[Chapter-delegates] Fw: Pease Read

Thu Jan 29 09:34:22 PST 2015

Hi Klaus et all

Klaus I've responded to you personally but thought it would also be great to post here so others are looped in.

Thank you for always being an advocate of our site - it's great to have a strong and passionate community!  You are correct - the homepage only has been experiencing some blips on the multilingual side but this is now resolved and the translated content should start appearing as early as tomorrow.

I'd also like to take the chance to invite others to be a part of our accessibility working group. We've got a great team started.  If you'd be interested in being a part of it please send me an email and I can send you more details.  If you can't formally be a part of the group but would like to follow along on discussions, contribute ideas, share best-practices, and being a part of web accessibility goal setting you will be more than welcome. We'll have more details on how you can be a part of this is the coming days.  Please feel free to get in touch with me any time about this.

Thanks again to all for helping to ensure we are moving towards a great web presence

Lia

From: Klaus Birkenbihl <Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de<mailto:Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de>>
Date: January 29, 2015 at 2:50:57 PM GMT+1
To: Kathy Brown <brown at isoc.org<mailto:brown at isoc.org>>
Cc: "chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org<mailto:chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>" <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org<mailto:chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>>
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Once again: accessibility and ISOC's website [was: Happy new year!]

is it always me to disclose Web-site oddities？

After talking about ISOC being a multilingual organization on the European
chapters workshop this morning, I decided to practice some multilingualism
and payed a visit to our new home page which proudly offers:

 * العربية <http://www.internetsociety.org/ar>
 * 简体中文 <http://www.internetsociety.org/zh-hans>
 * English <http://www.internetsociety.org/>
 * Français <http://www.internetsociety.org/fr>
 * Русский <http://www.internetsociety.org/ru>
 * Español <http://www.internetsociety.org/es>

Wow! I decided to challenge my 中文
<http://www.internetsociety.org/zh-hans>. Surprise! Though my skills are
rather basic I could read everything. Guess what: the same applies
for every translation exceptEspañol <http://www.internetsociety.org/es>.

Though not by intend: if you are a native 中国人 and don't speek
English you might feel fooled.

Klaus

Kathy Brown schrieb am 09.01.2015 um 13:00:
Klaus and all,

We did, indeed, pick up your message --I meant to reply yesterday but the day got away from me. We take time, though, to talk through your very helpful intervention and to make some immediate improvements as per your recommendations.

As you rightly point out, we need to bake accessibility into our design and initial planning for all communication. I agree that it is a quality issue. It is also a "principle" issue. If we say that the Internet is for everyone, we better mean everyone.

We are about to begin an upgrade for the ISOC site. Now is the time to set the design and quality standards for all aspects of our communications. The BY THE NUMBERs piece was an attempt to make data alive--something I think that is very important. Help us think through and perfect how to make these type of design experiments work for everyone.

Lia Kiessling will be point on this for Staff. Expert input is key to the process so I asked her to reach out to you. There's also the Disability and Special Needs Chapter that both you and Lia can coordinate with.  I believe you have Lia's Skype details so I'll leave it with the two of you to start this needed process.

Thank you, again, for your quick, thorough and helpful contribution. We all, together, need to continue to build the Internet and the Internet Society for everyone.
Kathy Brown

On Jan 9, 2015, at 4:27 AM, Klaus Birkenbihl <Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de<mailto:Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de>> wrote:

Hi Gunela and Judith,

Gunela, I appreciate your paper
http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/internet-accessibility-internet-use-persons-disabilities-moving-forward
(crazy enough it doesn't mention you authored it). And I'm not saying
we are bad at preaching. But we often forget to drink the water we preach.

So we should not be overly optimistic. Accessibility is part of
quality. Given that we have this discussion since 3 years now and
neither tools, procedures nor means for quality assurance have been
installed, and given the observation that this topic is treated
carelessly, I'm afraid that hope alone will not make it. Asimple bug
tracker would provide the means to properly handle issues and is
minimum state of the art today.

But good news (and a new experience): somebody obviously picked my
message up quickly and provided alt texts at least for
http://www.internetsociety.org/. (Maybe it was already done when
Gunela checked the page after my mail. The page source I downloaded at
2015-01-08 08:50UTC has no alt texts at all for the main part of the
page).

Best, Klaus

Judith Hellerstein schrieb am 09.01.2015 um 02:04:
HI Gunella,

Thanks for your very helpful note.  Glenn and I have been working on
these same issues with Paul Brigner, the North American Regional
Director and he is very much wanting to make the site, the videos
that his region generates, and the events that NA Chapters hold more
accessible.  We talked to him about the need for captioning of
events and the short videos that ISOC does.  We are hoping for many
changes and positive moves on accessibility front now that ISOC has
a new Communications Director James Wood. Glenn and I shared with
Paul and others in ISOC the excellent session that Pat Graves had
done for the ICANN Technology Task Force and also introduced Pat
Graves to Paul Brigner.

Let's hope for an increased accessibility of ISOC events, videos,
and website for the coming year

Best,
Judith Hellerstein

_________________________________________________________________________

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Hellerstein & Associates
3001 Veazey Terrace NW, Washington DC 20008
Phone: (202) 362-5139  Skype ID: judithhellerstein
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On 1/8/2015 3:42 PM, Gunela Astbrink wrote:
Happy New Year everyone,

As I've done for years, I support improved accessibility.

Thank you to Klaus for updating us on the accessibility status of
ISOC's website.

I do note that some of the alt tags on the home page are empty
while many images are well-described. However, there are a number
of other accessibility issues including the need to caption videos.

I think that ISOC made an effort a few years to make its website
accessible. The problem is that if there isn't an embedded
principle of accessibility within ISOC's communication policy and
practice (including guides and templates), as the website changes
accessibility may be forgotten. This also relates to the level of
staff awareness of accessibility.

I remain hopeful that ISOC's website will meet and then retain
W3C's WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

I know some staff support accessibility especially in Chapters
including the Community Grants program of which the Australian
Chapter has been successful in running capacity-building and
awareness training in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, the central work of ISOC HQ is vital. This goes beyond web
accessibility. Further details are in the paper I wrote for ISOC:
"Internet Accessibility: Internet use by persons with disabilities:
Moving Forward"
<http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/internet-accessibility-internet-use-persons-disabilities-moving-forward>

It is useful to see that organisations such as ICANN, ITU and IGF
are all working on accessibility in different ways.

ICANN - RFP for web accessibility analysis
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-12-23-en

ITU - a number of actions including Resolution 175 (rev) from the
2014 Plenipotentiary, internal accessibility, incorporating
accessibility in standards development and encouraging Member
States to improve ICT accessibility.
https://itu4u.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/renewing-itus-mandate-to-promote-ict-accessibility/

IGF - Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability. Its latest
output is a guide to accessible meetings.
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/documents/dynamic-coalitions/dynamic-coalition-on-accessibility-and-disability/258-igf-2014-dcad-accessibility-guidelines-final-v5/file

I look forward to working with ISOC on accessibility in 2015. We
may see good things happening.

Regards,
Gunela

Klaus Birkenbihl said the following on 8/01/15 20:17 :
Happy new year to everybody!

Following Kathy's Onto 2015! HNY
<https://twitter.com/KathrynCBrown/status/552942319238799360>! I
ended
up on this page:
http://www.internetsociety.org/internet-society-numbers.

Wow a lot of info, a lot of figures, some meaningless but some
impressive. And a great artwork.

From there I payed a visit to our home page
<http://www.internetsociety.org/> . New layout
big images, not too much text ...

From there I checked weather we still think accessibility is
important. Yes we do "Internet Accessibility: Internet use by
persons with disabilities: Moving Forward"
<http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/internet-accessibility-internet-use-persons-disabilities-moving-forward>

is still out there.

There is an ongoing promise since the last relaunch of our
precious home site that we at ISOC will follow the principles
we published in the before mentioned document.

The most simple, famous and first rule to achieve accessibility
is "Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#text-equiv>
it can be changed into other forms people need, such as
large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#text-equiv>"
HTML, the source language of Web pages provides easy
means to do so.

After so many years of discussion, delay, lip prayers one
has to learn things are getting worse. Nearly all alternative
texts for pictures on "http://www.internetsociety.org/" are
"" (nullstring, nothing, nix nada!). You might argue, that the
images are decorative only. Hm, they cover 80% of the
page - so even this should be explained.

But on the top of the tops you find
http://www.internetsociety.org/internet-society-numbers.
All info in a pixle (png) file no alt text no underlying link,
and all text within the graph in a small - even for somebody
who is not visually impaired - nearly unreadable print.

This wonderful artwork would have been the case for
a wonderful technology - part of HTML5 and processed by
all modern browsers - called SVG! With at least the
following advantages:

* provides better accessibility
* provides searchability
* can be infinitely scaled (without breaking apart into pixle
squares)

I wish you all a usable and accessible 2015 - at least outside ISOC,

Klaus

PS.: In case you want to read the contents of
http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/internet-society-numbers
I recommend
http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/Internet%20Society%20By%20The%20Numbers.pdf

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_______________________________________________
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to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org

--
Klaus Birkenbihl
Treasurer and Board member
Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE)
c/o ict-Media GmbH
http://www.isoc.de/
<Klaus_Birkenbihl.vcf>
_______________________________________________
As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org

--
Klaus Birkenbihl
Treasurer and Board member
Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE)
c/o ict-Media GmbH
http://www.isoc.de/

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