There are three parts to this assignment. One is groupwork, the others are individual.
Your task for this assignment is to work with your group is to develop some kind of metric you can use to apply to each page of the website you'll be auditing. The metric should make clear what needs to be addressed on each page as well as how accesssible each page is as it now stands.
That second point is very important. Keep in mind that you will be putting in a lot of work on this project. Thus, I'm sure you'd like the webmaster of your nonprofit group both to read your accessibility report and make the changes you suggest so that the website will be more accessible. Your documents will be easier to digest if they include some good news for the webmaster—e.g., that all the images have alt text. So in addition to pointing out accessibility problems, you also want to point out and encourage good accessibility and usability aspects of your client website.
That being said, the another reason to explain how accessible a page is as it now stands is so that the webmaster can prioritize his or her tasks in working on the website.
In developing a metric, think about your task in two ways:
So for Thursday's class, I'd like each group to come up with a proposal for how you'll go about auditing your client website. Your proposal should be specific in explaining what metric you will use to evaluate each page of the website. For example, you could use the checklist appendix of the W3C WCAG 1.0 or some other resource from the web (e.g., New York State Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001).
Keep in mind that in addition to the accessibility standards outlined in the WCAG 1.0, we'll want to pay attention to the general usability aspects of the website (as these are articulated, e.g., in the readings you've done by Jakob Nielsen). So be sure that these are included in your proposal.
Each group will give a 5 minute presentation on its audit proposal. To make this go smoothly, each group should select a spokesperson who will lead the presentation (though you will all participate).
I've been kind of vague about how you should use your blog, so here are some specifics.
First, don't forget to use the emacs timestamp function to put an anchor timestamp on each entry. (The emacs command is Ctrl-c b. It will only work when emacs is in HTML-mode.)
There are three types of entry you should put in your blog:
These are specific observations about websites you visit. They aren't restricted to your client website. You should write a brief description of what the good or bad aspect of the website is, and draw some kind of general conclusion (e.g., "this is a good example of how to do x and other websites should try it", or "Y works on this website, but might not work well in general because ...").
Each time your group meets, you should put an entry in your blog in which you summarize what went on in the meeting and what you are currently working on. (This is your personal take on the meeting, and thus it is not acceptable to have one group member write a summary and then each of you link to it.)
Your blog should contain two entries:
Make sure there's a link to your blog on your warp homepage.
The exact design of your blog is up to you; it should, of course, rank high in terms of accessibility and general usability.
Make sure that your Michalko webpage is up to date, i.e., it covers the entire book.
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Brian J. Rosmaita <contact me>