Guiding web accessibility for all
A universal coding system has been developed for message encoding and can be used for eMail, eChat or enhancing web-page information. The system has a public scope, involving six national and three symbol languages. Further support for assisting people with cognitive, motor and/or language disorders in the handling of information and navigation has been developed. Software applications containing appropriate user interfaces, presenting the message content in multiple ways such as by text, speech or by symbols have been created. Additionally, web-guidelines and an authoring tool have been designed for information providers. Included in the user platform are educational and rehabilitation centres, organisations for the elderly involved in ICT and several AAC-focused companies. At least six countries have been represented, securing optimal user-focused design, qualitative evaluation of the results and a logical and realistic exploitation planning. In order to create a basis for guideline development, discussions took place on various issues. These include whether there should be only one site or two alternative sites; conflicting user needs, content simplicity and summaries, top loading, tagging images, navigation mechanisms, and search engines. The results have led to eight recommendations proposed as success criteria, examples and strategies to be included in the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The guidelines offer a unique perspective on Internet use by AAC users and could make a significant contribution to the Internet standardisation debate.
