User:GijsKruitbosch/ChatA11Y AppAuthors

Making Chat Accessible using Web Technologies

Many chat solutions these days are web-technology-based. In this case, we are not just speaking about web-based chat solutions like Mibbit, Meebo, AIM Express, MSN Web Messenger, etc., but even about client-side applications like Adium, Google Talk, and so on. Even these client-side applications use web technology in order to achieve what they need to do (and in fact, some IM protocols use HTML to transfer richly formatted text and so on).

In order to make such applications or websites accessible to the blind and visually impaired, authors can make use of ARIA markup to signify the function of elements of the page or application. In particular, they can indicate which part of an HTML document is a (chat) log, and prioritize messages inside this log. In the remainder of this document I will first detail the relevant markup, and then provide some concrete examples from Google Talk in GMail, Mozilla Live Chat, and ChatZilla.

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ARIA markup for chat logs

The WAI-ARIA specification allows web authors to specify the functionality of parts of a page in a way that does not affect the visual properties of the page or its elements. Accessibility tools, such as screenreaders, can make use of this information in order to provide better access to users. For example, if a is really a button, the author can use role="button" to indicate that this particular span is actually meant to be a button, and a screenreader will then present this element as a button rather than a piece of text on the page (as it would normally do for a span). This enables the user to interact with it in a way they would normally interact with a button, just as a sighted user would normally be able to do (assuming the span in question looked like a button in some obvious way).

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