[NLedu] Researching accessibility of Silverlight-based websites

[Jan Stedehouder]

>> For our legal strategy we want to establish whether computerusers with
>> visual impairments can work with Silverlight-based websites or not. If
>> the answer is 'no' we might be able to include them as a group that is
>> locked out of online school environments that use proprietary
>> webtechnology and closed standards.
>>
>> We would like to ask a few people to test Silverlight-based websites
>> with various accessibility tools that are available for users with
>> visual impairments: screen readers, braille readers, read aloud tools,
>> et cetera. Yes, I am aware that this might necessitate working with
>> Windows, Internet Explorer en Silverlight as well ;-)
>>
>> I've been thinking about what might need to be included in the research:
>>
>> 1. a decent list of Silverlight-based websites where you have a
>> combination of text-based information and multi-media, but mostly
>> text-based (as that would ensure the validity of the research for
>> Magister);
>
> How to we get such a list? I met a few people working on
> accessibility at FSCONS, one of them visually impaired. It would be
> good to have such a list before I contact her and ask for some
> testing. But maybe she already knows that it is painful to use
> Silverlight.

We have to start looking for those site. I'm afraid I don't have a
list available. Any help on this is appreciated. I could ask around
among students that need to use Magister, maybe they can cooperate
with your contact. Can you ask her if she is available for testing?


>>
>> 2. a list of used accessibility tools
>> 3. overview of the points tested
>> 4. some kind of scorecard to test the various sites in combination
>> with the tools
>> 5. a brief report describing the research and the conclusions.
>>
>> For completeness sake we would need to include a similar list of sites
>> that are build in HTML/CSS/Javascript. Am I missing something? What
>> would need to be added?
>
> I am not sure if we really need to have such a scientific research to
> proof that certain criteria are not met. Maybe, half of the work is
> already done by people who have been dealing with this matter for
> years. W3C might be an ally here:
> http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility
>

Good suggestion. Jan Verlaan also pointed at those criteria. The
benefit is that with W3C-criteria we can not be accused of stacking
the criteria in our favour ;-)

Regards,

Jan