High Quality Scenarios for Raising Web Content Accessibility Awareness

‘Web content accessibility’ is about making content for the World Wide Web that is accessible to all, regardless of what access device they are using. The particular focus is on developing standards that will make it possible for all users, including those with disabilities and relying on assistive technologies, to access Web content. Raising awareness of the need for and benefits available from improving Web content accessibility has, however, not been very successful. This paper considers a pedagogy called the Active Accessibility Technique, especially the qualities of scenarios that make the best base for this technique. As with use cases, many times the scenarios improve with use. In advance of use with 'students', scenarios can be road-tested. Once really good scenarios have been developed, they can be shared. Scenarios are considered good, or ‘rich’, if they reliably provide role-players with a wide-range of stimulating issues. It is not essential for these issues to be obvious when the scenario is first read, but they should emerge as the role-playing advances. Indeed, experience with scenarios can help in their evaluation: some are not as rich as hoped, others are not as reliably generative of engagement by students or as illustrative of important aspects of accessibility. This paper should help others develop scenarios and follow the Active Accessibility Technique. Author Address: oburmeister@csu.edu.au URL: http://www.hci-international.org/index.php?module=conference&CF_op=view&CF_id=3 http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/R/-?func=dbin-jumpfull&object_id=9746&local_base=GEN01-CSU01 http://de.scientificcommons.org/22238835 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=543434.543439 CRO identification number: 9746 High Quality Scenarios for Raising Web Content Accessibility Awareness