COMparing Peer Accessibility Ratings in Evaluation (COMPARE) Erasmus Project

Project Title

COMparing Peer Accessibility Ratings in Evaluation (COMPARE)

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Disabilities – special needs; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

Access of people with disabilities to online information and services has become a critical requirement for an inclusive society as described in the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Many digital resources are still not accessible to people with disabilities. The rising demand for accessibility competence means that accessibility evaluation skills must become part of the standard IT skill set.
The COMPARE strategic partnership between DIAS (DE), BrailleNet (FR) and Funka (SE) was set up to support and strengthen the accessibility competence both of skilled evaluators and non-expert IT staff. All three partner organisations have a long involvement and high expertise in the field of accessibility and in the development of tools and methodologies for accessibility evaluation. All three are important multipliers in their respective country. The project has built and tested an innovative learning resource that enables its users to look at real web content examples and related accessibility ratings by different experts / peers across Europe
The partnership has developed and implemented the COMPARE repository of web content cases with accessibility ratings (PAR Repository) – see https://compare.accessiweb.org . The system is based on Wikimedia installation and has been populated with cases, accessibility assessments, and user testing results. The focus is on interactive widgets that are often hard to evaluate. Evaluators and developers can investigate the cases and ratings when learning to evaluate the accessibility of real web content. They can also validate one’s own assessments against the judgments of peers. Accessibility experts and organisations of people with disabilities across Europe have contributed cases, assessments and user testing results.
A second major project output is a Learning and Exploration Module called Access & Use. It features best practices and many video examples of user testing showing key accessibility requirements of interactive widgets. It links to related cases in the repository for exploration – see https://accessuse.eu . Access & Use can be deployed in existing training contexts, but also be used as part of future accessibility curricula. It shows eight key interactive web components, and interfaces with cases in the PAR repository where example cases can be explored further. The concept has been validated by other accessibility experts across Europe that are core stakeholders and contributors to the repository.
The COMPARE resources offer a hands-on learning and exploration approach to accessibility where the focus is on real, complex web content and associated accessibility ratings. User testing results have added a third dimension. The impact of the project has been an improvement of the accessibility evaluation competence of experts and learners across Europe. With the PAR repository, experts have learned by comparing the different assessments of peers which validate (or at times contradict) their own judgments. They have also made use of the hands-on examples of user testing and the problems these videos demonstrate in https://access.use.eu in their familiarization and training activities. The International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) has signaled that it will use the COMPARE resources in their training activities. Access & use had also become a part of the EAE training course by French partner BrailleNet and is used by partners Funka and Dias in the training of accessibility evaluators that are needed to meet the strongly growing demand for accessibility evaluation services across Europe. In addition, standards bodies like WAI / W3C already benefit because working group members draw on COMPARE content examples and assessments to validate test procedures and techniques that are developed as resources of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 255693 Eur

Project Coordinator

D.I.A.S.GmbH – Daten, Informationssysteme und Analysen im Sozialen & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ASSOCIATION BRAILLENET
• FUNKA NU AB