ISO Standards for Usability, Accessibility, & Software Documentation

SIG member, Richard N. P. Hodgkinson, Fellow of the U.K. ISTC (Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators), is the editor for two ISO standards related to usability, accessibility, and systems software documentation:

• ISO/TS 16071:2003: "Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Guidance on accessibility for human-computer interfaces"
• ISO/IEC FDIS 18019:2003(E): "Software and systems engineering — Guidelines for the design and preparation of user documentation for application software"

ISO/TS 16071:2003

• "Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Guidance on accessibility for human-computer interfaces"

  Areas of interest to SIG members are addressed in Clause 7.11. This standard, published in May 2003, is the result of several years of development. It was based upon (and with their permission) a U.S. Human Factors Society guideline which is still in development. Technical committee / subcommittee ISO/TC 159/SC 4/WG 5 (software ergonomics and human-computer interaction) developed ISO TS 16071. Because of more recent developments (for example, U.S. Section 508 legislation) a successor standard has already been approved. This will be titled "Guidance on software accessibility" and it will be developed by the same ISO committee. Richard N. P. Hodgkinson is the editor for the new standard.

• ISO Press Release about ISO/TS 16071, Ref. 858, 3 June 2003: "ISO guidelines to designing software for users with disabilities". Of particular interest is the link to the report by System Concepts on accessibility issues related to the BBCi Web site.
• Requirements Survey for the Revision of ISO 16071. (.doc) The purpose of this questionnaire is to enable WG 5 to improve the structure and content to best meet the needs of the users of the new 16071 standard. Please complete this survey and return it to Richard at moc.tenretnitbnull@nosnikgdoh_drahcir

ISO/IEC FDIS 18019:2003(E)

• "Software and systems engineering — Guidelines for the design and preparation of user documentation for application software" (1.7 MB .pdf).

  These guidelines are being completed in a separate committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7/WG 2 – Systems software documentation). The guidelines address documentation accessibility requirements primarily in Clause 4.2.6. Richard N. P. Hodgkinson is the editor of this standard.