In the CMS industry, we try to stay current with the latest and greatest trends for Web sites, Web apps, and the Internet in general. We work so hard to stay ahead of the market, in fact, that it's often easy to lose sight of where most businesses and organizations are in terms of their online presence.

To better understand our customer base, we at Hannon Hill undertook a primary research project in the summer of 2006 to determine how important Web standards are in the education and healthcare fields. What we found was not good: 86% of America's Best Colleges, and 99% of America's Best Hospitals, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, aren't compliant with the HTML/XHTML Web standards recommended by the W3C.

New Legal Precedents for Web Accessibility Catalyst Change
Meanwhile, the legal push for Web accessibility (directly related to W3C HTML/XHTML Web standards) is increasing, even into the corporate sector. In September 2006, a legal precedent was set for Web accessibility when a federal judge sustained discrimination claims against retailing giant Target. This precedent means that retailers must make their e-commerce sites accessible to the blind under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The problem isn't that companies don't want to provide disabled people equal access to their Web sites, but rather that many of them don't have a clear understanding of the inhibiting elements or how to resolve their sites' accessibility problems.

Web 2.0: New Technology, New Challenges with Accessible Web Content
Enter Web 2.0, and the problems can only get worse. New content formats and content management systems can make providing content that is accessible to a wide number of users with disabilities, from limited motor functions to blindness, even more complex. For example, with an increase in visually oriented rich media comes an increased difficulty for Web browsers that translate content for blind users.

In preparation for the onset of Web 2.0, the WAI has already appointed an advisory committee to revise the Section 255 guidelines and Section 508 standards to address some of the issues that are beginning to surface. Since the new guidelines will end up being an extension of the current ones, anyone who's already developing and managing compliant sites will have a jump start on the rest. And that's where XML comes in.

XML Drives Accessible Web Content
To understand how these guidelines aid accessibility - and how XML can help - it's important to understand how individuals with disabilities might interact with the Web. When approaching a Web site design, ask yourself, "How do the blind or persons with color defected vision or limited motor skills navigate the Web?" And, to a large degree, improving a Web site's accessibility isn't geared directly toward assisting the disabled visitor, but toward helping the various available assistive technologies read the site better. For companies serious about improving their accessibility, it might make sense to invest in a Jaws screen reader, for example. To simulate limited motor skills just take away your mouse. Try navigating with only keystrokes, and you might be amazed at the challenges your own site presents. By designing your Web site so that assistive technologies can navigate it easily, you've made your site accessible.

Easier Content Management & Better Search Rankings:
Accessibility-Compliant Web Sites Provide Additional Benefits
Assistive technologies aren't the only "machines" reading your Web site. By making your site standards-compliant, you'll discover other benefits. Search engines can index your site more accurately, improving search rankings as well as the user experience. Regardless of what precisely the advisory committee comes up with in the future, it would do companies well to pay attention. When companies improve their Web sites to meet W3C guidelines, they take the same approach to making a Web site accessible as they would to making physical walkways and structures accessible to persons with disabilities.

Besides all the obvious benefits, the thing that makes me really excited about using XML to create standards-based accessible sites is how much easier it makes managing a site. XML just makes things cleaner. It'll also force you to be more organized, which might make some people grumpy to start with, but ends up saving a lot of time.

'How-To' Use and Manage XML Content for Company Web Sites
Let's look at specific ways in which companies can use XML - both now and in the future - to make the Web more accessible.

XML, as a standard format, makes it easy to enforce certain rules. Take for instance this code snippet of an image:

    <img src="picture.jpg"/>

What's wrong with it? Well, there's no text indication for a blind person. What is picture.jpg? Is it a picture of a kitten, a person, an object, etc? Assuming it's in fact a picture of a kitten, the proper XML tag would be:

    <img src="picture.jpg" alt="Black kitten sleeping"/>

A screen reader would then be able to relay information to a blind user about the image in context.

Another example of XML facilitating accessibility issues is that of different format outputs. Once the content is in XML it's easy to transform the XML into different output types like XHTML Mobile for cell phones, PDF for printing, and text-only for people with certain kinds of disabilities. A text-only version can be optimized for different screen readers.

Let's look at a more technical example. Most Web sites have a code structure where the page header comes first followed by the top navigation and then finally the meat of the page. Here's an example:

<html>
    <head>
      <title>Page Title</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <!-- Header HTML Goes Here -->
      <!-- Top Navigation HTML Goes Here -->
      <!-- Main Page HTML Goes Here -->
      <!-- Footer HTML Goes Here -->
    </body>
</html>

The common accessibility technique is to have a hidden link that "jumps" to the main page content like follows:

    <p class="hidden"><a href="#main">Jump to content</a></p>

This works fine but someone using a screen reader would have to choose that link on each page as they browse around. This becomes cumbersome and makes their experience less than ideal. With your site content stored as XML you can easily create a complete version of your site that's text-only whereby people with disabilities will be greeted with the main content first. Let's look at that example:

<html>
    <head>
      <title>Page Title</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <!-- Main Page HTML Goes Here -->
      <!-- Footer HTML Goes Here -->
    </body>
</html>

Once the XML infrastructure and re-purposing rules are in place, there's no additional burden put on the content authors to have this text-only version of the site made available for whosoever chooses it.

If you're still not getting excited about using XML to drive your Web site, check out a few organizations that have taken the plunge. Since our study was conducted, we've noticed more universities catching on. Just recently Carnegie Mellon University launched its new XML-driven Web site, www.cmu.edu. Without making any sacrifices, it now has an easy-to-manage site that's accessible and W3C-compliant (to see their compliant site results, visit http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcmu.edu).

You can also check to see if your own site is compliant, and what factors need to be updated by visiting the following link: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F.

Two of the greatest benefits of the Internet are its availability and reach. Web sites allow potential students to visit campuses on the other side of the country, and shoppers to buy at stores from the comfort of their home. Virtual experiences are increasingly becoming as important as face-to-face interactions, and equal Web site access is increasingly viewed as a right, not a privilege. Fortunately, with XML to help technology meet the demand, we can follow a few simple concepts and not only meet accessibility requirements now, but also to be prepared for future developments.

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