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| Photo credit: ITU/R.Paladin |
| WIPO Director General Francis Gurry (left) and Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization
Bureau Malcolm Johnson (right) at the joint workshop on accessibility |
Joint WIPO-ITU workshop offers training for webmasters
A workshop hosted jointly by ITU and the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on
2–5 February 2010 attracted more than 180 staff
from United Nations organizations. Its aim was to
raise awareness about accessibility to websites for
people with disabilities, and to encourage webmasters
to implement principles of accessibility in their
work.
The workshop, held at WIPO headquarters in
Geneva, was opened by WIPO Director General
Francis Gurry. He underlined the importance of accessibility
and reaffirmed WIPO’s commitment to
establishing a web environment that promotes easy
access to information on intellectual property issues.
Mr Gurry explained that this is in line with WIPO’s
visually impaired persons, or VIP, initiative launched
in 2008 to facilitate access to literary, artistic and scientific works, as only some 5 per cent of these are
currently available in accessible formats.
Speaking at the opening, Malcolm Johnson,
Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization
Bureau, said the meeting was “an excellent opportunity
for the UN staff responsible for our information
and communications to profit from the knowledge
of some of the world’s leading experts in this field.”
Those experts came from the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C), Yahoo!, Adobe Systems
Incorporated, and the Royal National Institute for
Blind People (RNIB) of the United Kingdom. Practical
training was the focus of a day’s session sponsored
by Adobe, on making PDF files and Flash contents accessible
on the web. This was followed by two days
of training led by RNIB staff.
What barriers?
Examples of barriers on the web include pages
containing images, videos or audio links that do not
have a written text as an alternative means of understanding
their content. Other barriers are text fonts
that cannot be enlarged, and inconsistent and/or
overly complex navigation. Shadi Abou-Zahra of the
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at W3C explained
how these barriers can be overcome using a variety
of technologies, and by following guidelines produced
by WAI on such topics as authoring tools and
web content.
In a day-long training session by Andrew Ronksley
of RNIB, participants were able to try out a WAI product:
the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)
suite of documents that define a way to make web
content and applications more accessible to people
with disabilities. Another session, led by Marco
Ranon of RNIB, focused on techniques for testing accessibility
in websites; participants learned what to
look for when testing and how to identify some of
the most common problems.
UN agencies take action on accessibility
The background to the workshop is the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of People with
Disabilities, which entered into force in May 2008.
“Ensuring easy and effective communication for
those with disabilities is by no means a ‘fringe issue’,”
said Mr Johnson. “I would like to highlight that, as
an organization, ITU practises what it preaches and is
working hard to make itself more accessible to persons
with disabilities,” he added.
ITU staff outlined the steps that are being taken
to improve the Union’s websites so that they can be
easily used by a wider range of people. The workshop
also heard presentations on work in this area
at WIPO, the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), the International Labour Organization (ILO),
and the World Health Organization (WHO), which
has a task force on making the organization’s work
more accessible to people with disabilities.
From an overall UN perspective, Fanny Langella,
Associate Website Officer and Accessibility Focal
Point at the United Nations, New York, highlighted
the work undertaken by the UN Department of Public
Information, based on the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) of the W3C. She said that attempts
to reform websites sometimes met with initial
resistance, due to misconceptions that changes
would take too much time and resources for the
benefit of only a few users, and too many limitations
would be placed on website design. It is therefore essential
to foster awareness and expertise, especially
among the growing number of content editors who
do not have a technical background. “There is a demand
for solutions,” Ms Langella said, and she proposed
that a UN Accessibility Practitioners Network
should be created.
Meanwhile, participants found the workshop very
valuable in allowing them to exchange experience
and learn new techniques. Organizations in the UN
system — including ITU — are focused on working
hard to allow people of all capabilities to follow and
take part in their activities.
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