Developer Resources

The resources below will assist you in developing accessible web sites. Although these resources have been chosen with the AIR competitions in mind they will continue to provide you with valuable guidance in other projects as well.

Tips For Your Website Planning

Communication!

Build a relationship with your client. Magic word, “communicate” with them. You will get valuable points for satisfying your client.
Designate a team captain. In addition to having the time to lead, this person must be willing and able to take the initiative to facilitate communication within the team, with the client and with the Knowbility staff.
Know the strengths and weakness of the people on your team. It is best if you have worked together in the past. If not you will need to make an extra effort to learn about each other. Share portfolios and experience. Have some fun.
Divide up the tasks so everyone knows what their responsibilities are.
If possible, have a well rounded group with different strengths and skills.
If you are using a technology that not everyone on the team is familiar
with you may need to have a training session. It may not be necessary for your team mates to know the intricacies of the technology but they will need to understand how their contribution works with the technology. Do not assume they will learn it on their own.
Speak up and take responsibility.

Be Prepared!

Prioritize and set reasonable goals.
Do not try to do more than the recommended number of pages.
Take advantage of resources:
- Review resources on the Knowbility website
- Sign-up for the Access-Sig list
- Study the Judging Form and utilize the judges before and during the competition.
Know how you are going to test your site before the competition. Don’t underestimate the importance of testing.
Test and Validate -- Use spell checker, test in multiple browsers (at least IE and Firefox), listen to your site with JAWS, use the developer and validation tool bars, test your links.
Attend trainings. Materials for these courses are constantly updated. Even if you’ve attended in the past you will learn something new.
It is ok to have a member on your team that is not a strong developer. There are many different tasks that s/he can accomplish such as testing or organizing.

And Don’t Forget...

Maintenance – Someone will be in charge of maintaining your site after the competition. It’s important to know who will be maintaining this afterward to help you to choose how to construct the site now. If they will be managing the site after the competition, often times this will mean meeting once or twice after the competition. If they are anticipating that you will be helping to maintain the site, be sure to discuss what this will mean with the organization. Be sure to talk about this idea early so you can all plan accordingly.
Professionalism – AIR competitions can be stressful. With tight timelines and short relationships, it can be a challenge to get on the same page and come out with a successful site. Please be sure to be professional about the relationship – don’t miss meetings without warning and try to address issues in a timely and professional manner. If issues with your team arise and you are worried about the results, communicate these with the team. If the issues continue, please address this with the AIR staff as soon as possible.
Relationships – Remember that this is a working relationship with your organization. If you differ on opinion, handle this with the same decorum you would handle a relationship with a client at work. You are there to provide a service to your non-profit and your community. Be respectful and remember what a great opportunity you have to help evangelize for universal design.
Celebrate!! – We know that AIR competitions can mean extra work for you, so take time to celebrate the results and the accomplishments of you and your organization. Attend the Kickoff meeting to see what a great experience this can be, and congratulate each other and the other teams at the Awards ceremony.

Remember, if you have any questions or concerns along the way, the AIR staff will be available.

Discussion Groups and Mailing Lists

Accessibility_SIG The Accessibility_SIG list is the primary list server for Knowbility. This list is used to ask questions and post comments about accessibility issues and to discuss Knowbility programs and services including AIR.
The email address for the air-judges is airjudges@knowbility.org
Magpie NCAM welcomes your feedback about MAGpie. If you have comments, suggestions or bug reports about MAGpie, please share them with the MAGPIE listserv. To subscribe, send an email with the subject "subscribe magpie" (without quotes) to requests@mail4.wgbh.org. You can send messages to the list and your messages will be sent to the other list subscribers. Send messages to magpie@wgbh.org. To receive help, send an email with the subject "help" to requests@mail4.wgbh.org. To be removed from the list, send an email with the subject "unsubscribe magpie" to requests@mail4.wgbh.org.
Tech Lunch Tech lunch is held the first Wednesday of each month at the Brick Oven Restaurant located at 10710 Research Blvd, Austin, TX 78759. (Map to Brick Oven) Pat Pound, Executive Director of the Texas Governor's Committee on People with Disabilities, hosts the event which is an open discussion and networking forum for people interested in accessibility issues. You can also subscribe to the tech lunch mailing list by sending an email to tech lunch-subscribe@smartgroups.com

Books

Maximum Accessibility by Knowbility Executive Director Sharron Rush and Dr. John Slatin of the University of Texas-on how to build accessible Web sites and why it is increasingly important. The book includes user experience chapters, and details for creating accessible tables, forms, and multimedia applications online. Activate the image link to buy the book through Amazon. Or order Maximum Accessibility from Amazon Access
Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance by AIR judge Jim Thatcher and other leading accessibility experts teaches the HTML techniques for the best in navigation, tables and forms. The book includes an excellent legal survey on accessibility and chapters on assistive technology, testing for accessibility and Flash. You can also order the book from Amazon.com.

General Accessibility Information and Learning Resources

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Guidelines adapted by European Union, other governments, and businesses.
Section 508 Standards of the Federal Rehabilitation Act defines standards for US federal government agencies. Influencing general practice as well.
Section 508 Resources from the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet. A substantial listing of government, industry, and academic resources related to federal accessibility standards.
Web Accessibility Course Produced by the Information Technology Technical Assistance Training Center (ITTATC)
Web Accessibility for Section 508 The online accessibility course on the site of the person who wrote it. Jim Thatcher's site also includes other valuable information.
Accessibility Institute founded by Dr. John Slatin maintains a wealth of web accessibility information, FAQ's, resources, and research.
Knowbility's on-line curriculum An overview of accessibility issues, tools and techniques for designing accessible web sites.
ACM SIGACCESS (Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing) resource page.
WebABLE Solutions
Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Leading research center for technology and disability.
Adaptive Technology Resource Center of the University of Toronto, home of the APROMPT accessibility testing tool.
Making Educational Software Accessible Excellent, detailed guidelines for CD-ROM-based multimedia.
Simple Steps to more readable type from Lighthouse International
Making Text Legible from Lighthouse International
Resources for Color-Deficient vision Guidelines for selecting Web colors that work for people who have difficulty seeing certain colors. Excellent illustrations. By Christine Rigdon of British Telecom.
WebAim Web Accessibility in Mind. Tutorials, training, accessible simulations, laws, guidelines and more.
Skills for Access A comprehensive guide for creating accessible multimedia. Targeted to e-learning but also contains a great deal of information that can be applied to any site.
Microsoft's Enable site includes links to Microsoft's Active Accessibility (MSAA) Application Programming Interface (API) for Windows.
WebSavvy Accessibility tutorials
University of Minnesota Developer Resources A comprehensive resource guide spanning accessibility, usability and many other topics.

Accessibility Evaluation Checklists

Knowbility's AIR Judging Form in Excel format. The form used by judges to evaluate the accessibility of entries in AIR competitions.
Evaluating Web Site Accessibility WEB Aims step by step guide.
IBM Web Accessibility Checklist and Tutorial Each checkpoint includes a link to a short tutorial.

Colorblindness Information and Resources

Visicheck Downloadable Page Testing Tools for Color and Contrast (Windows and Mac)
Jesset.com Information about color blindness and web design

Accessibility Testing Tools

Online Lift Tool Thanks to our good friends at UsableNet we are pleased to offer the online LIFT Machine to AIR-Interactive Participants. Email our technology volunteer Mike Moore at mmoore at knowbility dot org with your name, your team's name and your client to receive your personal account and password. Follow this link to obtain instructions for using LIFT including configurations that will match closely to the AIR-Interactive judging criteria.
Bobby You can test one page at a time with options to use sec 508 or WCAG Accessibility Standards
Wave Accessibility Tool This tool is very good at helping developers see the order in which a page will be read by a screen reader.
Cynthia Says Similar in functionality to the Bobby tool.
A Prompt A downloadable assessment and repair tool.
WAI Tool List The WAI's Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group maintains a list of free and commercial evaluation and repair tools. The list is frequently updated.
STEP508 free tool for aggregating accessibility errors (Section 508) across an entire site.
Ian's Favelets show page dependencies, table headings, links-titles and hrefs, and more.
Jesse's Bookmarklet site A set of tools that perform a variety of testing and accessibility enhancing functions.
WEBAIM Tool List A Review of Free, Online Accessibility Tools

Validation and Cleanup Tools

W3C HTML Validator
W3C CSS Validation Service
HTML-Kit Performs several useful and important functions, including Word HTML cleanup, HTML validation and conversion to XHTML.
HTML Tidy Tool for HTML conversion, validation, and cleanup available for multiple platforms plus on-line HTML interfaces.

Helpful Browser Plug-ins and Tools

Internet Explorer
- Accessibility Toolbar an accessibility checker and simulation toolbar for IE on the PC.
- 508 Compliant Demo Tools find images with no 'alt', gray scale a page, and kill style sheets.
Other Browsers
- PNH Toolbar a developer toolbar for Mozilla, Safari and other browsers running on most platforms.

Microsoft Specific Tools

Microsoft Accessible Web Publishing Wizard Helps authors convert PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files into accessible Web-based presentations.
Microsoft IE 5.x Developer Accessories View partial source, view DOM, more
Microsoft IE 5.x Web Accessories links list, toggle images, more

Screen Readers

One of the most effective methods for testing website comparability with screen readers is to browse the site using one.

Freedom Scientific Jaws A comprehensive screen reader for windows systems. Full version and free demo versions are available.
GW Micro Window Eyes Another comprehensive screen reader for windows systems. A free trial version is available.

Captioning Tools

The Magpie Tool is a free java based program that will allow you to caption Quicktime, Real, and Windows Media player files. The site includes installation instructions. You will need the Java® runtime environment 1.3.1 or newer, and Apple Quicktime® configured to use java. Our technology volunteer Mike Moore is available to answer your questions about installation if you run into any problems. He can be reached via email at mmoore at knowbility dot org.
Tools to convert media files between formats in order to permit captioning using Magpie. The RM converter and the AV 1 converter. Both of these programs are available for free trial downloads for windows operating systems. Thanks to Lisa Barnett and Jim Allen for locating these resources.
SMIL Synchronized Media Integration Language. A W3C specification for coordinating synchronized display of multiple media tracks such as video, audio, captions, descriptions, etc., etc. SMIL is an XML application.

Editors and Development Tools

IBM's Home Page Builder includes a configurable accessibility checker, and much of its extensive functionality is accessible from the keyboard.
Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX includes extensions for checking compliance with Section 508 and with general usability guidelines. Flash MX includes improved accessibility options, but requires knowledgeable application.
Access.Adobe Recent accessibility advances for PDFs.
UsableNet's LIFT™ suite of software authoring tool extensions (Dreamweaver &Frontpage) are designed to allow authors to continue using preferred tools.
UltraEdit A powerful and easy to use text, HTML and Programming editor for those of you who want the control that comes from hand coding.
Accessible Powerpoint. Tutorial on creating accessible Powerpoint presentations from scratch.

AIR participants: when you have completed your site, please use the AIR Submission Form to ensure that the judges give you full credit for all of the accessible features present in your website.

If you have a resource that you would like to share with the other developers competing in AIR, please email Aimee Ronn who will update this page.