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© Novática Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People This guideline also recommends that logically related links should be grouped together, and that each control should be properly positioned with its associated tag. We encountered the problem of not being able to analyse the relationships between a text and the various links included, or the relationship between a text and a specific control, so we were unable to provide a satisfactory solution. Finally, help is provided for people with cognitive disabilities so that they can navigate through a form. The edit boxes or text areas of a form are filled in with either "Write here" or "Text" depending on the size of the space. If an image replaces a button, the type of action to be carried out will be indicated. Guideline 11: Use W3C technologies and guidelines All obsolete or deprecated HTML tags or CSS style tags will be replaced by their recommended equivalents. Sizes are modified by changing from a number to a CSS format. Finally, the "!Important" tags in an CSS document are eliminated so that the user is not prevented from disabling any part of the style. Guideline 13: Provide clear navigation mechanisms The basic mechanism of Web navigation is the link. To ensure that these links are as clear as possible, alternative texts are added with the name and target of the link. If the link is to a section or to an email, or indicates a frame or window into which the link is to be loaded, this should be indicated in a clear and concise manner so as to provide users with all possible information about the link so that they can decide whether or not to follow it. Guideline 14: Ensure that documents are clear and simple All HTML document style definitions have been moved to CSS documents so that they comply with the principle of separating structure and presentation. The use of styles allows us to show the alternative texts to be sure that this information is also available visually. Finally, various styles indicating the type and tone of voice have been indicated, to be used for headings and elements that indicate emphasis and similar effects. Although current voice browsers are capable of performing this analysis automatically, these additional styles are included to ensure that older browsers are able to inform users properly. 4 Implementation and Results The application has been developed entirely in Java as this allows it to be run on a variety of platforms, thereby avoiding restrictions on its use. This is important as the end user could be a system administrator but could equally well be a user with only a basic knowledge of computing. The application has been put through a series of tests involving 60 Web pages. The topics of the pages are random but include a large proportion of all possible types. Thus we may find anything from leisure and game sites to Web pages belonging to banks and not-for-profit associations. The Wiki format is also represented in our test bed. In order to pass a Web page processed by our application as accessible, it must retain its original style while eliminating all deprecated and inaccessible elements. The proposed solution should also improve accessibility in general. Finally, the result must be validated by W3C validation tools and CTIC’s Web Accessibility Test (Spanish acronym: TAW) [7]. We can see an example of a successfully processed page in the images below. Figure 3 shows the original page. As readers will see. It is a complete and complex Web page; i.e. it contains a number of different elements and a large amount of information. Figure 4 shows the result after using our application. The presentation of the Web page is identical to the original. There are some added elements, such as an explanatory text in the search box and additional information is provided in the alternative texts accompanying the images to allow users to know what function each image has. There is also a notification that the page has been processed to meet the WAI standard. Thus users are aware that they are not viewing the original page and that deprecated elements may have been disabled or eliminated. Our test bed returns some very good results. 100% of our test bed pages are analysed correctly. In Figure 5 we see the improvement in terms of accessibility and grammar errors. In the case of accessibility the improvement is 35.08%, a result which may seem low, but if we analyse the improvement by priorities we see that it is a very good result indeed. When we analyse the improvement by priorities (Figure 6), the result is very good in two of the three priorities. In the case of priority 1 the improvement is 96.19% which is very good, especially if we bear in mind that this priority includes all elements that make it impossible to access information. Thanks to this improvement, 71.67% of our test bed pages achieved level A accessibility; in other words, they contained no element that made access to the information contained in the Web page impossible. Meanwhile the improvement achieved in priority 2 is the lowest since this priority includes solutions for which it is necessary to know the semantics of the website’s content of the website. This priority concerns elements that make it difficult to access information. Finally, the application also scores highly for the third priority, achieving an improvement of 86.85%. This priority includes elements that make it somewhat difficult to access information. As we can see, the overall results are really very good. We need to take into account the difficulty of obtaining information from a page that is not designed with accessibility in mind. But even so, the application achieves a significant improvement in accessibility. Perhaps the most important aspect of the results is the high number of pages that achieved level A accessibility. It should also be noted that the presentation of the pages after running the application is practically the same as before, which means they can be navigated by anyone, whether disabled or not. UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 77
Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People 4 Conclusions By meeting WAI standards we can provide Web access to disabled users and improve it for people without any disability. The automatic conversion of documents is a very important step in the quest to make the Web more accessible. A tool of this nature can also be used by organizations wishing to make all their existing information accessible at a really low cost in terms of both time and money. The standardization provided by ACTAW requires a broad scope of action if it is to be useful. The HTML analyser we have designed is capable of processing all types of HTML documents. Thanks to this versatility the tool can deliver some very good results and improve the quality of the Web by providing pages that use proper HTML grammar. However, we should not forget that the guidelines proposed by the WAI are intended for developers, which means that applying them a posteriori is a complex and costly task. Thus, in order to improve the proposed solutions and enhance accessibility we need to build a semantic analyser. Such an analyser would allow us to understand the content of a Web page and apply better solutions on the basis of that information, and work is already underway on its design. Work is also underway on systems that will ensure the correct alignment of tables, improve orientation in tables and frames, and detect the language used in the website. The application that we present in this article represents a further step along the road to improving Web accessibility. The fact the tool can be used by either end users or website administrators has the advantage of allowing end users to access the information on a Web page even if the original page did not meet Web accessibility criteria. The ACTAW tool also addresses the issue of accessibility from a global viewpoint and attempts to improve all possible aspects while respecting both the Web developer’s original style and the W3C standard. Translation by Steve Turpin References [1] World Wide Web Consortium. . [2] Web Accessibility Initiative. . [3] Web Content Guidelines Working Group. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. . [4] The W3C Markup Validation Service. . [5] The Web Standards Project. . [6] Chen Shan, Hong Dan, Vicent Shen. An Experimental Study on Validation Problems with Existing HTML Web pages. International Conference on Internet Computing. Proceedings, 2005. [7] CTIC Foundation. Web Accessibility Test 3.0. . 78 UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 © Novática
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