The landscape of today's world wide web differs vastly from that of ten or even five years ago, and just as web technologies advance, so too does web accessibility. Technologies such as Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) and the upcoming HTML 5.0 specification have ushered in many accessibility challenges, as well as developments to address them. Former conventional wisdom states that Javascript is a major accessibility issue, as it often introduces behaviors that make website use less predictable. For instance, Javascript which dynamically updates a page might pose issues for blind users reading sites with screen readers and synthesized speech; the screen reader cannot easily know that an area of the page has been changed, and to the blind user it seems that nothing is different. With AJAX techniques becoming more prevalent, simply avoiding Javascript becomes a less appealing option, both for web developers and for disabled users who are just as likely to appreciate more responsive and accessible interfaces. Thanks to a new technology called Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA), web developers can include hints describing how a page might be presented via speech or other access technologies. For instance, a site displaying sports scores updated live might indicate via ARIA that the portion of the page containing the scores is a "live region" whose contents should be spoken whenever they change. In this manner, a blind user could enjoy the same snappy and accessible interface as his sighted friends with little effort necessary from the website developers. ARIA goes much further than live regions, however, and is being implemented into many common Javascript toolkits, so while some accessibility testing will remain necessary, much of the basic work will have already been done simply by selecting an ARIA-compliant toolkit. The upcoming HTML 5.0 specification includes a number of exciting features, chief among which is support for audio and video without the need for third-party plugins. This support includes a number of opportunities to provide unpresidented levels of accessibility to video and audio content, and while no standard for this currently exists, work is ongoing. Closed captioning is essential for hearing-impaired users to appreciate spoken word content, and descriptive content in the form of text or spoken word can make visual elements of video available to blind viewers. The HTML 5.0 specification is still under active development but is choosing not to focus on these issues, instead relegating them to the audio and video formats being used. As web content becomes less text-centric and more focused on content delivery,, the relative accessibilities of third-party technologies become relevant to web accessibility, and accessibility advances in audio and video formats can only serve to improve that of the web at large. As the content and use of the web changes, so too do our expectations of how it should behave. As we come to expect websites to behave more and more like applications, the technologies used to grant access to those capabilities must keep pace. Fortunately, web accessibility is receiving more attention now than it ever has throughout the web's short history, and since more accessible experiences usually benefit everyone, the end result of such efforts will be appreciated far beyond those for whose benefit they were intended.
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