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Overview
As many
as 500 million people worldwide have physical, sensory,
or cognitive disabilities. In the US, about 26 million people
(one in ten) have a severe disability (1). Disabilities
can require use of special technologies, such as screen
readers or braille machines, which perform optimally when
web pages follow the conventions in the accessibility guidelines.
Section
508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that Federal agencies'
electronic and information technology is accessible to people
with disabilities, including employees and members of the
public.
This
document provides an overview of PeopleSoft's plans for
ensuring PeopleSoft 8 applications are accessible and usable
by people with disabilities. These plans are up to date
as of March 2001.
What
PeopleSoft means by "Accessible Applications"
By "Accessible
Applications", PeopleSoft means that to the best our
knowledge our applications adhere to the W3C and DOJ accessibility
guidelines (see below) which apply to enterprise business
applications. It also means that PeopleSoft has made design
modifications, beyond what is spelled out in the W3C and
DOJ guidelines, in order to provide applications that can
be used by people with disabilities and that PeopleSoft
is testing the PeopleSoft 8 applications with disabled users.
The
following accessibility guidelines from the W3C and DOJ
are being used by PeopleSoft to ensure the accessibility
of our applications:
Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 from the W3C (2). These
are the most widely recognized accessibility guidelines,
created by a worldwide collaboration of industry, disability
organizations, and governments. Each guideline has associated
"checkpoints" that explain how to apply the accessibility
principle to web site features.
Department of Justice (DOJ) Web Page Accessibility Checklist
(3). The checklist assists in evaluating the extent to which
web pages are accessible to most people with disabilities.
The checklist is based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines, and covers a subset of the guidelines (primarily
the Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints).
If customers encounter any problems with the use of PeopleSoft
8 applications by people with disabilities, they should
report the issues to the PeopleSoft GSC. Accessibility issues
will be addressed like any other issue reported through
the GSC.
PeopleSoft
expects the accessibility guidelines and technologies to
evolve over time and we will continue to enhance our technology
and applications to adhere to the newest guidelines and
to maximize the user experience for the disabled user.
What
PeopleSoft has done up to this point to deliver accessible
PeopleSoft 8 applications
The
effort to address accessibility with PeopleSoft 8 applications
started in early 2000 and at this point we are progressing
nicely with our goal to begin delivering accessible applications
by the end of 2001 across all PeopleSoft 8 product lines.
Browser-based
Applications: With PeopleSoft 8, all PeopleSoft 8 applications
are browser-based. This means that end users interact with
PeopleSoft applications the same way they interact with
any website. A big benefit of this is that the end user
does not have to learn a proprietary means of navigation
and interaction to use PeopleSoft 8 applications. If the
end user has experience using a web browser, he or she can
leverage this experience when using PeopleSoft 8 applications.
We expect this to be a great benefit to disabled users since
many are experienced web users.
Metadata-driven
Architecture: The PeopleSoft Internet Architecture is a
very metadata-driven architecture. Where this is extremely
helpful in adhering to the web accessibility guidelines
is the HTML generation engine of the architecture. PIA has
one place in the architecture where all of the HTML for
our browser-based applications is generated and this greatly
improves our ability to deliver applications that adhere
to the guidelines across all product lines. Why? Since the
HTML generation engine creates the HTML for the 14,000-plus
PeopleSoft 8 pages, modifying the HTML generation code so
that it creates HTML that adheres to the W3C and DOJ accessibility
guidelines tackles the vast majority of the work for accessibility.
This is a great example of the benefits of a metadata-driven
architecture.
PeopleSoft
Power HTML Enhancements in PeopleTools 8.12: In PeopleTools
8.12, PeopleSoft made a huge step towards accessibility
with the introduction of numerous power user enhancements.
See the PeopleSoft Power HTML white paper for details on
these enhancements. The primary enhancements related to
accessibility deal with mouse-less data entry. Prior to
PeopleTools 8.12, end users had to use a mix of the keyboard
and mouse for interacting with PeopleSoft 8 applications.
Starting with PeopleTools 8.12, the PeopleSoft 8 applications
can be completely controlled through the keyboard.
What
PeopleSoft is doing in 2001 to deliver accessible PeopleSoft
8 applications
In order
to deliver accessible applications, both PeopleTools and
applications changes are being made. PeopleSoft currently
plans to begin delivering accessible applications across
our public sector products in Q4 2001 and plans to have
accessible applications across all of our public sector
products in 2002. PeopleSoft's long term accessibility goal
is to deliver accessible applications across all product
lines by the end of 2002.
Note
that improving the usability of our applications will be
an ongoing process that PeopleSoft will continue to invest
in throughout 2001 and beyond. As of March 2001, PeopleSoft
has a team of skilled engineers and consultants (who are
experts in accessibility issues for web-based applications)
addressing this issue and who will continue to improve our
products going forward. PeopleSoft currently has more engineers
working on this issue than ever before in our company's
history and is fully committed to delivering accessible
applications. We expect the accessibility of PeopleSoft
applications to continue to improve as the guidelines and
technology evolve, but just as enhancing the user experience
for our traditional end user is a never ending process,
the same holds true for delivering a high quality user experience
for the disabled user.
To summarize,
the following work is being done in 2001 to deliver accessible
applications:
PeopleTools
Enhancements: Application Designer and HTML generation enhancements
are being made with PeopleTools 8.14 (available to customers
by June 2001) in order to deliver a tool set where applications
that follow the W3C and DOJ accessibility guidelines can
be created. This primarily involves allowing the application
developer to associate meaningful text descriptions with
all PeopleSoft page controls and enhancing our HTML generation
engine to generate HTML that adheres to these guidelines.
Application Enhancements: The primary application changes
that deal with adherence to the guidelines involve associating
meaningful text descriptions with each page control so that
the screen readers and Braille machines can effectively
render the PeopleSoft 8 applications to the disabled end
user.
PeopleSoft's
plans beyond 2001 to continue to deliver accessible applications
PeopleSoft
is committed to continue to deliver accessible applications
beyond 2001. To make sure this happens, PeopleSoft is doing
the following:
PeopleSoft
is making accessibility testing a standard part of the PeopleSoft
release cycle.
PeopleSoft will fully consider W3C and DOJ accessibility
guidelines when implementing new features.
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1 Statistics
from Microsoft Windows Guidelines for Accessible Software
Design, December 1999
(http://www.microsoft.com/enable/download/dev/guidelines/Introduction.doc)
2 The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 can be found
at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ .
3 The DOJ Web Page Accessibility Checklist can be found
at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/.
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