News & Announcements from the Cognitive, Language, and Learning Discussion Group

10/16/08 - Raising the Floor Workshop on web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities held at the University of Colorado's Coleman Institute. 

• Agenda
• Results

Agenda of RtF Workshop:

Long-term goal: Content on the Web should be accessible to and usable by people with cognitive disabilities who have a need for it or interest in it.
Workshop goal: Identify who needs to do what, when, to bring this about.

1.  What can and should be done today?
2. Shaping the technology
   
   • new technology needed
     Raising the Floor initiative (RtF): Gregg Vanderheiden and Jim Fruchterman have developed a strategic vision for making assistive technology available to everyone, built into the cyber-infrastructure.
3. What are the technology elements needed for support of people with cognitive
   disabilities in RtF?
   • language engineering
     screen reading
     markup
     configuration, profiles, Single System SignOn
4. What is the research agenda?
5. Who are the players?
6. Funding: What agencies should be involved, and how can we promote their involvement?
7. What actions are needed to develop and promote this initiative?
8. What will motivate development and adoption of new technology?
   • regulation
   • economic/ market based approaches
   • open system "common good" developments
   • what actions are needed to mobilize these forces?

Results of RtF Workshop

The following items were added to the access feature masterlist and to the list of CLL features following the workshop:

• Safe browsing tools
  • List of trusted sites
  • Single login
  • Alternative authentication methods (besides passwords)
• Task sequencing
• Limiting the number of stops/options
• Standards conformance
• Consistency of layout, position, and labels icons
  • While maintaining distinct appearances across sites
• Control over time-based elements
• Changing font - leading and kerning
• Error reduction/prevention
• Error recovery
  • General strategies
  • Context-specific
• Real Time Assistance
  • Instant playback - assistant knows what was happening when an error occured
• Multimodal (Speech and text) content
• Pair text or images to controls
• Reduce distractions and focus on main content
  • Main content should stand out in boldness, color, and size
• Structural Elements
  • Heading/lists
  • White space
  • Prioritization
• Try harder / Try other options
• Feature wizards
• 24751 standard on accessibility and adaptibility