Microsoft Web Accessibility Handbook

IT Developers

AKS also provides tools for the developers and administrators in the organization who are responsible for more complex or customized SharePoint based sites. All of the features of AKS are available separately, so that developers can pick and choose the ones they need.

This enables developers to either use bits and pieces of the code in AKS that are applicable to their custom development, or to utilize the documented practices in AKS to enhance the accessibility of their own development efforts. In addition, the community of AKS developers offers both peer and expert support, and open source code sharing. This educational aspect of AKS is appealing to these developers, and will help to drive both adoption and quality of implementation.

One of the primary goals of the AKS project was to develop a set of building blocks, components, documentation and educational materials that accelerate the process of accessible development using SharePoint. In order to accomplish this goal, a key priority was to ensure that the kit was open and fully documented and that developers working in SharePoint would be able to quickly review and understand the components of the kit. Because SharePoint is a highly customizable solution, and every SharePoint site can be totally different, the kit was designed utilizing an “a la carte” methodology, so that developers could pick and choose the pieces that applied to their implementation.

AKS uses a combination of replacement templates, CSS and Control adapters. SharePoint is built on top of ASP.Net 2.0, which includes a feature, called Control Adapters that allows a developer to override the default rendering of a control before it is sent to the browser. AKS makes extensive use of this feature to optimize the output for WCAG 1.0 conformance.

The AKS Control Adapters

AKS control adapters are documented so that they can be implemented in multiple scenarios. The control adapters that ship with AKS improve the accessibility of the out of the box Web parts that are used in the common scenarios for SharePoint deployments for the Internet and Intranet Web publishing scenario. Developers creating custom Web parts can use a similar approach. AKS 1.1 provides control adapters to address Web parts related to WIKIs and Blogs.

The AKS Feature

The AKS Feature is a standard SharePoint implementation that provisions a complete set of master pages, templates and CSS files that replicate the out of the box files included in SharePoint and utilized by the Publishing Portal site definition. Once the AKS Feature is activated on a site collection created using the Publishing Portal site definition, a user can select one of the AKS provided master pages that use the AKS provided CSS files. Developers can then pick through these files to see how things were implemented.

As previously mentioned, these custom ControlAdapter classes allow developers to see how the rendering of Web controls is modified from the default rendering options.

Education and Community

The educational approach is also a very important goal of the AKS solution. AKS does not contemplate an automated process to remediate any accessibility or usability concerns with current published content where the organization has implemented custom approaches that excluded the CORE SharePoint styles or masters. However, this is far from a roadblock for implementing the principals of the kit. The Guidelines and approach outlined in the AKS can be applied to existing sites and in fact should be used by companies who are in the process of hiring an outside firm to develop an internet or intranet site to better define requirements.

Best Practice Integration

The goal of the AKS community site is to not only create a forum through which SharePoint users can share their challenges and solutions, but it also provides an opportunity to bring together key stakeholders with different perspectives in an open and constructive dialogue. The community is open to anyone and the initial 150 members that have joined the community are geographically dispersed, with worldwide representation. Community members include government organizations, Universities, Non-government organizations, Advocacy organizations, technology companies, Systems Integrators, Microsoft SharePoint partners and others. Community members are also encouraged to contribute source code, and best practices to the community repository to further extend the kit. HiSoftware extends the AKS solution through its commercial applications that also enable “end-to-end” accessibility through the SharePoint Web project life cycle. These solutions empower developers to create accessible custom templates with desktop validation and remediation software. They also enable content monitoring and automated testing through SharePoint work flows. Additionally content creators can use HiSoftware’s page tester as part of the Web editor console within SharePoint. While these solutions are available at a cost to customers, they extend the concept of accessibility beyond the tools that Microsoft provides them, and allow the organization to take additional ownership of their longer term accessibility goals.

Conclusions

The AKS initiative is an ongoing project. Phase I of the kit was released in late November 2007. Phase II of the kit was released in March 2008. Phase II will be available in Q3CY2008. In the first 30 days of the release of AKS 1.0 over 1500 organizations downloaded the kit and over 150 organizations joined the AKS community and discussion list. Although this project is an ongoing initiative, several interim conclusions can be drawn:

1. 
   By including a broader community outside of just of the software vendor you can encourage sharing even amongst competitive organizations because they are all working towards a common goal.
   
2. 
   Involving the target organizations from the beginning ensures that the initiative does meet their needs in a much more relevant way.
   
3. 
   By delivering small sections of the initiative incrementally value can be demonstrated early on and it ensures that the target audiences’ needs are being met. If they are not being met then there is an opportunity to adjust plans and refocus on the highest priorities.
   
4. 
   Developing an add-on kit with the real-world concerns of site implementers, such as cost and impact on existing installations, in mind will drive adoption and increase the field of accessible Web sites.