oz: the blog of glenda sims ( the goodwitch)

Today, May 9th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The point of this day is to increase awareness of the importance of digital accessibility for all people. This outreach is for both geeks and non-geeks. It is for accessibility in learning, playing, working and enjoying life on the web. Because when it comes right down to it the web really is for everyone. So what are you going to do today to celebrate GAAD? Here are a few ideas:

Ideas for Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)

• Real People, Real Lives, Real Accessibility – Watch the accessibility story of Aleeha and see how technology is allowing her to overcome her disability and study to become the first blind veterinarian.
• Experience Loss of Dexterity – Trying switching your mouse to your non-dominent hand for an hour. See what it would be like to use the web without your current level of dexterity.
• Experience Keyboard Only – Try using your favorite web page without a mouse. If you hit a road block realize that people who use screen readers or have dexterity issues and can’t use a mouse would not have equal access to this site. Consider sending a message via the “contact us” form for that site asking them to make their site more accessible.
• Experience Reduced Vision – Dim the screen on your mobile phone and try to use it in bright sunlight. See what it would be like to have reduced vision and a lack of clear color perception.
• Sign up for the online version of AccessU – AccessU at Your Desk – Learn more about accessibility from the comfort of your own desk. What a great line-up of speakers and topics.
• Apply for a $10,000 Accessibility Grant - Apply for the Amaze Digital Accessibility Grant. Deque has extended the deadline for submission through today. What would you do with $10,000 to make the web more accessible through innovative technology or an amazing new project?
• Try using a screen reader.
  • ChromeVox – Try ChromeVox, a free screen reader for the Chrome Browser. I’ll tell you, the interactive ChomeVox Tutorial is really awesome.
  • VoiceOver – If you have a mac, try VoiceOver (it is already on on your computer).
  • NVDA – Try using the open source screen reader NVDA for PCs. Great instructions on getting started can be found at

Additional News and Resources of Global Accessibility Awareness Day

• Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) – May 9
• Follow the Twitter Feed for GAAD
• G is for Global: Tribute to Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2013 – Lainey Feingold

What did I do last year? I spent one hour using the web without my mouse. I reported my findings last year at “Accessibility Awareness: My 1 Mouseless Hour on the Web” .

What am I going to do this year? I’m going to use ChromeVox (a free and powerful screen reader) to explore Google Docs. I’ll share my findings in an upcoming Tweetchat as well as a post to my blog.

I’ve been living in the world of digital accessibility for over a decade now. I know so much about helping people who are blind, deaf and/or mobility impaired. But the area I’m weakest in, is cognitive disabilities. And, let’s be honest, that topic can feel overwhelming. Where are the lines about what is possible and reasonable to do for cognitive disabilities? Who can I turn to when I have questions on this topic?

One of the visionaries in the field of digital accessibility and cognitive disabilities is Lisa Seeman. She is really helping me understand that the time has come to further our research in this area. Why now? Because cognitive disabilities are more prevalent than all the other disabilities put together. We’ve spent over ten years focusing on blind, deaf and mobility/dexterity. Yes, at first the concept of cognitive disabilities may feel intimidating, but stop and remember when someone first told you that a blind person could use a computer and we needed to make our sites accessible to screen readers. That was pretty mind-boggling too. We didn’t let that challenge stop us, now did we?

Let’s stop being blind and deaf to the opportunities that await us in the realm of digital accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities.

AccessU is Knowbility’s annual conference that provides three days of accessibility classes and workshops. As Austin begins to warm toward summer, there is no cooler place to be than with the passionate speakers and instructors for this May’s AccessU! How can you resist all these wonderful accessibility courses and workshops from the world’s best instructors?

This year, some of the highlighted speakers and topics include include:

• Henny Swan from the BBC, who will focus on Mobile Accessibility
• Shawn Lauriat from Google, who will help us take on accessibility challenges in Complex Web Applications
• Molly E. Holzschlag from Knowbility, who will demystify the emerging Open Web Platform.

Be sure to check out the AccessU full course schedule to learn more about all of the fantastic presenters and content, as well as opportunities for socializing and networking during evening events.

AccessU keeps close to the heart of the ideologies of Open Web – that the Web we create must transcend the platforms, operating systems, browsers and most importantly – societal barriers imposed on anyone seeking access to the information and services we create every day. To do this well is a fine art as well as deep technology.

Come and join in for a great experience that will leave you with new learning, inspiration and passion for building the Web – the way the Web was meant to be!

Want to change education for the better? Even if you are not from Texas…I need your help! Please send an email to the Honorable Jimmie Don Aycock in support of HB 3586. (see sample letter at bottom of this post) Let’s make it loud and clear to the Texas Legislature that education needs to be accessible.

Call to Action:

Students with disabilities, who are served in Texas schools, need your help. Please consider writing a letter of support or position statement for HB 3586. This bill will help move our schools toward providing learning and assessment materials that can be accessed by all students in an equally effective manner.

HB 3586 was recently filed by Texas State Representative, Mark Strama to form an Accessible Learning Materials Council. This Council will:

1. Study issues related to improving the academic success of students with disabilities using accessible learning materials for instruction and accommodations on assessment instruments that will allow use of assistive technology devices or software;
2. Make recommendations to change existing requirements, law, rules, or policies to require that assistive technology and accessible learning materials be available for instruction and use in the administration of assessment instruments;
3. Produce biennial reports on the status of providing accessible learning materials for public school students with disabilities, including accommodations used in the administration of assessment instruments; and
4. Establish accessibility and procurement standards to provide accessible learning materials for students with disabilities that are as effective as materials and assessment instruments provided to students without disabilities.

Desired Outcome of Action:

Persuade members of the Public Education Committee to hold a hearing on HB 3586

Action Steps

1. Write a letter or position statement in support of HB 3586. ( see sample letter below ) If writing on behalf of an organization, please use the organization’s letterhead.
2. Address your letter or position statement to:
   Texas House Public Education Committee
   The Honorable Jimmie Don Aycock, Chairman
   jimmie.aycock@house.state.tx.us
   P.O. Box 2910
   Austin, TX 78768-2910
3. Salutation should read:
   Dear Chairman Aycock and Members of the Texas House Public Education Committee:
4. Provide your name, phone number, and email address at the bottom of your letter or position statement and sign it.
5. Email your letter or position statement to the following members of the K-12 Accessibility workgroup so that they can take a copy of it to each member of the House Public Education Committee:

Sample HB 3586 Letter

To: Jimmie Don Aycock
cc: k12accessibility@gmail.com

Texas House Public Education Committee
The Honorable Jimmie Don Aycock, Chairman
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768-2910

Dear Chairman Aycock and Members of the Texas House Public Education Committee,

I positively support HB 3586 and its purpose of providing accessible and usable public school assessment materials for all students regardless of their abilities or disabilities. There is a definite gap in these services and students with disabilities are the only ones at a disadvantage. This has a real impact for successful independent lives.
Thank you in advance for working to pass this legislation.

Your name
Your phone number
Your email address

I just sent my own letter. I personalized it with information about my web accessibility experience and added my resume. If you are an expert in this field, you may want to use my email as your starting point:

Texas House Public Education Committee
The Honorable Jimmie Don Aycock, Chairman
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768-2910

Dear Chairman Aycock and Members of the Texas House Public Education Committee,

I positively support HB 3586 and its purpose of providing accessible and usable public school assessment materials for all students regardless of their abilities or disabilities. There is a definite gap in these services and students with disabilities are the only ones at a disadvantage. This has a real impact for successful independent lives.

As an expert in the field of web accessibility, I solemnly swear that this is a reasonable and achievable requirement for K-12 education. There are numerous lawsuits and settlements in higher education based on universities not providing equal access to digital resources. Act now before we get hit with a lawsuit.

I’ve attached my resume so you can verify my experience in web accessibility.

Thank you in advance for working to pass this legislation.

my name
my address
my phone number
my email address

The Amaze Digital Accessibility Grant is a $10,000 grant that will be awarded to the applicant whose submission best exemplifies an innovative technology or project that will contribute to removing barriers on the web. All applications will be reviewed by a panel of Deque accessibility experts, and a winner will be selected from the finalists by Deque senior leadership team.

In addition to receiving the $10,000 grant, the winning applicant will receive a stipend of up to $5,000 to attend the 2014 CSUN Conference where they will present their project and share an update on how it’s going.

The grant website is now live at http://www.deque.com/amazegrant. Applications are due by May 1st, 2013.

So fire up your imagination and help make #a11y history!

Help us raise awareness

Help us raise awareness of the cause of technology access for all – donate to Knowbility during Amplify Austin. Your support will help Knowbility support the cause of equal access to technology for everyone, including people with disabilities. Here is how you can help:

Sign on to Amplify Austin anytime during the 24 hour period beginning at 7 pm tonight and follow these easy steps

1. Choose Knowbility from the nonprofits list and make a donation of $25 or more
2. Spread the word on your favorite social media platforms.

If you are feeling especially generous, you may become an “Individual fundraiser.” Select a goal for Knowbility solicit donations on your own fundraising page on AmplifyATX.org. All fundraisers must register their page by completing the online form on the Amplify Austin site.

And please act now, Amplify Austin wraps up at 7:00 pm TONIGHT.

On behalf of people with disabilities served by our work, thank you!

New Info About FireEyes Installation Added January 2013

I bet my accessibility toolbelt is wider than yours! I’m always collecting free accessibility tools. Why? Because I like to see what each one does and how it can help me be a better tester. My current toolbelt includes:

• WAVE Toolbar
• Web Developer (Firefox Extension)
• HeadingsMap
• JIm Thatcher’s Favelets
• Jon Gunderson’s Accessibility Evaluator
• Juicy Studio Accessibility Toolbar

In a class by itself, is FireEyes. A free testing tool that will blow your socks off (once you get it installed in a compatible environment). I’ll admit, the installation process is delicate. FireEyes depends on having just the right versions of the following stack (updated Feb 22, 2013)

• FireFox
• FireBug
• Java
• FireEyes

Don’t forget to turn off automatic updates for FireFox and FireBug. And you must Disable the FireFox Blocklist (until we release the java-free version of FireEyes. coming soon).

Because this is such a moving target, we are centralizing the “how to” for FireEyes installation at FireEyes FAQ

I can’t wait for the java-free version of FireEyes to be in our hands.

After a decade of working in the field of web accessibility, I still hear people who think that creating accessibile multimedia for the web is too expensive and too hard to do. I’ll admit, I was initially overwhelmed by the challenges. But today, I know that accessible multimedia is doable and smart business. You just need to know how to be super efficient with your resources and how to prioritize. And while I know a lot about this topic, it is evolving and I can always learn more from the accessibility tribe.

So, on Monday, June 18th, the amazing Elle Waters (@nethermind) and I (@goodwitch) hosted an #a11ychat “Making Audio and Video Accessible to All” and we were joined by our colleagues to share what we know. You can read the transcript or chirpstory. Here are some of my favorite lessons learned:

Captioning Strategy

To be effective, your organization needs to adopt a captioning strategy. @jared_w_smith of WebAim and I have both seen that outsourcing captioning to firms like CaptionSync is incredibly cost effective. I continue to keep an eye on automated solutions, like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But to date, the error rates on speech recognition software are too high to make this method the most cost effective. Let me put that last statement in context. Speech recognition software can be trained to your particular voice…and when it is trained, the accuracy rates can be very, very good. So, if you have a single voice speaking on the audio/video and the speech recognition software is trained to that voice, software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be very cost effective. But, when you are trying to use speech recognition software and any of the following are present, your results are going to need a significant amount of manual correction: more than one voice, an accent, background noise.

My rule of thumb? If the error rate of the speech recognition software is greater than 3%, it is more cost effective to outsource the transcription/captioning to professionals than it is to manually correct the automated transcript in-house. It takes more time (and/or costs more money) to review and edit the mistakes than it would for a trained transcriber to create the transcript from scratch. There is an interesting and effective method for using speech recognition software called “re-voicing”. Some transcription houses use this method to create their transcripts. Using the re-voicing method, a trained transcriber listens to the multimedia to be captioned and re-speaks all dialogue, in their own voice, directly into the speech recognition software. And, this speech recognition software has been trained to their particular voice. Because the re-voicer is a trained transcriber, they know to describe any relevant sounds beyond pure dialogue, as well as other transcription methodologies that insure efficient, quality content.

Acceptable Error Rate

What is an acceptable error rate in the transcript / caption file? The error rate should not exceed 1% and in reality should be at or below 0.5%. If you think I’m being a perfectionist, I’m really not. Ask anyone in the field of professional transcription and you will get a very similar answer. Need to know why an error rate of 3% is not acceptable? Check out this interesting post on “When Does 1 Error = 5 Errors“.

Social Justice

The message is crystal clear. Captioning of multimedia on the web is a civil right. It is already a legal requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Court case after court case has shown that the web is a place of public accommodation, just like a physical store, convention center, motel, museum, library, school, zoo, gym, movie theatre… (the list goes on). Keep a close eye on the Netflix lawsuit and you will quickly realize that captioning is a legal requirement.

I’m not saying you have to caption every bit of multimedia you have on the web before the end of the day today. But I am saying, you need to recognize that captioning is a requirement. Be smart and draft a captioning strategy for your organization. Consider outsourcing to a firm that specializing in transcription and captions. Prioritize your multimedia. First caption the content that is most important and that people use the most. Make it easy for people to request captioning on an item that has not been captioned yet, and be able to produce that item in a caption form in a reasonable timeframe. Make transcripts and captions a part of new multimedia production.

I promise you, that once you’ve gotten your first few videos captioned, you are going to realize, this is doable. This is not going to break your budget. And I wager, that within a few months…you will be realizing how captions are actually benefiting your business in many ways including making your multimedia searchable.

For a real eye-opener, I recommend that you watch the movie ‘Audism Unveiled‘. I know the movie had a profound impact on me. Intellectually I realized that captioning provided equal access. But I had no idea how painful the experience of discrimination against people who are deaf could be.

You can make a difference. You can caption your multimedia. You can also join the #captionTHIS social media movement and ask for equal access for all.