About this Work

This work is being done as part of Masters Degree thesis being done by me (Jagat Jasjit Singh) at Department of Computer Science and Engineering , Guru Nanak Dev University , India

The work is being done under guidance of following Professors

Dr. Karanjeet Singh Kahlon

Professor and Head Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Dr. Hardeep Singh

Professor , Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Mrs. Parminder Kaur

Lecturer , Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Contact details for all of the professors can be found on official University Website.

The work has been divided into various sub domains , the critical one being

• Accessibility Metrics
• Webmasters point of view of accessibility problem. Why webmasters are not able to take up and implement accessibility guidelines in all of their work.
• Identification of problems faced by disabled users.

If you are interested in knowing the current status of the work or possible research collaboration , please feel free to drop me email or comment.

Jagat Jasjit Singh
Department of Computer Science and Engineering , (GNDU)
Email : jagatsingh [at] gmail [dot] com
Mobile Number +91-9888223280

Advantages of Implementing Accessibility Guidelines

There has been considerable debate in webmasters community on how the accessibility guidelines help them.

• The people from search engines like Google are amongst the core team members who decide the W3C accessibility guidelines. The recent WCAG2.0 core team had one of the four people from Google. The search engines do give preference to websites which rank high in accessibility ratings
• Moreover the accessibility not only helps the people who are disabled but also improves the usability experiences of the normal web users.Its like satisfying one group and giving added advantages to the other group.
• The ecommerce websites should not ignore the number of customer base they are loosing by not implementing the accessibility guidelines.As per United Nations estimate , World wide there are about 750 million people who are disabled. The amount of additional business which webmasters can add up to them can be easily guessed keeping in mind the fact that disabled people want to shop from the comfort of the home.
• Strict Mandatory Government Laws also need accessibility compliance for all the websites. Otherwise webmaster might have to face public litigations which can be much more costly , then to implement accessibility guidelines over their websites.

We are carrying a Accessibility Survey as part of research . If you haven't participated in the survey yet. Please spare 3-5 min of yours.

Accessibility Survey

Thanks for your time . Your comments and suggestions are heartily welcome.

Survey Motive

One of the webmaster who participated in the survey gave us feedback , asking motive of the survey.

This work is being done as part of university research on Accessibility

What we are trying to find out from this.

• Webmasters point of view of accessibility problem. Why webmasters are not able to take up and implement accessibility guidelines in all of their work.
• What problems they are facing in implementing those guidelines?
• Does tough project timeline and money put constraints for implementing accessibility?
• Is knowledge of webmasters related to accessibility bottleneck?
• Whose responsibility does they feel in implementing Accessibility ? Are they just trying to pass the ball?

I hope at the end of this process we shall be able to have answers to some of these questions.

Just read these questions below , and incase you haven't participated in the survey yet. Please spare 3-5 min of yours.

Accessibility Survey

Thanks for your time . Your comments and suggestions are heartily welcome.

Q1

From which country you are ?

Q2

What level of knowledge you are having for accessibility and how it helps people with disability

Q3

Do you implement accessibility guidelines in your organization websites?

Q4

Which guidelines are you using for accessing accessibility of website

Q5

What type of tools you use for checking accessibility of your website.

Q6

While project time/cost estimation do you include accessibility features inclusion and testing into consideration?

Q7

What is your current role in your organization?

Q8

Whose responsibility is do you feel to make websites accessible for everyone?

Q9

Why you implement accessibility guidelines in your organization?

Q10

Which factor stops you from implementing accessibility guidelines in your work.

Q11

This part of survey is OPTIONAL. Please give us your feedback, suggestions and comments regarding accessibility or this survey. You can also include URL of your website if you want free accessibility analysis done for your website*. We shall be happy to send back you report for the same. Please don't forget to include your email address.

3D Captcha Problem for Blind

Recently I noticed new form of CAPTCHA used by YUNITI at the registration page .

http://www.yuniti.com/register.php

The screen shot below shows the CAPTCHA used by them . The user while registering on the website have to match 3D images of objects shown .

For example in the image shown below Guitar , Apple and Table Lamp images have to be matched in sequence with the images shown.

3D CAPTCHA are clear problem for users with Visual Disability along with people having learning disabilities.

Accessibility Survey Request posted

I have requested webmasters on various forums to take part in short survey to analyze why we are still lagging in implementing accessibility for our websites.

If you haven't taken part in this short survey please spare 3-5 min of yours and just complete it.

Accessibility Survey

The survey request has been posted on various forums namely

Accessify Forums

Digital Point Forums

Elance Talk

iWebTool

Ozzu

Sitepoint

ukWebmasterworld

Webcosmo forums

WebAIM

WebDeveloper Forums

Web Master Forums

WebMaster Server

Webmaster Talk

Web Talk Forums

Thanks to all those who spared their valuable time and participated in this survey.

Accessibility Survey for Webmasters

In spite of about 10 years of hard work by World Wide Consortium (W3C) , the percentage of websites implementing accessibility guidelines is very less. To have idea of mind set of webmaster i have created the survey (link below) to have feel what problems are being faced by webmasters in implementing accessibility over their websites and projects.

I shall be thankful to you if you can take this short accessibility survey. It contain just 10 questions and will take just 5 min to complete it.

Your efforts will be helpful for me in completing my masters degree thesis , i shall be publishing the results of this survey as i complete it.

Click Here to take the accessibility survey

Webmasters survey

We are carrying out survey of Webmasters around the world with two basic motives

• Which factors affect webmasters to not to apply accessibility guidelines over their websites?
• How informed are webmasters these days about accessibility guidelines.

I have chosen Questions Pro to handle survey for me. The good thing with them is that they are providing this facility for free to carry out my research survey. This is part of policy of Questions pro to return back to society.

If you too are interested in similar survey for your project , just follow the links below

QuestionPro Online Survey Software and ContactPro Email Marketing employs an easy to use Wizard interface to author and deploy Web Based and Email Surveys, Newsletters and Campaigns. No knowledge of HTML or programming is required. A comprehensive suite of analysis tools, ranging from Simple Frequency to TURF to Conjoint, are also provided for data analysis. In addition, QuestionPro Web Survey Software provides seamless integration with SPSS and Microsoft Office products.

MicroPoll Free Web Polls provides seamless ondemand Web Polls for your blog/website. Web Poll Script as well as Web Poll HTML code is provided. Setting up Web Polls is as easy as copy and paste.

QuestionPro Online Surveys also licenses its software free to Students and Researchers in the academic community. The projects have to be strictly academic in nature and should not be part of any other funded research or consulting.

Additional Links:

• Survey Design - Writing Great Questions for Online Surveys
• Survey Questions - List of questions and answer types used in surveys
• Steps in preparing an online survey
• Paid Surveys - Join qSample to voice your opinion and get paid

Accessibility Scenario in Internet for people with disability

About 18-20% of the global population suffers from some form or disability. About 97% of websites fail to meet the most basic requirements for accessibility.

Global Statistics suggest that:

• Worldwide, between 600 - 750 million people have a disability
• 3 out of every 10 families are touched by a disability
  

These are rather shocking numbers given the fact that the Web plays an important role and offers significant benefits for people with disabilities. It becomes utmost priority of ours to make web easy for them to use, as they can do their day to day work with much easy online rather then moving out. We as a blessed humans having no disability must understand this as our duty and work towards web a better place for people with disability.

This work has been taken with a motive to contribute some how in efforts of people who are trying to make life better for people with disability online.