A Common Approach to Accessibility for All
From: IST Results - 06/12/2006

Information Society Technologies (IST) is funding an initiative to develop a
practical and common method for benchmarking and evaluating the accessibility
of Web sites. The project is the work of the EU Web Accessibility
Benchmarking (WAB) Cluster at the Bartimeus Accessibility Foundation in the
Netherlands, and three other IST projects. The European Internet
Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project is developing a prototype for
widescale Web accessibility benchmarking, while Support EAM is pushing the
European Commission and its member states to embrace the "eAccessibility"
quality mark for goods and services, which would bring the region in line
with the standards developed within the WAB cluster and accepted
internationally by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). BenToWeb
(Benchmarking Tools and Methods for the Web) will offer new software modules
and methodologies for Web accessibility that address such factors as color
contrast, low vision, color deficiency, consistency of navigation elements,
and language simplicity. Ultimately, researchers are trying to determine the
best way to design and evaluate an accessible site, and develop standards and
guidelines that can work for the entire region. The WAB cluster is expected
to unveil the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM) 1.0 in July online
for free, and it will be consistent with the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines developed by W3C. Project coordinator Eric Velleman says Web
accessibility impacts everyone, adding that adopting W3C's guidelines will
make a Web site easy to read in screen readers, PDAs, mobile phones as a
result.  

Read the entire article at:
http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/82339

Links:
IST Results
http://istresults.cordis.lu/

ISTweb
http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/

Web Accessibility Benchmarking
http://www.wabcluster.org/

European Internet Accessibility Observatory
http://eiao.net/

Support EAM
http://www.support-eam.org/

Benchmarking Tools and Methods for the Web
http://bentoweb.org/

Eric Velleman
http://www.braillenet.org/colloques/policies/velleman_paper.html
