How to contribute code that passes accessibility tests

About this document

• Status: DRAFT
• Updated: 11-jun-2009

Accessibility Policy

The policy for .LRN is published at .LRN website: Accessibility Policy

Corresponding policy for OpenACS is currently being written and will be published soon.

The conformance level to be satisfied is explained in the "Accessibility Conformance Level" section of the .LRN Accessibility Policy.

The "Accessibility page" refered by the .LRN Accessibility Policy states the conformance level and its domain of aplication for each version of the software.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Note: Although automatic tools, such as TAW and "Cynthia says", may be useful to help the developer/author in addressing accessibility issues by providing informative reports, they can not certify the accessibility level of a page since many things need a manual review. Also, those tools won't be able to check a page protected by user and password (they would report on the login page, the one they can actually reach).

WCAG version 2.0

• Understanding WCAG 2.0: a "must read"
• The guidelines
• How to meet WCAG 2.0 (quick reference)
• Techniques and Failures for the Success Criteria of WCAG 2.0

WCAG version 1.0

• The guidelines: explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities.
• Checklist of checkpoints to satify for each level of conformance. Each checkpoint is followed by one or more links to techniques in the following documents:
  • "Core Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" ([WCAG10-CORE-TECHNIQUES]), which discusses the accessibility themes and general techniques that apply across technologies.
  • "HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" ([WCAG10-HTML-TECHNIQUES]), which provides examples and strategies for authoring accessible Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) content.
  • "CSS Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" ([WCAG10-CSS-TECHNIQUES]), which provides examples and strategies to help authors write Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as part of accessible content design.
• Techniques: gateway to the aforementioned specific ones.

Contributing Code

Once the requirements are met, to contribute your code follow these instructions (one of the two):

1. How to contribute to OpenACS
2. Contributing code for .LRN: submit your proposal to the .LRN leadership team by:
   • posting at the .LRN Q&A forum
   • joining the weekly meeting on IRC (tuesday at 18:00 CET/CEST)

Resources

on-site resources

• (addressing) Accessibility in .LRN and OpenACS: tutorial from the OpenACS/.LRN conference in Valencia (nov 2008), based on WCAG version 1.0.
• Accessibility Guidelines for OpenACS/.LRN developers: slides from an online tutorial on may 2009, based on WCAG version 2.0.
• .LRN Zen project Standards

External resources

• Web Accessibility Initiative
• Web Accessibility in Mind
• 456 Berea St: Articles and news on web standards, accessibility, and usability

If you need more information on how to address accessibility, post your questions at the forums