This version revealed the beginnings of a more detailed and user-friendly My Web My Way, which I'm delighted to say has just launched in full.

My Web My Way is designed to educate audiences with accessibility needs about how to get the best out of the web - not just BBC Online - by using personalisation features in their browsers or operating systems, or using assistive technologies like screenreaders.

It's estimated that around 11 million adults have a form of disability and that this group tends towards 'heavy' media consumption - increasingly online. The BBC's sixth Public Purpose is to deliver the benefits of technology to the public, and this public must be as wide as possible. Because of this we've invested time in updating our accessibility information for the benefit of users with impairments - whether visual, hearing-related, motor-related or cognitive. Of course there are other providers of this kind of information, but to many the BBC is a trusted guide to the web.

So - what's changed?

Key features of the new My Web My Way are:

Improved signposting and easy-to-use main menu, helping users locate the right 'How to' guide for them based on their needs;

Introduction of informational videos within the guides which will live alongside transcripts of information;

A visual overhaul to increase alignment with other sections of BBC Online and updated user experience;

A 'jargon buster' which provides a definition of commonly-used terms relating to accessibility, disability, and computers in general;

Share functionality allowing users to spread awareness of helpful information.

Overall, My Web My Way is now a more detailed and up-to-date accessibility hub which should be easier for users to find their way through, ensuring they get the best from the web.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Usability & Accessibility, BBC Future Media

The Day aims to promote a better understanding of disability issues with a focus on the rights of persons with disabilities, and the gains to be derived from the integration of persons with disabilities in every aspect of the political, social, economic and cultural life of their communities.

So it's a good day to write about a step forward in promoting an understanding of disabled people's needs from websites to the owners of those sites.

That step forward is the new web accessibility standard from BSI: BS8878.

BS8878 will be launched on Tuesday December 7th at a free (but sold-out) event in London.

Part of the BBC's job is to contribute where we can to best practice in the UK internet industry. For that reason, as the BBC's Head of Usability &Accessibility, I chaired the committee who created the standard, and acted as its lead author.

I thought it would be a useful here to give a preview of what the standard is, and how it may help.

I've worked in the field of accessibility for almost 10 years now, working to ensure that the BBC's constantly innovating web products give a consistently good user experience for all users, regardless of their abilities or disabilities.

In these 10 years my accessibility colleagues at the BBC and I have tracked four key aspects of web accessibility:

• the changing drivers and motivations behind web accessibility - the ethical, legal and regulatory, and (for those aspects of the BBC which are commercial) commercial reasons why web accessibility is important

• the changing nature of the web itself - from simple informational text & image websites, through increasing amounts of interactivity and multimedia (including the specific opportunities and challenges of video-on-demand, web-based apps and games), through the shift from users being anonymous consumers of web content to being active and recognised publishers and collaborators, and through the increasing diversification of the web onto a multiplicity of devices such as mobile phones, tablets and connected TVs and set-top boxes

• the changing understanding of how best to respond to the changing needs of different groups of disabled and older people in their use of the web - from desk research on these needs, through the growing importance of testing products with real disabled users, through to recognising the importance of canvassing disabled and older people's views in earlier stages of web production

• the changing organisational structure and roles in web production teams - from an initial emphasis on accessibility of technology, through to recognising the key importance of ensuring user-experience designers and usability specialists understand accessibility, to the current focus on the web product manager as the key player in making the strategic decisions which most strongly influence the accessibility of a product

While web accessibility has never been simple, the demands it now puts on every member of a web production team can sometimes feel overwhelming. The decisions that they make every day may affect whether or not the products they work on will include or exclude disabled and elderly people.

Internationally recognised web standards such as WCAG 2.0 and BS ISO/IEC 24751 are immensely helpful in advising these team members on how to make decisions on what they are creating. User-centred design standards such as BS EN ISO 9241-210 have also provided design teams with standard processes for how to engage users within their design processes.

However, many web product managers have been missing best practice advice on how to ensure their teams are making informed, justifiable decisions on accessibility at each stage of product development. And organisations have been missing best practice advice on how to embed such behaviour within their business as usual practices.

BS8878 provides just such advice. Building on the previous PAS-78 guidelines, which it replaces, it is based on the experience of many accessibility experts from different parts of the UK web industry and disability organisations on its drafting committee IST/45.

While it is a British Standard, it has also been reviewed by over 100 global accessibility experts to make sure it harmonises with international and other countries' national standards.

We've also tried to ensure BS8878 reflects the reality of current web production and the directions it is likely to go in, in the future. So it includes the best the drafting committee could currently say about:

• inclusive design and personalisation - it provides advice on the relationship between inclusive design and user-personalised approaches to web accessibility, including when to consider providing additional accessibility provisions

• accessibility across devices - it provides advice on how to find information on making web product on new platforms such as mobile apps and internet TV (such as YouView) accessible

• accessibility under new legislation - it provides information on how the recent Equality Act 2010 impacts on web accessibility

• accessibility in web product procurement - it recognises that many organisations contract out their web products to external suppliers to ensure they produce an accessibility product

The BBC has been using much of the best practice in BS8878 for a while now, and we will soon be training our product managers in web product accessibility using BS8878 as our guide.

By training BBC product managers in this practice, our aim is to ensure that all BBC web products are able to provide a consistently good user experience for all our audiences.

By contributing our experience to the standard and making it publicly available, we hope that product managers of other websites, both in the UK and beyond, now have a resource which will help them do the same.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Usability and Accessibility, BBC Future Media & Technology

Here's Kevin Mercer - Usability and Accessibility Specialist for iPlayer - with more details:

Whilst coverage has continued to improve, the on-screen appearance of iPlayer subtitles has remained largely unchanged for the last few years. Feedback from our audiences has told us that one area where we could really improve the experience would be to offer coloured subtitles in a presentation format similar to that used on BBC television. This assigns colours to the subtitle text for individual speakers and makes it much easier to follow conversations between two or more people.

Frustratingly, despite colour code information for subtitles being technically available to us for some time, a fair amount of work has been needed to update the BBC Media Player (which delivers both the video and subtitles information for most iPlayer services) to display these colours, due to the growing number of different platforms the player needs to support, across BBC Online as well as iPlayer.

I'm pleased to say this situation is now changing for the better.

We've recently been working intensively with the BBC Media Player team to make a number of accessibility improvements, one major change being the way subtitle files are handled. In addition a number of new iPlayer services away from the web will also be coming online which can happily cope with the presentation of colour information in subtitles files without the issues we initially faced on the web.

We're pleased to announce that both of these developments will allow the roll out of coloured subtitles on many BBC iPlayer platforms over the coming few months, including the main iPlayer website.

The first place you'll actually be able to see the all new coloured subtitles is on the shiny new release of the Apple iPad version of iPlayer developed by Morten Eidal's team.

The Usability and Accessibility team here at the BBC are really pleased to get this improvement out the door. It's the first fruits of some quite extensive accessibility work we have been carrying out on the BBC Media Player over recent months, more information on which we will be sharing with you in the coming weeks.

We'd love to get feedback on this so please keep the comments coming.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of User Experience & Accessibility, BBC FM&T

Kevin Mercer is Usability and Accessibility Specialist for BBC iPlayer

This is partly because there isn't enough known in the accessibility community about how to make websites accessible to people with learning difficulties, and partly because their needs - for pages based around pictures or graphics, with simple text and large buttons for navigation - can often be so different from the needs of other website users.

Back in 2005, we did some research into how people with learning difficulties felt the BBC served their needs. This research recommended that, while fewer people with learning difficulties were online than the general population, this underserved audience might benefit from us creating specific Internet content for them, based on their interests, predominantly using images and video, and working together with organisations who best understand them like Mencap and PeopleFirst.

Since then we've launched services like the CBBC Newsreader which have made BBC news more accessible to older children with learning difficulties, by providing a simple, switch-based interface around news stories which are read out to them by a high-quality synthetic voice.
And I'm happy today to announce the launch of Us5 - a set of interactive videos created by, for and with people with learning difficulties to help them think through one of the biggest issues affecting them at the moment - the opening up of more choices to them resulting from the Government's move to direct payments, individual budgets and self-directed support.

People with learning difficulties have never before been so able to choose for themselves how they live their lives and what they want to do. However, because they've seldom had the opportunity before, this freedom can come with a lot of challenges and responsibility.
Created for the BBC by Gamelab London, Us5 shows people with learning difficulties five video stories of people like themselves making big choices, and supports them in thinking through what they might do in the same circumstances, and what the consequences might be.

The project is special in a number of ways...

• The video stories are 'hybrid fiction' - narratives based on 'true stories' developed and plot lined in workshops from the real experiences of young people with learning difficulties which are then simplified and engineered to bring home particular messages across five dramatic episodes.


• The videos were acted by a company of actors with learning difficulties, specially put together for Us5 by producer Owen Smith and director Adam Koronka from Yarrow Learning Disability Charity (who previously made Coping Strategies), and featuring guest performances by Ainsley Harriott and Kellie Shirley (Eastenders)


• Interactive comic strips are then used to allow users to try out different choices at the end of each episode to give users an immediate chance to make their own decisions.


• Us5 is one of the very few materials online created specially for people with learning difficulties, and has been a chance for the BBC to better understand how to create fully accessible content for this audience.


• Us5 has also been a chance for us to work together with Mencap, resulting in us sharing the Us5 videos as stimulus materials for engaging people with learning difficulties in Mencap's Plannet website - a new online planning model for young people with learning difficulties aged 16-25, which is currently in pre-launch testing. Plannet aims to enable young people going through transition to work towards self-directed support, which is part of the government's 25 year strategy on disability arising from the 'Improving the life chances of disabled people' report.

I'm delighted that, even though they were created primarily for the audience of people with learning difficulties, the quality and style of the resulting videos has already attracted one BIMA nomination, and a nomination for Best Children's Drama at this year's Children's Baftas.

Mark Goldring, Chief Executive of learning disability charity Mencap, comments:

"The Us5 films were a great opportunity for Mencap to work together with BBC Future Media and Gamelab to develop lively and relevant content to support the Mencap Plannet website. Mencap Plannet aims to deliver accessible and age appropriate materials for young people with a learning disability at a time when decisions over their future are so important."

I hope this will encourage many more people with learning difficulties online - much has changed since those text-heavy days of 2005.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of User Experience & Accessibility, BBC FM&T

Today I have more good news for vision-impaired iPlayer users.

I'd like to announce that we have now completed the work needed to increase the amount of Audio Described programmes on iPlayer to be broadly the same as broadcast on BBC TV - approximately 40 hours a week. You'll see these additional programmes - from CBeebies, BBC3, and the overnight Sign Zone - appearing in the Audio-Described category from today onwards.

It's been a good week for our team too, as we picked up the Access-IT@Home award at this year's Access-IT awards with iPlayer being recognised "the best ICT-based service in Europe that advances independent living for people with disabilities or who are elderly".

This is a great result, and is testament to how important video-on-demand is to the quality of life of elderly and disabled people across Europe.

The judges remarked:

"We recognised the immense value of emotional well being through an application that gave users a sense of cultural identity and entertainment for free and on demand. Millions of users access this software and content daily, and the opportunity to access media that is amongst the best in the world as and when you want it should not be underestimated. The work of the winning entry in creating a free, accessible solution is significant, and for these reasons the award goes to the BBC iPlayer."

They recognised iPlayer as being the most accessible video-on-demand service in Europe:

BBC iPlayer was the first VOD site in the UK to include BSL signed content in March 2008;

the first VOD site in the UK to include subtitles in May 2008;

the only VOD site in the UK to achieve >90% of programmes with subtitles;

and the first VOD site in the world to include audio description in August 2009.

Picture: Gareth Ford Williams, Jonathan Hassell and James Hewines picking up the award

As a result of the award we are already getting requests from broadcasters and governments across Europe asking how they can replicate what we've done in making iPlayer such an inclusive service.

So it couldn't have been a better time for Erik Huggers to introduce the BBC's 'Open iPlayer' plans to help other broadcasters by sharing iPlayer technologies with them, as he announced at the IBC conference.

Maybe someday all VOD services will be made this way...

If you have any comments or suggestions about how the accessibility of iPlayer could be further improved, the BBC Audience Accessibility Team would love to hear your views.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of User Experience & Accessibility, BBC FM&T

"audio description is great... they are saying they are working on putting it on iPlayer, but I don't really believe them".

We've always been committed to high standards of accessibility across all of our sites and services, especially those new services like iPlayer which strive to deliver the benefits of emerging technologies to all our audiences. But it always helps to hear from our audiences exactly what they expect from us.

So I'm delighted to say that we have now given visually-impaired people what they've been asking for - approximately 25 hours per week of the BBC's audio described programmes, across many genres including Childrens', are now available on iPlayer.
We also have plans to extend the coverage of the service to include more of the BBC's weekly broadcast audio described programmes in the future.

How do I get it?

Now, if you already have a computer which is able to use iPlayer (and pretty much all computers do), together with whatever Screenreader or magnification software you use, you've already got all the technology you need.

All you have to do is to go to the "Audio described" category in iPlayer (or Children's iPlayer), look at the listing of the audio described programmes available from the last 7 days, and select the programme you'd like to play.
It's as simple as that. Give it a try.

Why has this taken us so long?

And that takes time...

After investigating several delivery models and doing a lot of custom R&D to make this happen, we're delighted to be able to offer a solution which should not only work well now, but also be able to cope with any technology changes required by the ongoing advances in picture and sound quality which the iPlayer team are constantly working to achieve.

So what do you think? - send us your views

Initial feedback that we've received from people in the blind and visually-impaired community is very positive, as this quote from someone on the blind support group TAFN shows:

"iPlayer does have audio description because I have just watched all the weeks episodes and I am impressed. There is a pause, stop button which is easy to locate and you can even restart the episode. If you go back again it will take you to the same place where it was if you listened last time. I find it very accessible and easy to work and I am very pleased with it. Only problem, it has made me start watching Eastenders again"

If you have any comments or suggestions about how the accessibility of iPlayer could be further improved, we in the BBC Audience Accessibility Team would love to hear your views.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Usability.

In the same spirit I thought readers of this blog might appreciate a deeper look into the methodologies our Usability & Accessibility team use to keep all of our UX&D teams informed and connected with the contexts, needs, and preferences of all of our audiences.

So here's a recent presentation on Slideshare from myself and Chris Rourke - the Managing Director of User Vision (one of the Preferred External Suppliers for Usability & Accessibility research and testing that we regularly work with) - from the Internet World trade event at Earls Court earlier this year.

I hope this gives a useful insight into the work we do to ensure BBC Online, Mobile and Red Button sites and services are usable and accessible to all our audiences.

Please let us know if you find articles like this interesting, and if there are places you'd like us to share in more detail in the future.

• View the presentation: User experience in action on Slideshare

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Usability.

A group like this is children with complex physical disabilities, including near total loss of motor control, who are not able to use a keyboard or mouse.

Computer access for these children is achieved through Switch technology - a small piece of hardware that accepts input from one or more custom devices, such as a large button, motion sensor or even a tube to blow into, and then maps this input to a key on the keyboard.

Content available for this technology is fairy sparse, custom-made, and often geared towards pre-school age groups. However, the high quality age-appropriate content which we already provide for other older children is often very difficult or impossible to use for this audience, although it would be of huge benefit to them.

That's the conclusion that Jennette Holden of Tor View Community Special School came to. She felt that the ideal content for her pupils would be news - as most were interested in how the football was going or celebrity gossip.

However, she'd written off the idea as impossible for anyone to provide, as no-one could possibly have the time or resources to do the daily updates and maintainance on a news website made specifically for this audience.

That was until she shared her idea with Ian Hamilton from the CBBC online team who immediately though that the children's Newsround website might be the answer. Two years later, with the recent launch of the CBBC Newsreader, Ian and his team have made her idea a reality.

Here Ian tells the story behind the creation of this innovative new service.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Accessibility, BBC Future Media & Technology.

Idea

I was introduced to Jennette's idea while investigating possible projects at an accessible technology lobby a couple of years ago, and it was immediately obvious that it wasn't so impossible after all. We already had access to perfectly suited content in the form of the Newsround website, and due to the clear division now between content and layout, it would be a relatively simple task to present our content feeds in a simple, highly accessible alternative interface, capable of being operated by a single keypress.

Ideas such as Jennette's which are simple to execute and have a real benefit to our audiences are the lifeblood of innovation at the BBC, and we have various mechanisms set up to incubate them. One of those mechanisms is our 1-in-10 process, which the project was chosen to be an early test-case for.

Since then we have researched and worked with her and other industry experts and academics to bring this about, in particular from within the BBC thanks to sterling individual efforts from Leigh Jenkinson and Mark Swinson, and also some assistance from BBC RAD.

Development

Switch-accessible controls rely on scanning interfaces, which automatically move a coloured highlight around a menu, pausing on each option in turn for a given amount of seconds before moving on to the next. So to navigate around the interface the user just has to press the key (or their switch device mapped to that key) when the desired option is highlighted.

These kind of interfaces are normally bespoke applications, however the method we created for the CBBC Newsreader was to provide it on a normal HTML website by using some JavaScript to move the browser's built in tabbing focus around, which I believe is a first, and opens up some very interesting possibilities.

Another key feature of the Newsreader is dynamically generated speech via high-end voice synthesis, used to read out all of the story text and buttons. This is important as this audience could well have problems with seeing or reading, and may have difficulty using standard screen-reader software.

It's a very simple principle and one that could easily be applied to other content and audiences. Adults for example have even less age-appropriate content available than children, but providing this access could provide just as much benefit.

Results

Technology like this can have a huge impact on people's lives. Allowing those who are not able to do much without assistance to have some independant interaction can be really empowering, especially if it means being able to access exactly the same content that everyone else can. The BBC's combination of public service mandate and access to a wide variety of high quality content gives us quite a unique opportunity to be able to develop it, and in doing so give some real help to people who need it the most.

We've already seen some very encouraging results from our user testing and initial post-launch feedback. The target audience of children with motor disabilities has really benefitted, and the teachers are also using the Newsreader as a teaching aid for children with learning difficulties.

Another particularly exciting finding is the Newsreader's potential to help people on the autistic spectrum, due to the low cognitive load of the simplified interface, the repetition between text and audio, and the strong connection between the content and the real world. Seeing autistic kids now able to cope well with the content was quite unexpected and rewarding, and we've been told that the it is already being used in lesson plans for autistic children.

We launched the service two weeks ago, and the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly encouraging, for example:

"Just to say a big THANK YOU on behalf of all my pupils and clients all over Scotland who are switch users and poor readers - the new accessible newsreader is absolutely brilliant and much needed."

"This is excellent. I've added it as a link to my site and will be telling lots of people all about it through my work supporting London pupils with assistive technology needs and I'll get you feedback. Thank you for such a useful resource."

"We are a school for moderate learning difficulties and Autism. I will be using it with my children (age range from 7-16). A key to working with ASD children is to find something that motivates them and this is usually more easily done through technology. This will be a useful tool for the classroom and to initiate discussion etc. with them. Simple but brilliant!"

As a result of the feedback we've had and also findings from our testing sessions we are currently working on the next phase of development, to further open up the benefits to as wide an audience as possible.

Ian Hamilton is a senior designer in BBC FM&T Vision.

The CBBC Newsreader can be accessed from the CBBC Homepage by clicking on the Switch icon or link bottom right of the page

As the person responsible for ensuring that iPlayer is giving the best experience it can to disabled audiences, I thought it would be worth looking back at how far we've come this year in the provision of subtitles for the service.

Before I look back on the year, I think it's worth looking at the history of subtitling on TV, just for comparison.

While the BBC Television Service started broadcasting in 1936, the first subtitled BBC programme became available in 1979 - a documentary about deaf children called 'Quietly in Switzerland' via the Ceefax service. It took until 1986 for us to subtitle our first live programme (an episode of Blue Peter), with the subtitling of news programmes following in 1990. And we finally achieved the landmark of having 100% of our programmes across the main BBC TV channels available with subtitles in May 2008.

So that's the story for broadcast TV. What about iPlayer?

Well, back when I started my role in February, the situation didn't look good - subtitles had been suspended from the iPlayer launch in December 2007 because a robust subtitling solution wasn't ready for launch.

However, since then, we have evolved the service immensely.

We introduced subtitles for download in May, and for the streaming service (above) at the end of June. And since then we have been working to get workflows in place to ensure subtitles can be delivered for iPlayer no matter how and when the programme in question is delivered to the Operations team, and for as many of the devices that Alex Nunes mentions in his iPlayer day blog as we can. While this is complex task, we have delivered new workflows to increase the amount of programmes with subtitles progressively since June.

And I'm delighted to announce that, in the last few days, we have launched new workflows to make subtitles available for two more categories of programme: live programmes (except those from BBC News and BBC Parliament channels, which we are still working on); and time-sensitive programmes which tend to change hours before transmission, and so have subtitles produced sometimes minutes before broadcast.

Since the workflows went live, our monitoring has found that they have increased the percentage of programmes with subtitles on iPlayer to over 90% today.

Please note that these new categories of programme will only have subtitles available in Flash Video format, as used in streaming and downloads using the new BBC iPlayer Desktop - downloads of these programmes via the old iPlayer Download Manager will not include subtitles, due to the limitations of the technology used in the Download Manager.

Please also note that, due to the separation between the workflows used to encode the programme and its subtitles on iPlayer, on occasions there can be a small window of time between a programme becoming available and its subtitles becoming available - if you find a programme does not have subtitles available, we'd encourage you to try again an hour later when the subtitles may be available.

I'd like to thank my colleagues in the iPlayer team (especially James Hewines, Alex Nunes, Steve Buttling-Smith, Marcus Box, Mary McCarthy, Ashley Hindmarsh, and Kemi Idowu), Andrew Strachan and David Kirby who did initial R&D, and the Operations Team for all of their hard work in making this possible.

In 2009, our aim is to continue leading the field of accessible video-on-demand services by doing further integration and innovation work to improve the subtitles you get from iPlayer. Key areas of investigation we have planned include:

- Improved live subtitle synchronisation - live subtitles on iPlayer, at present, are based on those from broadcast TV and we are still working on ensuring that the time-lag between speech and subtitles, which is a limitation of the current live subtitling broadcast process and the current online repurposing process, is reduced as much as reasonably possible to improve the experience of watching live subtitles online

- Colour - improving the iPlayer's media player so it can display the colours currently used in broadcast subtitles to indicate different speakers

- Inclusion of subtitles for more regional BBC programmes

- Inclusion of subtitles for live programmes from BBC News and BBC Parliament channels

- Inclusion of subtitles on BBC channels simulcast on bbc.co.uk

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the much greater amount of programmes with subtitles we now have available.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Usability.

So I'd like to give our deaf and hard of hearing users an update on our work to improve the availability of subtitles on BBC iPlayer.

Firstly, I'm sorry for not communicating about this more regularly.

This is not because the BBC "doesn't care" about deaf people's needs, as some users of the iPlayer messageboard have said, but because of the complexities of getting broadcast TV subtitles online.

After the launch of subtitles for streamed content back in June, we have been constantly working on improving our production processes and technologies - in partnership with our broadcast partner - to steadily improve the amount of programmes on iPlayer with subtitles.

I hope that you may have noticed an improvement in the number of pre-recorded programmes on iPlayer with subtitles recently, since we rolled out a technology update in our subtitling workflow a few weeks ago. This increased the amount of programmes with subtitles on the site by approximately 25%.

However, this still isn't good enough, especially because it leaves our users unaware of which programmes are likely to have subtitles for reasons they shouldn't need to understand.

So the main thrust of our work in improving the amount of subtitles on iPlayer is still to come. We are currently in the last stages of developing and testing new workflows to make subtitles available for two more categories of programme: live programmes, and time-sensitive programmes which tend to change hours before transmission, and so have subtitles produced sometimes minutes before broadcast.

These should significantly increase the number of iPlayer programmes with subtitles, and are a key element of our plans to get as much of the 100% of programmes across the main TV channels which are subtitled available online as is technically and practically possible.

Once these workflows are finalised and operational, I'll let you know.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Usability.

Today I'm delighted to announce that we have launched a new version of our Media Player, which includes the ability for blind users to tab around all of its controls - including the volume and timeline controls - purely using the keyboard.

(picture by djukami on Flickr)

Both controls use the same pattern for use: tab to the control, select it to enter into it, tab to the volume or location setting (in increments of 10% of the programme length) you desire, and select to jump to it. We've used this 'hierarchical' tabbing approach to minimise the number of tabs you have to do to move around the controls, ensuring that you don't have to tab all the way through the volume or location settings to get to the next control

This facility to tab through BBC iPlayer's controls allows greater access, not only for blind users, but also for anyone with dexterity impairments who can now control each of the BBC Media Player's controls purely using two keys - tab and space/enter - which can be easily mapped onto switches for those who use them.

I'd like to thank the blind and switch users who have helped us in testing the keyboard-accessible Player against different screenreaders, levels of familiarity with those screenreaders, and different switch setups.

I'd also like to thank User Vision who conducted the user testing, and AbilityNet who have been our expert accessibility testing partner in this project, ensuring that the keyboard experience of BBC iPlayer works in the same way across different screenreaders, many of which work with Flash in different ways.

This is the first of two steps we have been working on to make the Media Player as easy to use via the keyboard as we can.

The second step, which Julie Schiller and Liam O'Sullivan from our Accessibility and iPlayer teams are still working on, is to provide an additional set of keyboard shortcuts which will allow keyboard users to control all of the Media Player's functions directly. These shortcuts should allow users to jump around within a programme by time intervals of 1 and 10mins forwards and backwards, on top of the rest of the functionality in the current player.

While it may seem a simple thing to do to add such shortcuts, the work we are currently doing is to ensure that they do not clash with: those key-combinations used by screenreaders for their navigation functionality (which are different for each screenreader); those key-combinations which screenreaders can pass through to Flash; and those key-combinations which browsers use for their shortcuts (which are different for each browser). We are also working to ensure that the shortcuts perform in a predictable way where multiple instances of the Media Player appear on one page (as they often do on News pages).

I hope that blind and switch users will find the new BBC Media Player greatly improves their experience of using audio and video content across BBC Online, and especially the iPlayer.

If you have any comments or suggestions about how the accessibility of the BBC Media Player could be further improved, please do leave a comment. The BBC Audience Accessibility Team would also love to hear your views.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Usability, BBC Future Media & Technology

I'll summarise here what I said on that programme.

In many ways, this kind of transition difficulty is very understandable and not uncommon on the launch of any new service. Due to the much larger amount of programmes available on BBC iPlayer - from TV as well as radio - navigation in iPlayer works in a different way to Listen Again.

Knowing that this might be a challenge to blind users, we consulted and tested iPlayer with two blind accessibility experts all the way through its creation, so we are confident that the site is accessible by blind people.

However, in response to feedback on the programme, we are working on a help document which will enable blind users to understand how to get the best from BBC iPlayer. I hope to get this onto the iPlayer help site later in the month.

Blind users have also been concerned that they cannot currently jump around within programmes in the way they are used to from Listen Again. This is due to iPlayer's use of a "scrub bar" to enable users to jump to any place within a video clip, in a way which should be familiar users of web streaming video sites such as YouTube.

Unfortunately, the visual way the scrub bar works doesn't make so much sense to blind users, and there are very few examples of sites available which have solved this problem. So we have been working on new ways of making the scrub bar, and the volume control, work well using just the keyboard and speech. We have done a lot of thinking and research with blind people into what the best controls should be. And it does seem that the jump buttons used on Listen Again are among the best solutions available.

We are almost there with our research, and will be including keyboard shortcuts for all of the iPlayer video player's controls (including some form of jump and volume control functionality) by early October.

In the meantime, blind users can still get radio in Real Media (and sometimes Windows Media) formats by using the Text Only version of iPlayer. This, incidentally, uses a much simpler navigation interface than the graphic version - just select the station you want, then the day of the programme, and you can browse through the available programmes in your screenreader's List Links dialogue by pressing P to cycle between all available programmes (each programme's link starts with "Play audio").

This will allow you to select links to play radio programmes in players with transport controls similar to those you may already be familiar with from Listen Again - both will allow you to control the volume, but unfortunately neither yet can manage to rewind or fast-forward streamed clips.

Blind listeners to BBC radio, St Dunstans, May 1st, 1927.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of User Experience & Accessibility, BBC Future Media & Technology.

A couple of weeks ago we made the decision to start removing microformats from BBC sites that used the DateTime pattern, the most popular of which is hCalendar.

This pattern was provided to give non-BBC programmers an API (an "application programming interface" - these allow computers as well as human readers to use BBC data) with which they could create software using the information on sites such as /programmes and iPlayer.

Unfortunately the pattern had a number of flaws, which I'll summarise here:

In terms of accessibility: using the DateTime pattern causes some screen readers (in non-default configurations) to read out the contents of the title attribute rather than the text content of the element, meaning users will hear data which is designed to be understood by computers rather than information designed to be understood by people

In terms of usability: using the DateTime pattern causes a tooltip to appear containing this machine-readable data when the user hovers the mouse over the text content. Some technical users may understand "1998-03-12T09:30:00-05:00", but the majority of BBC users will not.

Because of the above problems, we changed our semantic markup standard, adding a rule that the title attribute MUST contain human-readable data.

This is why microformats have started to disappear from BBC sites.

We need to uphold the needs of our users, and see if we can find alternative patterns which do not have these negative usability and accessibility side-effects before programmers start building too much software which depends on the DateTime pattern in its current form.

The BBC have engaged with the microformats community to come up with alternative patterns. While this is a complex process, I hope that through this engagement an alternative pattern will be found which satisfies all the demands on it, from a programming, web standards, usability and accessibility perspective.

My colleague Jake Archibald (who is a Senior Client Side developer in BBC FM&T) has more technical detail on this decision below, and the latest summary of the debate around these alternative patterns.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of User Experience & Accessibility, BBC Future Media & Technology

The Microformat DateTime Pattern

Michael Smedhurst blogged about the removal of this pattern from bbc.co.uk/programmes on the BBC Radio labs blog a couple of weeks ago, and then the world went mad.

The RDFa guys started claiming victory and a small war broke out in the microformats community around alternatives to the pattern.

I'd like to clear up exactly why we don't support the current pattern, and what alternatives have been proposed.

What are microformats?

The HTML elements we use in modern web development are from a specification released in 1999. The web has evolved considerably since then and there are notable gaps in the specification. A developer can, using HTML, identify some content as computer code, but cannot identify a telephone number or a date.

The microformats community create HTML patterns for describing things such as contact details and calendar events. Other programs and websites can read this pattern and present the data in another way. An example of this is the Operator plugin for Firefox, which recognises the hCalendar microformat and lets the user add detected events to their Google calendar. (n.b image from nennett on flickr)

What's wrong with the current datetime pattern?

<p>
  To be held on
  <abbr class="dtstart" title="1998-03-12T08:30:00-05:00">
    12 March 1998 from 8:30am EST
  </abbr>
  until
  <abbr class="dtend" title="1998-03-12T09:30:00-05:00">
    9:30am EST
  </abbr>
</p>

The screen reader issue

This is the most commonly discussed issue, but it's not as big as people suggest. Some screen readers in non-default configurations will read out the contents of the title attribute rather than the text content of the element, meaning users may hear the machine data rather than the human data.

Personally, I believe that screen readers should read the title attribute rather than the text content by default (I'll come back to this later), but they don't, so it's not that much of an issue.

The tooltip issue

This is the biggest issue in my opinion. When you use the above pattern, a tooltip will appear containing the content of the title attribute when the user hovers the mouse over the text content. Like the screen reader issue, this is presenting machine data to the human user. Some technical users may understand "1998-03-12T09:30:00-05:00", but the majority of BBC users will not.

The semantic issue

The HTML4 and XHTML2 specifications say the <abbr> element is for marking up an abbreviated form with the expanded form in the title attribute, and the <abbr> element should be used around each instance of the abbreviated form. The HTML4 specification says the content of the title attribute may be presented to the user, so you can conclude that the content is intended for humans.

On the other hand, the XHTML2 spec is vague, defining the title attribute as "meta-information about the element on which it is set". In XHTML2 land, the microformat use of <abbr> seems valid.

HTML5 defines <abbr> as an abbreviation or acronym, with an optional expansion via the title attribute. In my opinion, this is the best definition of <abbr>. Expansions should only be used when they're needed. So it would be used like this:

<p>I am 6<abbr title="foot">ft</abbr> tall and work for the BBC</p>

Here I have expanded 'ft', because I read it as 'foot', whereas I read 'BBC' as each letter individually. This is why I believe screen readers should read from the title attribute of <abbr> elements rather than their text content.

The BBC's decision

Because of the above issues, we changed our semantic markup standard, adding a rule that the title attribute MUST contain human readable data. This is why some microformats have started to disappear from BBC sites.

What are the alternatives?

RDFa is a possible alternative but BBC sites will require an exemption from our standards and guidelines before they can use them, because they don't validate as XHTML strict.

Microformats are an excellent way of adding additional semantic value to a page without compromising validation. However, we can't use them if they create usability or accessibility issues.

Alternatives to the datetime pattern have already been proposed which attempt to solve the current problems. Here's a quick overview of 3 proposals...

Empty elements with title:

<p>
  To be held on
  <span class="dtstart" title="1998-03-12T08:30:00-05:00"></span>
  12 March 1998 from 8:30am EST until
  <span class="dtend" title="1998-03-12T09:30:00-05:00"></span>
  9:30am EST
</p>

Here, empty elements are used to create key-value pairs using class and title. Screen readers ignore the empty element and the hover area for the tooltip is zero-width so it won't appear to the user in normal circumstances. For microformat parsers, there's little change from the current implementation, as most (if not all) do not require an <abbr> element.

However, it has the same semantic issues with title as the current standard has, and should an empty element even have a title?

It's also been raised that some CMS / tidying systems have issues with empty elements, making them self-closing or removing them completely.

Data in the class attribute:

<p>
  To be held on
  <span class="dtstart data-1998-03-12T08:30:00-05:00">
    12 March 1998 from 8:30am EST
  </span>
  until
  <span class="dtend data-1998-03-12T09:30:00-05:00">
    9:30am EST
  </span>
</p>

Here, the machine data is moved into the class attribute. The content of the class attribute is never presented as human readable data and the spec proposes using it "For general purpose processing by user agents". The developer is free to use whatever element is semantically best. Microformat parsers would have to find the element with the identifying class, such as 'dtstart', then look in the same attribute for the data class beginning 'data-'. Elements could have many identifying classes, but only one data class.

However, despite the "general purpose" definition of the class attribute, it's an unusual use of the attribute and not in line with the object-oriented concept of 'class'. Also, a principle of microformats is to keep data visible to humans, whereas this proposal intentionally hides data in the class attribute.

Here's a link to furtherdiscussion of the data class proposal

Date and time separation using value excerption

<p>
  To be held on
  <span class="dtstart dtend">
    <abbr class="value" title="1998-03-12">
      12 March 1998
    </abbr>
  </span>
  from
  <span class="dtstart">
    <abbr class="value" title="08:30">
      8:30am
    </abbr>
    <abbr class="value" title="-0500">
      EST
    </abbr>
  </span>
  until
  <span class="dtend">
    <abbr class="value" title="09:30">
      9:30am
    </abbr>
    <abbr class="value" title="-0500">
      EST
    </abbr>
  </span>
</p>

Here, the time information is split up into separate parts. The <abbr> element and title attribute are used to provide the machine alternative to individual date parts. The machine data is still displayed to user via a tooltip and potentially read by a screen reader, but splitting it up makes it feel more human (and keeps the data visible). A single span can represent both the start and end times, ideal for situations like the above where the start date is only mentioned once, as it is also the end date. Parsers would have to collect all the elements with an identifying class such as 'dtstart', then gather all the <abbr> elements within with class 'value'. The parser would recognise the string patterns in the title attributes (as they are not in a particular order) and construct a full date from them.

However, this pattern seems complicated for both implementors and parsers, involves more elements and can require multiple 'dtstart' and 'dtend' classes, as in the example above. The semantic issues around <abbr> and title remain, as does the possibility of screen readers reading the machine value rather than the human value. Tooltips would still be presented to the user, which may be unwanted and potentially confusing. Non-technical users may not be used to seeing dates year first, or timezones represented in that way.

Here's a link to furtherdiscussion of the separation proposal

Where now?

It's clear that none of the proposals are ideal, and as usual semantics play a big part in the debates between them. The microformats community need to come up with a solution that solves the issues with the current pattern and doesn't create any new ones. Once they do that, microformats such as hCalendar (in their new form) will begin to reappear on BBC sites.

Jake Archibald is a Senior CSD in BBC Future Media & Technology

So, today's a good day for me to post an update to my previous blog post, looking at the progress we have made on providing subtitles and signed content for BBC iPlayer.

So what's changed?

Firstly, subtitles are now available for many iPlayer programme downloads, making iPlayer one of the only IPTV services in the world to include subtitles.

It is now easy to find these programmes - look out for "Include optional subtitles" on iPlayer programme information pages and "Subtitles available" in the iPlayer Download Manager. And to get the best subtitles experience, you may need to update your version of the iPlayer Download Manager - see here for more details.

So why is this not 100%?

It's a technology thing. We're currently concentrating on the delivery of subtitles for pre-recorded TV output, and have the technology and production processes in place to make this work. Our priority is to ensure that we deliver the correct subtitles for each downloadable programme as well as delivering the best viewing experience for the audience.

Going forwards, next on the roadmap is adding subtitles to iPlayer streams, which is something we're working hard on and hope to have ready some time in June or July.

After that we'll be looking at the possibility of making subtitles available for iPlayer on other platforms, such as the Wii or iPhone. We'll also be looking at the possibility of providing subtitles for those programmes which use live subtitles or those time-sensitive programmes which tend to change minutes before transmission. That's a whole new challenge.

I'll let you know how we fare.

Moving on to signing: in March, we added a dedicated Sign Zone area to iPlayer, allowing one-click access to all signed programmes. This means iPlayer has enabled the BBC to provide what many of our British Sign Language users have regularly asked us for - access to a directory of recent BBC signed programmes, and the ability to watch those programmes at a time which is convenient to them. The content is available in both streamed and download forms. It's even available on the iPhone.

We hope that the BSL community welcomes this move, and is now able to better access the BBC's Signed programmes.

We'd love to hear your feedback on subtitles or signed programmes on iPlayer, so please send any comments through to the BBC Usability & Accessibility Team.

Jonathan Hassell is Acting Head of Audience Experience & Usability, BBC Future Media & Technology.

I thought it might be worth a few words here to talk about how we made the new homepage work for disabled users.

The accessibility team in BBC FM&T is looking at new approaches to accessibility, which truly put usability for disabled users at the heart of everything we do, but also help usability for non-disabled users.

The idea that the new Homepage should be a widgetised page - like Facebook, iGoogle and Netvibes - presented a challenge. How could Ajax and JavaScript be used to make the page dynamic and customisable, without causing a disastrous user experience for access technology users and alike?

Firstly, we looked at ways to make the page friendly to users with motor, cognitive and visual impairments.

For example, we ensured that font sizes and the use of colour met our Accessibility Standards & Guidelines, and that links were not too spaced out (for screen-magnifier-users), too close together, or too small (for those with motor impairments).

To identify the full extent of any potential problems for disabled users, we invested heavily in a process of regular user testing with participants with various cognitive, motor and visual impairments. To ensure against problems with screenreaders and dynamic content we also commissioned AbilityNet to test the site against several screenreaders, including: Jaws (versions 9.0.552, 8.0.2173 and 7.10.500), Hal (v8.03), Window-Eyes (v6.1), Thunder (v1.0.25) and WebbIE (v3.3.5).

As predicted, the main issues arose with the customisable content section.

For example, un-focusing a link visually (when a button is clicked on by a user it changes appearance to show it has been activated) normally sends screen readers to the top of the page.

After much experimenting with Jaws 8 and JavaScript, our developers managed to find a solution that worked for screenreaders and that worked visually. We eventually managed to send the focus to the new content for screenreaders using JavaScript, and then added more JavaScript to unfocus the link when a user released the mouse button, based on the assumption that screenreader users will be using a keyboard to navigate the page.

Using the results of our user-testing we made semantic markup of the page a priority, ensuring that each panel of the homepage design could be treated and navigated consistently. For example, the H3 heading always applies to the title of the content panel whether the content is in a table, a list or paragraph, and a logical structure of headings follow underneath.

[NB: H3 headings are those with the +- at the end of them on the homepage. For example: "More Top Stories" in the News Panel; "Most Popular" in the iPlayer panel.]

Another interesting lesson that we took away from the testing was the use of visual labels to signify changes in the state of content boxes. Originally the content boxes featured links labelled "Collapse this box". We realised that "collapse" and "expand" hold little meaning to blind users and so relabelled them to "Open the News box" and "Close the News box" etc.

We are delighted that because of all that we learned on this project, our disabled users will get a better experience of using the BBC homepage.

Credit needs to go to the homepage developers and designers, and the accessibility team in User Experience & Design which focuses on research, testing and policy creation across all of the BBC's web, mobile and interactive TV services, encouraging a culture where accessibility is a given.

But it's not just disabled users who'll benefit from this work.

The fact that the BBC Homepage is customisable without JavaScript (it's the only page "within the dynamic website arena" that we know does this) ensures that choosing content boxes, customising content, and changing the page colour are all possible for users with mobile devices and older browsers too.

Jonathan Hassall is Acting Head of Audience Experience & Usability, BBC Future Media & Technology.