Transcript www.un.org/webaccessibility A human right mandate for the UN  A General Assembly mandate since 2004  Established as a human right by.

www.un.org/webaccessibility
A human right mandate for the UN
 A General Assembly mandate since 2004
 Established as a human right by article 9 of the Convention on the
rights of people with disabilities.
 The General Assembly,
[…]
Also requests the Secretary-General to continue the progressive
implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of
facilities and services of the United Nations system, taking into
account relevant provisions of the Convention
Resolution A/RES/62/170 on the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Beyond the “alt tag”
 Initial resistance due to some misconceptions
 Takes too much time and resources
 Poses too many limitations on the design
 Takes significant efforts for the benefit of a handful of users
 Raising awareness in the Department of Public
Information
 Organizing a demonstration with a screen reader user
 Providing training on accessibility and CSS
 Creating of a taskforce
Taskforce Objectives
o Research best practices in the field of
accessibility
o Foster expertise within the Department of
information
o Address misconceptions
o Establish consensus
o Provide a guidance document
o Provide a validation methodology
Guidelines for
Accessible UN Websites
 Based on WCAG 1.0
 Left out some outdated checkpoints
 Out of scope:
oMultimedia
oOfficial documents
 Published on
www.un.org/webaccessibility
Providing guidance on validation
 Pressure to recommend automated tools
 Those tools are limited, generate false
positives / false negatives
 Provided guidance to perform a point by
point validation with tools such as Firefox
developer toolbar
 Validation procedures available online
A set of accessible templates
 CSS based
 Proper structural mark-up (headings, list
for menus…)
 Skip links
 One version with un.org new branding
Challenges Ahead
Fostering Awareness and Expertise
 Growing number of editors without
technical background, using different
tools
 Need to:
 Raise awareness on accessibility among
content editors
 Provide ongoing training
Filling the Gaps
 Multimedia
 PDF (ODS documents in particular)
 Rich Internet Applications
Providing Tools
 There is a demand for solutions
 Create a UN Accessibility Practitioners
Network