the resources that our listeners can find on the site for Section 508 voluntary, it?’s not the voluntary product accessibility template, it?’s an extension for flash that lets you include synchronized captioning. So it?’s like a five-hundred dollar piece of add-on software that folks creating video and flash can use to become Section 508 compliant.

BILL: Well that?’s great Brent. Sounds like another terrific resource. Thank you for that and of course thank you for all of your support. I think we?’re starting to get to the heart of this issue and that is that we?’ve determined the rationale, we?’ve determined the business reasons for this. We did an analysis of the WOW Technology Minute site. We?’ve looked at the tools available. We found the reports. All of these resources are readily available for the average working Web professional. It?’s not to say that it?’s not complex and it doesn?’t need a little bit of investment and time, but it seems to me that we?’ve gone down the path of better understanding this topic. We?’ve gone down the process of incorporating it into our daily life. And it seems like we?’ve actually found some solutions for some big issues that need to be addressed. So Brent I?’m very grateful for that. In future minutes I?’d like to explore other in-depth interviews about how you felt about this process and how you feel about incorporating this kind of activity into your daily Web professional life. In addition, I?’d also to like to point out that for the listeners of this podcast that are outside of the United States, 508 is a particular section that applies to the United States. We will be interviewing other Web professionals from a more international perspective, so we can find out what issues exist internationally and we can also find out what solutions exist. And I know there are many. So with that, thank you for listening and thank you for watching. And of course Brent, thank you again for your time today.

BRENT: Much aloha Bill, and aloha to everyone out there.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a practicing Web 2 developer s point of view, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii.

If you?’ve been following along with this series of podcast than you re aware that Brent?’s taken project of researching the current status of Web accessibility and the tools that are available today for the Web professional.

For today?’s podcast Brent recaps some of his findings and the specific tools he?’s used, including some SEO tools that lend itself to accessibility by evaluating the readability of your website. For the complete 3 minute interview complete with the tools and resources check out today s podcast at WOW Technology Minute.

Stay tuned for future interviews with Brent as he will be reporting on his findings and am in depth analysis on the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal of aligning it with best practices. Brent will cover the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interviews of the process.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a Web 2 developers point of view, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer from the great state of Hawaii. Brent has been a long time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

I ve asked Brent to take on the project of researching the current status of Web accessibility and the tools that are available today for the Web professional. Brent s uncovered some interesting information and resources. He also has a unique perspective on the topic as well. For the complete 7 minute interview and the tools and resources check out today s podcast at WOW Technology Minute.

In future interviews, Brent will be reporting on his findings regarding my request to conduct and analysis on the WOW Technology Minute website with the goal of aligning it with best practices. Brent will cover the topic from an educational perspective complete with a written report and audio interviews of the process.

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of Web accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from a Web 2.0 developer perspective, I?’ve enlisted the support of Brent Norris, Web developer and a long-time supporter of the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute, from the great state of Hawaii. I?’ve asked Brent to explore the topic of Web accessibility from the perspective of his daily activities. In addition to that, to help support the WOW with it?’s Web 2.0 application and ensuring that we are providing the best practices relevant to Web professionals. Good evening and thanks for agreeing to this interview and for your continued support to the WOW organization.

BRENT NORRIS: Aloha Bill, thanks for having me back.

BILL: Thank you Brent. I?’m curious to know Brent, with that said and that introduction, can you give us an update?

BRENT: Sure. Well, I?’ve been looking at tools and testing methodologies. In fact one of the things I wasn?’t aware of is that as of February 1st the Watchfire WebXact and Bobby online products, were no longer available. Those were purchased by IBM. I think that was a couple of years ago now. And so anyway, we kind of looked for new tools. And there happens to be some really great tools out there. The FAE, the Functional Accessibility Evaluator from the University of Illinois, is an example of a great tool. There?’s a few others and lots of resources out there. Although maybe not as many resources as there used to be. Microsoft, Apple, they still have their Section 508 and accessibility resources. The Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility has their resources. And then section508.gov and virtual508.com, I believe, they all have their tools as well. So then there?’s the tools that we?’ve outlined, there?’s the resources that we?’ve outlined to go and use. We?’re also going to include additional resources on the website. And using those tools we?’ll be able to assess the current situation and come back with some recommendations.

BILL: Yeah, thanks Brent, I appreciate that. And so I?’m curious to know, for those listeners that are not familiar and that haven?’t been practicing for the length of time that you have, give us a high level of the mechanics, if you will, the functionality of both LIFT and Bobby.

BRENT: Well, Bobby is an online tool, you enter a URL into the Bobby interface and it would come back with warnings and issues that pass Web accessibility guidelines. So it would give you a pretty accurate assessment of how well your website did when it came to Web accessibility. And it touches on 508 compliance as well. So that was an online tool. LIFT was an extension for Dream Weaver that gave you some additional help, as you were coding a page there were some pop-ups windows that would help you in Dream Weaver to add accessibility features. Things like tab indexes, navigational aides and it would indicate to you when you needed to give different forms of content. So if you included a table it would make sure that you put the proper table headers in and it would make sure that if you provided a piece of multimedia content that you would provide it in an alternate form as well. So those were two really popular tools, back in the day. And now IBM has those tools also in their Rational Testing Tool, so Section 508 is still very much in the realm of professionals and the tools and the case, they?’re there for professional use.

BILL: So that begs the question then, Brent, you know this is what I?’m trying to get at with this podcast, in particular. In previous podcasts we?’ve explored the rationale and the business reasons for Web accessibility. For example, we?’ve interviewed most recently T.V. Raman from Google, who made a very solid case for designing, developing, with Web accessibility. There are quite a few people with disabilities, both visually and hearing, and otherwise. So with that said, I?’m trying to hone in on that large percentage of the audience that?’s not that familiar with Web accessibility. In other words, we know practicing professionals that receive government funding, higher education for example or government, for the most part they?’re somewhat familiar, if not very familiar, with Web accessibility. But to those that are out there in the field that are not necessarily practicing Web accessibility everyday, I?’m just curious to know from your point of view, how practical is it to use the tools that are available today to make sound and Web accessible websites. I guess I?’m trying to cut to the chase and peel back a layer of that level of the onion. How practical is it that these individuals can go out and use these tools today?

BRENT: Well, you know, you raise some really interesting points and I think the search engine optimization point is probably the most popular for most folks. One of the things that we know from reading Google?’s webmaster guidelines is that Web accessibility also helps drive traffic to your website. So I think there?’s a strong business case to bring your sites into compliance or to bring them at least to that 80-90% level for accessibility. One of the things I learned from the IBM Rational Policy Testing homepage, is that there?’s actually over 10% of the online population has a disability. That?’s 750 million people worldwide, 55 million Americans. And there?’s also a large number of people with learning disorders and disabilities that also need help when we?’re putting our pages together. So things like trunking the information, while they?’re good for search engines, they?’re also good for folks that, they?’re good for everyone to be able to help read and skim through the data on the website. So the tools actually from the search engine optimization state, mimic some of the needs of accessibility folks too.

BILL: Fair enough. So I?’m a Web developer and I?’m out there managing small business websites and I?’m strapped for time, these tools are resourceful for me as well?

BRENT: I think so. And there?’s plenty of tools available. SEOmoz has a good search engine optimization tool. Website Grader is a good search optimization tool. But what I really think we need to do is use something like the Functional Accessibility Evaluator from the University of Illinois site and combine the features of that tool and maybe one to five data point in some of these website graders that consider search engine optimization. So in other words, make accessibility part of that, part of that thing.

BILL: Yeah, fair enough. Okay, well that?’s an interesting point. Well listen, let?’s make it a point to make all of these links and these resources available on today?’s WOW Technology Minute and then reaching out into the future Brent, can you give us an in-depth analysis of the current WOW Technology Minute website with the, an analysis that we can easily read and understand and walk the listeners and the viewers of this podcast through the process of what we did when designing our sites for Web accessibility?

BRENT: Absolutely. We?’re going to do a full pass and identify those tools. We?’ll make sure all the resources are available and we?’re going to also identify the best practices. So we?’re going to outline not only the top ten things that folks should be doing on their websites, but also where to get more help.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much Brent, I appreciate it. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters, the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Brent Norris from the great state of Hawaii. Thanks again Brent.

BRENT: Oh, thanks Bill and have a good evening. Aloha.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility. To assist us in understanding this issue from a “what can we do today” perspective, I am on the phone with Professor Mark DuBois, from Illinois Central College.

Mark, good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to the interview. Mark, as you know thousands of Web professionals are tasked to manage a number of complex technical, designs and Web business topics everyday. In short, they are not always going to be Web accessibility specialist. As a result, can share with the listeners of podcast a couple of specific examples that Web professionals need incorporate when considering Web accessibility for their clients?

Mark. you also serve as the Director of Education for the WOW organization and we are collaborating yon the development of a short course on the topic of Web accessibility the listeners what that course might entail and how much will it cost?

To listen to the four minute response check out the WOW Technology Minute at: http://www.webprominute.org

Today?’s WOW Technology minute is sponsored by the “Voices That Matter” series of Conferences. This years Voices That Matter Web Design conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders, the leading publisher of Web design books and resources—and home to the most popular Web design authors, trainers, and speakers. This year?’s Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Check it out today! http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2008/