Project Social4ALL

Accessibility adaptation platform for social networks
Social4all is a platform aimed at improving the accessibility of websites. Accessibility standards are a very useful element in helping people with limitations use websites. Unfortunately today there are large numbers and websites that do not comply with the principles of accessibility, this may be due to several factors, such as disrecognising the principles of accessibility or not having the ability to cope with the effort of adapting and maintaining an accessible website. Currently the responsibility for creating accessible websites rests with the developers of the same. Meeting accessibility criteria requires proper use of web languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Social4all brings compliance with accessibility criteria to any organization or person interested in improving the accessibility of a website, whether or not you are the developer of the site. The platform allows you to automatically analyze websites for several of the accessibility issues covered by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Based on the list of accessibility issues detected, “adaptive profiles” can be created. These profiles store a set of modifications to the original site, creating a profile is to apply a solution to each accessibility problem detected, for this a wizard is used. In some cases, the wizard will request that incomplete information be entered, or that you make decisions regarding the elements of the page. Each of the solutions provided translates into an “adaptation”, these adaptations are really modifications of the original content of the site that seek to improve accessibility. Each profile contains a set of adaptations. Throughout the process the wizard reports the detected problems, using understandable and uns technical language, while trying to provide a direct and simple mechanism to provide a solution to each problem detected. In some cases the wizard is even able to solve certain problems automatically.

The “adaptation profiles” created may be viewed by any user through the Social4all client, in this way users can use the original website with all the modifications that were specified. Thanks to Social4all it is possible to create more accessible versions of websites without having access to the original code of the site, making it easier for anyone or organization to contribute to improving the accessibility of a site. The accessibility profile system also allows the same website to have several different accessibility profiles, for example profiles could be devised for users with different types of limitations.

The Social4all project has been granted by the Economic Development Agency of La Rioja, is led by the International University of Rioja. The proposed platform is intended to improve the accessibility of any website. Through a semi-automatic system it allows to detect different accessibility problems and offer a solution to them dynamically.

Sources of funding

ADER – La Rioja Economic Development Agency