Adobe Accessibility

As the leader of Adobe's accessibility team, I am proud of the commitments Adobe has made to the mission of accessibility and needs of individuals with disabilities. Adobe produces innovative software that enables the development of content that is visually rich and highly interactive, and as a result rendering that content in a productive way for people with visual disabilities can be a challenge - one we take seriously.

Adobe has worked on accessibility standards committees in the U.S. and internationally, including: the W3C's WCAG 2.0, ATAG 2.0, Timed Text/DFXP, HTML5, and Protocols and Formats working groups; the U.S. Access Board's TEITAC subcommittee; and the PDF Universal Accessibility work group at AIIM. Two important goals of our participation are to help ensure that accessibility standards are effective at meeting the needs of those with disabilities and to promote technological neutrality. From an accessibility perspective, we believe that developers should be able to use any technology as long as they are able to deliver content that meets accessibility standards and end-user needs.

Adobe Flash and PDF (which is now an ISO standard - ISO 32000-1) both provide support for accessibility, but it is important for authors and developers to learn best practices and understand user needs in order to deliver results that take advantage of the unique capabilities of the formats and that allow all users to access the information and functionality. Authors sometimes will make a trade-off between producing a visually interesting application in a timely fashion and adhering to accessibility requirements. Other times, accessibility gets left to be dealt with at the end of a project that has a firm end-date and when other features take longer than expected, accessibility or other items fall off the schedule. Government agencies don't get to make these trade-offs as they are bound by law to make their services accessible, but commercial entities don't have the same requirements and often overlook the needs of people with disabilities when creating web experiences and documents.

Despite our best intentions, Adobe overlooked the needs of people with disabilities in our recently-launched Open Government web site, which failed to meet certain accessibility best practices. Some customers have contacted us and a few bloggers pointed out the issues and we are working to improve the Open Government site. We apologize to everyone who attempted to access the site and was unable to do so. With the benefit now of seeing the site in its present state rather than the initially-planned more dynamic and interactive version, the team is recreating the site using a combination of HTML and Flash. Several improvements to the current Flash-based site have been addressed already. My hope for this post and the intention of the Open Government site is to help other developers learn from this example, and improve their own development practices of visually rich web sites for access by all users.

Whether users need to use assistive technologies such as screen readers or magnifiers, operate their computer with the keyboard alone, view larger text sizes, view captions or subtitles for audio information, or utilize many other accessibility features, these features already exist in Adobe products. And while these are not perfect in all products yet, we are dedicated to enabling our tools to handle accessibility in robust and reliable ways.

If you are interested in learning more about accessibility in Adobe products, I'm providing some interesting links below. As always, we value the feedback of our customers and end users, so let us know your thoughts.

For more information about PDF accessibility:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat
• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/reader

For more information about Flash accessibility:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash

PDF and Flash accessibility training resources:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/tutorials.html
• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/best_practices.html

Adobe accessibility compliance statements:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/compliance/

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There are a lot of sessions at SXSW this year that are focused on accessibility. The session that I'd like to highlight is the one that Matt May on the Adobe Accessibility team proposed. Matt's proposal "Web Application Accessibility Showdown: Flash/Flex, HTML5 & Silverlight" offers an interesting comparison to help people make informed decisions regarding the strenghs of the various RIA options developers have.

Take a look and please vote for Matt's talk - it will be very interesting!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The European mandate 376 process is which will ultimately result in standards which will help ensure that products procured publicly enable access for people with disabilities. The goals of mandate 376 are (from official Mandate 376 document):

• to harmonise and facilitate the public procurement of accessible ICT products and services by identifying a set of functional European accessibility requirements for public procurement of products and services in the ICT domain, and
• · to provide a mechanism through which the public procurers have access to an electronic toolkit, enabling them to make use of these harmonised requirements in procurement process.

Adobe participated in an Expert meeting on March 23 in Brussels to discuss WCAG 2.0 implementation and the report of this meeting was recently published. Adobe encourages the European commission to use WCAG 2.0 as the basis for the EU standards, and to do so without modification of the WCAG 2.0 document.

More information on Mandate 376: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/archive/deploy/pubproc/eso-m376/index_en.htm

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Tomorrow is the final webinar in the series offered by The Paciello Group. The final session is on Interactive PDF forms, using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe LiveCycle Designer. The free webinar is at noon EDT on Wednesday April 8, 2009.

Information about how to join the webinar is available at http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog.

The session will be captioned live and offered as an archived session for asynchronous viewing.

Open question - what topics would you like to see covered in future webinars?

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Adobe MAX conference will be held October 4-7, 2009 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California and we've just announced a call for session proposals. You can read the official MAX blog post on this topic or go directly to the MAX 2009 Call for Sessions page. If you have an interesting topic that addresses accessibility and that developers who use Adobe products should know about please submit your session proposal before April 15.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

GW Micro has released scripts for Window-Eyes users to better interact with Adobe Audition. GW Micro worked with the Adobe Audition team to help address concerns that Window-Eyes users expressed about accessing the audio-editing tools and overall interface that Audition provides. Please let us know what you think or pass on the news to Window-Eyes users you know.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're delighted to join others in applauding the release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 as a W3C Recommendation.

WCAG is important because it treats accessibility independently and offers greater clarity and testability for the standards. The notion that only formats that originated at the W3C can be accessible is noticeably absent in version 2, which reflects not only the hard work on accessibility done by Adobe with PDF and Flash, but also acknowledges that the web changes quickly and it is important to have objective criteria that allow authors and technology providers to evaluate their offerings to enable users with disabilities to access content developed using new techniques or technologies.

Adobe has already provided information that clarifies how the concept of "Accessibility Supported" that is used in WCAG 2 applies to the PDF format, and also provided a sample implementation of a Flash-based video application that was determined to meet Level AA of WCAG 2. This information is available as part of the WCAG 2 implementation report.

WCAG 2 will benefit authors and end users, and already there is encouraging news related to its adoption into existing and developing accessibility policies, such as the pan-European accessibility policy being developed under UE Mandate 376 and country-based standards being refreshed in the United State, Japan, and elsewhere.

Coming soon

Adobe will offer a series of best practices for using Adobe tools, to enable authors creating content and applications that use Flash, PDF, HTML, or other formats to comply with WCAG 2. These will be available on the Adobe web site in December 2008 and have been developed in conjunction with leading accessibility experts inside and outside of Adobe. We'll announce the availability through this blog and various email lists.

Please take the time to familiarize yourself with this important standard.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Creative Suite 4 is shipping now, and here's a short post on a few favorite accessibility features that you'll want to check out:
#1: Flash video playback controls are accessible by default. If you want to offer controls that keyboard or screen reader users (and others) can interact with, you get this without trying when you export using the FLVPlayback skins in Flash CS4 Professional. More detail on accessible video.

#2: DAISY export in InDesign. We'll be publishing more details about this soon.

#3: Integrated support for Color Universal Design (CUD) filters in Illustrator and Photoshop to help authors create accessible images.

#4: InContextEditing in Dreamweaver. Find out how to use InContextEditing to maintain an accessible site.

#5: New documentation for PDF accessibility in Acrobat. This is long overdue, but this is just a start - we will soon publish a series of video tutorials for accessible PDF also.

We hope you make good use of these features! Let us know about your experiences.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The SXSW interactive panel picker is open and I wanted to tell people about the panels that are proposed that Adobe is involved with. Whether panels for SXSW run or not is determined in part by an interactive panel picker - please take a look and vote for accessibility sessions!

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ (you will need to register, which is painless and has no captcha).

Accessibility Talks and Panels

• Accessible Flash and Flex Applications - this panel is not fully populated, but Niqui Merrit has agreed to join it, and it'll be a great discussion.
• WCAG 2.0: Practical Implications for Web Accessibility Now - this panel is submitted by the W3C but also includes discussion of non-W3C technologies.
• Inclusive Universe 1.0 - Integrating Universal Design into Social Apps - this is Wendy Chisholm's talk with Matt May. Should be fascinating!
• ARIA Duet in the Key of A(jax) - this is a panel put on by Knowbility and will also be of interest for accessibility

Other Adobe talks

These are of interest - they aren't all about accessibility directly, but are interesting people and interesting topics

• Psst! The Money is in the Metadata! - with Mark Randall from Adobe. When I read this I think "more closed captioning"...
• Diversification: the Path to Web Design Riches - with Scott Fegette, Dreamweaver Product Manager.
• Uncovering Dynamic Content and Rich Internet Applications Through Runtime Search - with Justin Everett-Church, Flash Player Product Manager.
• How SoDA is Changing Interactive Design and Development - with Jen Taylor from Adobe.

Please vote and we'll see you in Austin!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week John Slatin passed away. This week there is a new project to honor his memory and help his family.

The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project matches accessibility experts with companies that would like a brief review of their site for accessibility. In return, the site owner is asked to contribute a minimum of $500 to The John Slatin Fund. The John Slatin Fund was established to help John’s beloved Anna offset the medical expenses incurred during John’s long illness. The goal of this project is to raise $25,000 for John’s family.

Learn about the project and sign up at http://www.knowbility.org/business/john-slatin.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 3:45 PM | Permalink

Last night John Slatin passed away, after a long bout with Leukemia. John was a tireless advocate for accessibility, and a terrific person. His approach to accessibility was fair and well-reasoned, and he was always interested in learning about different perspectives on a topic. I'll miss sitting down at CSUN with John for dinner or drinks to debate accessibility topics. John will be missed but the impact of his work on WCAG 2.0 and accessibility in general will endure.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week, members of the Adobe accessibility team attended the California State University's "Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference" - aka CSUN. This is a big event in accessibility each year and if you are interested in accessibility you should consider attending in 2009.

Adobe participated in four talks at CSUN:

1. IAccessible2 Development: An Accessibility API that Works for Assistive Technologies and Applications. This was a panel discussion involving IT and assistive technology companies.


2. Accessible PDF Authoring Techniques. This was a talk by Greg Pisocky and Pete DeVasto from Adobe and Brad Hodges from the American Foundation for the Blind. The presentation slides are available.


3. Rich Internet Applications with Flash and Dreamweaver. This was a talk by Matt May and Andrew Kirkpatrick discussing Flash and AJAX accessibility, related to Adobe's SPRY framework, Flash and Flex. The presentation slides are available.


4. Accessible Internet Video. This was a talk by Andrew Kirkpatrick on how you can deliver the most accessible experience in video online using Flash. The presentation slides
   are available. I'm going to post the main demonstration example shortly.

Please take a look and let us know if you have any comments.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The W3C has moved the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 to Last Call. This is the last call for public comment, so if you choose you can submit any comments on the draft by February 1, 2008. The draft is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20071211/.

I think that it is worth considering two things as you read this document.
1. This document is more complex than WCAG 1.0 because the web is more complex. WCAG 2.0 needs to address accessibility challenges for the web that is being developed today, with dynamic content and Flash and PDF and Flex and AIR and Java and Silverlight (and on and on). Please read with the whole of the web in mind.
2. This draft has received significant attention related to harmonization with the U.S. Section 508 standards in development, the ISO accessibility guidelines, and the Japanese Industrial Standards. Take a look at the latest draft of the Section 508 standards at http://teitac.org/wiki/EWG:Draft_Nov_27 and compare. Wouldn't it be nice to have one set of standards to attend to? I think so.

I don't feel that this draft is perfect, but think that it is an excellent document that we can use to improve accessibility moving forward. if you pick any two people interested in accessibility they will not fully agree on all the points in WCAG 2.0 but I think that you'll find that the issues in dispute tend to be edge cases.

I've been on the WCAG group for the past several months and there has been a lot of hard work put in during this time processing hundreds of comments. Please comment on this draft and let's get this one finished!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A group of IT and assistive technology companies have formed a group designed to address engineering challenges around accessibility issues. The group's name is the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance, or AIA. Adobe is part of this group because it is important to have improved methods to provide straightforward interoperability between IT products and assistive technology tools.

Of particular interest is the project that seeks to harmonize existing accessibility APIs such as IAccessible2 and UIAutomation. With the wide variety of assistive technologies available today, both these tools and Adobe's players need reliable and standard methods to participate in information exchanges with assistive tools. There are too many tools for Adobe's players to support directly through customization and similarly the assistive technology tools have too many IT products that they need to support so they too cannot provide custom solutions across the board. The way forward is through better and harmonized (or converged) APIs.

The AIA press release is at: http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/newsevents/pr121007.html.

The AIA group web site is http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm pleased to announce that Matt May is joining my team at Adobe working on accessibility. Matt will be working interally and externally, with Adobe product teams and customers to address accessibility in Adobe products, ensure interoperability with assistive technologies, and ensure that customers are aware of the many accessibility features that already exist in our products.

Matt is sure to be familiar to many of you from his work at the W3C. He joined the W3C/WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group in late 2000, co-edited the first JavaScript techniques document for WCAG 2.0 in 2001, and went to work full-time for the W3C in 2002. During that time, Matt was staff contact for the WAI Authoring Tool and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Groups (ATAG/UAAG), and the Protocols and Formats Working Group, which reviewed W3C and related specs for accessibility. Matt's most widely-seen W3C work is probably the W3C Note, "Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA".

In 2005, Matt co-founded a standards-based design firm named Blue Flavor, and since January, Matt led client-side development on a new merchant platform for Amazon's enterprise group.

We're excited to have Matt on the Adobe accessibility team! Welcome Matt!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

An Event Apart is offering a discount for registration for An Event Apart in Boston. Just use the code AEAADOB at the shopping cart when registering and you save $50.

I'll be speaking on accessibility, of course. "Beyond Basic Access" is the title of the talk, and I'm going to assume that everyone knows about the important aspects that we always hear about (i.e. I'm not talking about alt attributes on images, form labels, or headings as a topic unto themsleves) and focus on more complex issues that impact the overall experience for disabled users. Hope to see you there!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 10:30 AM | Permalink

An Event Apart comes to Boston this spring! March 26-27, 2007 at the Marriott Copley Place, to be specific. I'll be speaking on accessibility, joining an amazing cohort of speakers that will share their insights with the attendees. Adobe is proud to be a sponsor of this event - put it on your calendar!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new accessibility book hit the shelves last Monday. Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance is the collective work of several well-known names in accessibility, including Jim Thatcher. This is the new version of the standard reference "Constructing Accessible Websites" that Jim and others wrote a few years back, so the format and cover image are similar, but with updated and new content.

I wrote chapters on PDF accessibility and an overview of accessible technologies and co-authored/updated the chapter on Flash accessibility with Bob Regan. I'm very happy with the book, and I'm sure you'll find it invaluable.

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Welcome! We're launching our blog focused on accessibility – this blog will share information about accessibility best practices for our many products, important occurances in the world of accessiblity in the context of developing with or using Adobe products, and other timely information that impacts how developers can use our products to deliver accessible information and experiences to all users.

Adobe has a new web site design as of today, fully combining the content of the macromedia.com site. If you're looking for the accessibility resources for Adobe products the new starting point is the Adobe Accessibility Resource Center at http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/. This resource will continue to grow over time – please let us know what you think or what you'd like to see!

Posted by Andrew Kirkpatrick at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)