Please review ATAG2.0

I'm part of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) working group (phew, that's a mouthful) and during the week, we published a new working draft of the new guidlines (ATAG2.0) along with a new "Implementing ATAG 2.0" guide. The official call for comments sent to the WAI Interest Group (IG) went like so:

Dear WAI Interest Group Participants,

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group invites you to comment on the updated Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 Working Draft published 29 October 2009 at: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/

The draft integrates revisions in response to the comments of the 21 May draft as well as a substantially revised document, Implementing ATAG 2.0 that replaces Techniques for ATAG 2.0. In this draft, the Working Group made the following substantial changes: * Revised how authoring tools should support authors in making choices that improve accessibility. * Revised the former Techniques document to better serve developers, and changed the title to: Implementing ATAG 2.0.

Specific changes and questions for feedback are listed in the Status section: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/#status

ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use the tools. ATAG is introduced in the ATAG Overview at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag.php ATAG is part of a series of accessibility guidelines/standards developed by WAI, which are listed in WAI Guidelines and Techniques at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech.html

WAI encourages you to review the update ATAG 2.0 documents and submit comments on any issues that you think could present a barrier to future adoption and implementation of ATAG 2.0. Please send comments to the publicly-archived list: public-atag2-comments@w3.org by 30 November 2009

For more information, see: * How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/w3c-process * Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/

Please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you in advance for your comments.

Feel free to circulate this message to other lists; please avoid cross-postings where possible.

Regards, ~Shawn Henry and Judy Brewer, W3C WAI On behalf of: Jutta Treviranus, Chair of AUWG, and Director of the Assistive Technology Research Center, University of Toronto Jeanne Spellman, W3C Staff Contact for AUWG

If you're at all interested in accessibility (or even if you're not) and you build any kind of tool or application that can be used to create content, you really need to be having a read of these and making comments if there's anything you have an issue with. These guidelines are an important part of the process of ensuring that web content, applications and software are accessible, and present an incredible opportunity to really lead the field in best practice, especially for CMS vendors.

If you were a brand, what brand would you be?

I was recently asked the question:

If you were a brand, what brand would you be? The actual brand that you are, not the brand you aspire to be.

The question came out of left field and I wasn't expecting it, so I stuttered a wee bit and delayed answering a bit by doing the old "good question…" dance. Mostly, if I'm honest, because I was trying to figure out whether it'd be worth answering truthfully the first thing that appeared in my head or going for the aspirational angle and being rumbled as arrogant or a poseur.

In the end, I went with the answer that first popped into my head, but I'm curious what your answer would be, if you were asked that question - and whether you'd be honest, or aspirational.

So, if you were a brand, what brand would you be?

About Accessibility Pages

A while ago, I asked a question about accessibility help pages on twitter, and even set up a poll, asking "Where on the page do you put your accessibility help link?". I gave four options, and the results were as follows:

• At the top, in the first few tabs/links. 44% (35 votes)
• At the bottom, in the last few tabs/links. 25% (20 votes)
• What accessibility help link? 29% (23 votes)
• Other 1% (1 votes)

I've been meaning to blog about it for ages, and was reminded about it again today, when I looked at three or four sites in a row which had accessibility help links as the very last link on the page.

I then posted to twitter that I:

would love to see stats for how many views accessibility statements/pages that are linked at the very end of page get, vs top of page.

I was really pleased when @AndyDBryant replied:

@pixeldiva If it can wait til tomorrow, I can dig out stats for my employer's site (accessibility link at bottom). What kind of time period?

I wasn't expecting any particular answers to my tweet, I was really just thinking out loud, but I really would love to know how many page views accessibility pages get, regardless of their positioning.

I have a few theories about them, but I'd like a bit more data before I expand on what they are, which is where you come in.

If you work on the web, have access to statistics and have an accessibility page, I would absolutely love it if you could give me the following info:

1. Where on the page your accessibility page is.
2. How many views your accessibility page has had in a given time period.
3. How many views your home page has had in that time period.
4. What that time period is.

If you can give me the name/url of the site that would be awesome, but if you can't for whatever reason, that's fine.

You can also use a fake name along with your comment if you feel the need, but I'd really appreciate it if you used a real email address (it'll only be seen by me, and I won't use it for evil, promise) so that I can contact you for further info (if you're happy for me to do that).

If you really feel uncomfortable posting stats publicly but still want to share, you can email me instead.

Thank you.

Please update your feed subscription

If you're one of the lovely, lovely people who've remained subscribed to pixeldiva even though I barely wrote anything last year and all you've been getting is flickr pics and the odd delicious link, first of all, hello! it's been a while. Second of all, thank you. It's been nice to know that in the event that I actually wrote something, at least a few people (outside immediate family and friends) might have read it. As part of the sweeping programme of change recently instituted around here I'm moving away from feedburner, so I'd be awfully grateful if you could change the feed subscription to http://www.pixeldiva.co.uk/feed/ as soon as possible, so I can stop using feedburner.

Thank you.