Workshop: Workshop 2

The workshop described and discussed the main results from the European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project. The Observatory is an example of how large scale evaluations of web sites may be conducted and published automatically. The approach seems especially promising in the context of public web sites. The Observatory is likely to provide valuable input to eAccessibility policy making, supporting development of an Information Society for all. During the workshop we explained how the Observatory works, and elaborate on its known limitations.

All of the Observatory software is released under the GPL, Open Source license. We discussed how to improve the Open Source implementation to extend the use of the results and services in other contexts.

Objectives

The following questions have been discussed:

1. How does the Observatory work?
2. How can large scale evaluations best be used to encourage web accessibility improvements?
3. What are the experiences with related attempts in national or wider contexts?
4. Are there legal issues that can prevent effective use of the evaluation results?
5. Could large scale evaluation be used to improve the public procurement process?
6. How could the Observatory be best used to improve web sites in the private sector?
7. Is the quality assurance of the evaluation results sufficient?
8. What are the limitations of automated evaluation results compared to manually produced results?
9. How can results from manual evaluation be combined with automatic evaluation results?
10. Would it be feasible to use large scale evaluation results to estimate the cost of retrofitting?
11. What are the bottlenecks and possible remedies for scaling the Observatory capacity to covermore web sites and to perform more tests on the web content?
12. What is the value of Unified Web Evaluation Methodology for large scale, international web accessibility evaluations?

Structure

A number of experts from the EIAO team presented their work and their findings. A case was discussed for how a national, largely manual evaluation can be combined with an automated large scale evaluation.

The workshop was organized as a series of paper presentations and discussions. The presentation format allowed for short follow-up questions, with a summarising session at the end of the workshop allowing for more discussion. To facilitate further discussion an online discussion forum was organized.

Presentation of the EIAO project

Schedule for the workshop:

Participants

The workshop was open to all.

This workshop brought together researchers, designers, developers, practitioners and policy-makers.

Participants included:

Mikael Snaprud, Agder University College, Nils Ulltveit Moe/ Morten Goodwin Olsen, Agder University College, Annika Nietzio, FTB der Evangelischen Stiftung Vollmarstein, Germany, Terje Gjøsæter, Agder University College, Jens Frøkjær, Aalborg University, Denmark, Jenny Craven, The Manchester Metropolitan University, Frank Fardal, norway.no Norway, Patrizia Bertini, FBL Italy,

Organizers:

Agder University College: Drs Mikael Snaprud and Agata Sawicka, and Finn Aslaksen Vista Utredning.

The EIAO project is co-funded by the European Commission DG Information Society and Media, under the contract IST-004526.