[Nfb-web] An attempt to Fix The Web

[Blaine Clark]

Fix the Web is led by Citizens Online http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/ 
and funded by Nominet Trust http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/. A number of 
partners http://www.fixtheweb.net/about#partners are contributing to the 
development of the project.

See a video about the Fix the Web project 
<http://www.fixtheweb.net/video>. http://www.fixtheweb.net/video

Web accessibility is not improving very quickly despite the efforts of 
many experts. The scale of the problem is huge and there is a need for 
culture change amongst web developers and website owners. Our solution 
is to make it super easy for people facing accessibility issues (such as 
many disabled and older people) to report problems with websites. 
Volunteers do the work of contacting the website owners and signposting 
them to support. In doing this work, volunteers will understand more 
about e-accessibility for themselves, as well as giving crucial 
information to website owners. Everybody wins! Details of how the 
process works are explained for the different roles (volunteering 
http://www.fixtheweb.net/being-volunteer and issue reporter 
http://www.fixtheweb.net/reporting-websites ) 
<http://www.fixtheweb.net/reporting-websites> and in the FAQs 
http://www.fixtheweb.net/faq.
<http://www.fixtheweb.net/faq>

You can get involved in three different ways:

 1. Report issues <http://www.fixtheweb.net/reporting-websites> you are
    having with websites.
 2. Volunteer <http://www.fixtheweb.net/being-volunteer> to help liaise
    with website owners.
 3. Support the development of the project: contact the coordinator
    <http://www.fixtheweb.net/contact>. http://www.fixtheweb.net/contact

Reporting and volunteering are different "roles" within the Fix the Web 
process. We ask that reporters are disabled or older people facing web 
accessibility issues. Anyone can be a volunteer (we suggest you have 
reasonable tech skills) and this includes disabled and older people 
themselves. You may even want to take your own report forwards as a 
volunteer, making use of the sense of collective in Fix the Web, you are 
very welcome to do this.

*Benefits of a volunteer led process:*

 1. Complaining could happen on a much bigger scale
 2. Volunteers can offer support to make the web a better place, in
    their own time and online
 3. It's an easier process for disabled people
 4. The volunteers enhance their own knowledge and skills
 5. Website owners get feedback they can work with or use to justify
    changes to budget holders
 6. Web accessibility experts get more business
 7. Disabled people don't have to keep fighting their own corner
 8. It is clearer what the key issues are: there is a kind of mass user
    testing in place.

*What we want to achieve and why*

We want to get 250,000 websites reported over the next 2 years. That 
will need about 10,000 volunteers signed up and many hundreds of active 
reporters. We believe this will change the culture of the Web. We are UK 
focused for now (though everyone is welcome) and we would want to extend 
our global reach if this process works. In the UK alone, 6 million web 
users are excluded to some extent from 80% of websites. It is 
infuriating at times for disabled users. 30.4% of a blind person's time 
is wasted on-line dealing with access issues. Disabled people, if they 
had the energy and time to take this issue on (and report all the issues 
they face) may be excluded even from the complaining process (for 
example by the use of captchas). That's why we want to make it 
super-easy for disabled people to report and let volunteers take the 
issues forwards.


To add the ATbar to your browser simply right click the following link 
and add it to your bookmarks (also called favorites in Internet 
Explorer). On Safari, Chrome or Firefox you can drag the link to your 
bookmarks.

http://www.fixtheweb.net/toolbar

Should you ever wish to /Fix the Web/ simply select the bookmark and the 
ATbar will appear as a series of buttons (or links) at the top of the 
current page.

(Note you will need to use a javascript enabled browser.)

To use simply click the heart button (which is labelled "create a fix 
the web report about this page) and a new window will open with the 
address of the problem page shown. You then only need to fill in the 
accessibility issue field with the details of the problem you encountered.

The Fix the Web heart button is integrated in to ATbar, the assistive 
technology toolbar and so contains a number of other accessibility 
features you may find invaluable. Discover the functions of ATbar at 
this link; http://www.atbar.org/

ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help 
users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. The 
concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the 
functionality you would usually achieve through the use of different 
settings or products.

The ATbar allows you to enlarge and shrink text, run an online TTS (Text 
To Speech) converter for the page, change styles such as colors and 
fonts, spell check and of course, it opens a tab when you click on the 
heart where you can write a description of the accessibility issue such 
as mis-labeled forms, a non-compliant CAPTCHa or other issues. The tab 
contains the address of the web page so that when you fill out a 
description of the problem and submit it, the Fix The Web site receives 
your report which is then posted for volunteers to attempt to contact 
the web authors and let them know there is an issue that needs to be 
resolved. There is no guarantee that the web authors will do anything, 
but the attempts must be made.

Reporters are needed, but just as importantly, volunteers to contact the 
web authors are also needed. Note that with the tools on the Fix The Web 
site, reporters have the ability to become their own advocates and 
become volunteers.