Information Access: Theory and Practice

Part of an international awareness campaign for information accessibility, this website acts as a voice for and a practical application of the mandate of the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation:

The Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation is dedicated to commemorating the genius of the late Yuri Rubinsky by bringing together workers from a broad spectrum of disciplines to stimulate research and development of technologies which will enhance access to information of all kinds. The Foundation provides a focal point for those honoring the life and work of Yuri Rubinsky, an industry leader, inventor, entrepreneur, author, humanitarian and friend.

The WebABLE! section of the website is a database of access and disability related internet resources, based on the website previously located at www.webable.com (maintained by Mike Paciello).

Accessibility Design

Creating accessible information requires the following of only one rule: don't exclude anyone from your information. The challenge is not following that rule, but becoming (and remaining) aware of it. Some of the applications of accessible design as they exist on this website are listed below. Notice that the applications are, from an implementation point of view, insignificant, and more than anything they involve the developing of a routine and a mind-set. The outcome achieves two goals: 1) designers reach the widest possible audience, 2) viewers gain access to more information.

• No image maps: text browser friendly. (Image maps are fine as long as text-equivalents are available. We chose to avoid the extra maintenance of text-equivalents by not using image maps).
• Descriptive ALT tags on all images allow text browsers to portray an intelligible and navigable version of the site.
• Low on image size (9k main graphic plus 2.5k icons): Services lower end technology
• Use tables only when text would read properly in text-only browser or screen reader (left to right, row by row.)
• Colours chosen so as not to exclude those with colour-blindness. (This is not an imperative so much as an awareness-raising design choice. Certain colours are invisible to certain individuals. Choices to avoid communicating critical information in those colours will allow designers to reach a broader audience.)

Web Design Still Offers Appeal

Designing for accessibility does not mean reducing appeal. Professional, attractive, and interesting content and presentation remains the goal of websites designed for accessibility. Many design choices are unchanged. In all cases, the design goal is to achieve a pleasing result for the largest possible audience without producing an inaccessible result for any other audience.

• The door imagery of the site was chosen to reflect the theme of access. The images are described in detail using "ALT" tags, so the metaphors are not lost on text-based renderings of the site.
• Block quotes allow white space margins on left and right which enhance both readability and visual appeal.
• All icons have been arranged in one paragraph so that the browser decides how many to put on one line: nothing gets chopped off, all screens have pleasing layout: This design is backwards compatible to lynx.
• Every page has the familiar front-door graphic, which situates the user, and visually reinforces the fact that they are still on the same site no matter where they go.
• Navigation is designed to convey clearly to users both where they are, and where they have come from. Any previous page in a user's history of navigation is accessible through a single link. Small open doors on the current page visually distinguish the relationship of the current page with the section in which the page resides (section main pages are displayed with small closed doors which stack hierarchically to indicate the user's "depth" level in the site).

Navigating This Site

A few tips for getting around the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation website:

• You can always click on the large front door (top left of every page) to get back to the YRIF homepage.
• Every page that's one level below the homepage has the title of the page next to a little open door with light shining on the title.
• Every page that's two or more levels below the homepage has the title of the page next to a little open door, but in addition, titles will appear above the little open door which have closed doors next to them. This stack of closed doors indicates the path you took to get to the page you're on, and you can click on any one of the closed doors to go to a previous page. (Note for text browsers: the stack of doors is represented by the words "BACK TO" for each title, so the navigation will be the same.)

Credits

• colin moock: graphic art & web design
  colin is currently website coordinator and website art director at SoftQuad Inc. he contributed a chapter to Teach Yourself the Internet in a Week, Second Edition (Sams Publishing) and illustrated Beyond HTML, by Yuri Rubinsky and Murray Maloney. he created the theme, navigation, artwork, and web pages for this site

  
  

• karin trgovac: technical development
  karin is currently Intranet coordinator and website technical developer at SoftQuad Inc. she writes an occassional column about non-profit efforts on the internet for The Outreach Connection, was involved in the production of Project Gutenberg, and has been published in The World Wide Web Unleashed, Teach Yourself the Internet in a Week, and The Net magazine. she developed the database and search utilities for the WebABLE! internet resource database section of this site

  
  

• mike paciello: accessibility resources
  mike was responsible for compiling the original list of accessibility resources in the WebABLE! section of this site. he is the director of the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation