Notas
Esquema
EvalIris- A Web Service for Web Accessibility Evaluation
Arrue, Myriam
Tomás, Jorge
University of The Basque Country (Spain)
Index
What is EvalIris?
Examples of EvalIris use
How does EvalIris work?
Technology used
Conclusions
What is EvalIris?
It is an Accessibility Validator Tool, characteristics:
It is a Web Service
Its analysis is based on WCAG of the WAI guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
What is a Web Service?
 A Web service is a software system identified by a URI, whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by Internet protocols.
http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-gloss
Web Services Architecture, February 2003
Examples of EvalIris use
Portal
Crawler
Accessibility reparation Tool
ODSm (Authoring Tool)
How does EvalIris work? 1/4
Obtain HTML mark-up.
Divide the HTML mark-up into HTML components (image, table, header…).
Retrieve  accessibility information for each component from the native XML database.
Analyze the accessibility of each HTML component.
Return the result of this evaluation.
How does EvalIris work? 2/4
How does EvalIris work? 3/4
Result: A report containing Errors and Warnings found in the evaluation (XML schema).
Errors: When a HTML component does not fulfil the accessibility guidelines.
Warnings: Possible accessibility errors that need manual verification
How does EvalIris work? 4/4
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 1/7
Each guideline contains a list of checkpoints.
Each checkpoint is defined by HTML tags and attributes.
For instance, the 5.5 checkpoint referring to “provide a description for the information displayed in a table” is about to be formatted, in addition to the HTML tag <TABLE>, it is necessary to include summary attribute in the definition.
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 2/7
The elements of the proposed accessibility schema are the following:
Information regarding the guideline: identification number, title, description and the URL where the definition of this guideline can be found.
Information regarding each checkpoint in the guideline: identification number, description and priority.
The most complex part in this process is to express each checkpoint in terms of HTML tags.
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 3/7
XML Schema.
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 4/7
Example.
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 5/7
Example
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 6/7
Example
How to transform from WCAG guidelines into XML format? 7/7
Example
Technology used
The core is made in JAVA.
This system runs in a Tomcat Server.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) technology is used in the communications.
The accessibility guidelines formatted in XML schema are stored in a native XML database (Xindice).
Technology used
Graphical schema of the use of EvalIris.
Conclusions
An advantage for implementing Web Services is that another system can use the accessibility analysis module independently where the client system is running.
Thanks to the accessibility guidelines XML structure is possible to add new guidelines to the system.
Acknowledgments
This work has been financed by the European Commission within the IST-2000-26211 IRIS project (Incorporating the Requirements of People with Special Needs or Impairments to Internet-based Systems and Services) developed by:
European Dynamics,
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology,
the University of the Aegean,
the University of the Basque Country,
and the ISdAC International Association (Information Society disAbilities Challenge).