Constructing Accessible Web Sites

actiondan writes: "Constructing Accessible Web Sites is about how to build websites that can be used by people who rely on assistive technologies to browse the web. When I picked up this book, accessibility was an area that interested me but I am now convinced that it should be in the thoughts of every web developer. Some of the laws that are emerging to regulate accessibility look positively scary and there are lots of other good reasons to take accessibility seriously." Read on for the rest of his review. Constructing Accessible Web Sites author Jim Thatcher, Paul Bohman, Michael Burks, Shawn Lawton Henry, Bob Regan, Sarah Swierenga, Mark D. Urban, Cynthia D. Waddell pages 415 publisher Glasshaus rating 8 reviewer actiondan ISBN 1904151000 summary The whys and hows of making web sites accessible to all.

What does the book cover?

Chapter 1 is an introduction to web accessibility. I would guess that most people who pick up this book will already know at least a little bit about accessibility, but this chapter provides a good overview and presents some compelling arguments for providing accessible websites. Interestingly, none of these is based on a moral argument -- they are all sound reasons why it is in the interests of an organization to think about accessibility. For example, one of these sections mentions that people with disabilities in the U.S. are estimated to control a discretionary income of over $175 billion. Making a site accessible to these people gives it access to an additional market that non-accessible sites cannot tap.

This first chapter sets the tone for the whole book. It doesn't preach about accessibility for the sake of people with disabilities but rather seeks to convince the reader that accessibility is in their interests.

Chapter 2 concentrates on one of the major reasons for making web sites accessible - laws that compel us to do so. It presents an overview of the state of the law in different parts of the world and a couple of examples of cases involving web usability. I have to admit I skimmed this chapter, as I wanted to get on to the technical stuff.

In Chapter 3, the book gets on to the mechanics of accessibility -- assistive technologies. It provides a short survey of the screen readers and other technologies that are available. I would have liked to have seen more information here on how widespread these systems are, even if just approximate.

Chapter 4 is where the book starts talking about the actual work involved in creating accessible content. It runs down the basics of accessibility (most of it is good practice such as using ALT text and so on). The blink tag even gets a mention and a "good for them!" is given to Opera for not supporting it :) This chapter will not be news to anyone who has done any accessibility work (or even just best-practices web development). The information on how tables are handled by screen readers is good though.

Chapter 5 looks in more detail at navigation. The advice here is good even outside of an accessibility context and there are some good points about 'gotchas' that could make sites difficult to navigate with assistive technologies.

In Chapter 6, input gets the same treatment that navigation got in the last chapter. I wasn't sure about the stuff on PDF forms (does anyone actually use these for web input?) but the advice on HTML forms was great.

Chapter 7 is about testing for section 508 (of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act) compliance. Initially, this was another chapter that I skimmed, as I am not based in the U.S., but then I realised that the testing advice in this chapter is not just useful for section 508 compliance -- it is useful for general accessibility testing.

Chapter 8 studies the accessibility of web development tools themselves. This doesn't apply to me but it was interesting to see how the tools (Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive, Homesite and BBEdit) compare in terms of usability. This would have been a lot easier if there had been a summary table of the ratings given to the applications.

Chapter 9 seemed a little out of place. It is on "Separating Style from Presentation" and basically looks at CSS. I'm sure most people picking up this book will, like me, not need to be taught CSS basics. I skipped the chapter and very nearly missed an interesting little section on aural stylesheets.

I was surprised that chapter 10 was devoted to Flash, as I expected that Flash coverage in an accessibility book would be limited to a few paragraphs lambasting Macromedia for creating such an inaccessible technology. Well, it turns out that the new version of Flash supports accessibility much better than previous ones. This chapter was a real eye-opener for me. Clearly there is more work to be done but well done to Macromedia for putting accessibility support in!

Chapter 11 didn't really interest me much -- it seems to be more aimed at people who need to implement an accessibility strategy, one to hand over to managers once the technical content of the book is digested.

Chapter 12 is a bit of a heads-up on newer technologies and how they affect accessibility. There is some brief but decent discussion of how technologies such as SVG support accessibility.

The last actual chapter, Chapter 13, is a more in-depth look at U.S. web accessibility law. This was another one that I skimmed but one section did catch my eye. There is a discussion that raises the scary idea that web developers may be held liable for inaccessible web sites, even if their client told them to ignore the issue. If this is true, then it is an important point for every web developer to consider -- could you be held liable?

There are three appendices in the book; a quick reference guide summarises the most important advice given in the book, a glossary of terms and an appendix that details the U.S. Section 508 legislation.

Conclusion

Apart from the basic CSS coverage and the more U.S.-specific sections, I found the vast majority of the information in the book to be very interesting to me. The style was good too -- I was surprised that a book with 8 authors manages to maintain such a consistent and readable tone throughout.

Overall, I found the book a much more interesting read than I was expecting it to be. It gives specific advice about the way web sites should be constructed with accessibility in mind and offers strong arguments for following the advice.

It seems that accessibility is going to be a fact of life in web development. That being the case, every web developer needs to learn at least something about it, if only to use as ammunition in interviews. I would definitely recommend Constructing Accessible Websites as a good source of information on the area.

You can purchase Constructing Accessible Web Sites from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

crazy laws

[tmark]

Some of the laws that are emerging to regulate accessibility look positively scary

These laws are not only scary, they are crazy. If serving people with disabilities is so important, then I'll do it, because it makes financial sense for me to do so. But if these people are largely irrelevant to my target market (say, I run a website for bird-watchers or target-shooting enthusiasts - should I be obligated to put up a version readable by vision-impaired people ?), I should have the right to ignore this segment of the market - at my own peril, of course.

If they're going to legislate me into putting in 'assistive technology' into my websites, why don't they force magazines to put out Braille versions, or make them supply audio-cassettes or CDs with the contents transcribed ? Why don't they widen airplane and car and bus seats so morbidly obese people can sit in them ?

Re:crazy laws

[vrmlguy]

I can't speak for every state (or country!), but in Missouri, the DMV handles not just licenses, but also ID cards for people who don't want or can't get a license. So, if you're blind, over 21, and want to buy a beer, you need to deal with the DMV.

As for learning to fly, partial deafness is a disability that's covered by the ADA. If a learning-to-fly website had a lot of sound effects, it could make the site unusable to potential pilots.

Re:crazy laws

[vrmlguy]

There are many bird-watchers who are blind. How do they do it? They listen to the birds, identifying them by their songs. If you are a small publisher, then the laws will exempt you, but all it takes is one dissatisfied customer to poison your good-will.

Many books and magazines are available on tape. I know, my wife is a reader for college textbooks. I also recall several years ago, someone sued to get Playboy on tape. He was blind and really did "just read it for the articles".

Re:crazy laws

[pere]

Making accessible websites is about a lot more than serving people with disabilities.

Web-accessibility takes a lot of inspiration from whats called "universal design". (As opposed to "special sollutions" that tries to solve the problems for a specific group). The point of "universial design" is that you with very small means can make the world accessible to a lot more people, in different ages, with different abilities. Examples of "universal design" is wider doors, lower and bigger light switches, electrical doors, ramps, lower busses etc etc). Braille and wheelchair elevators are examples of "special sollutions" since they mainly helps those with that special disability.

The really interesting part about "universal design" is that good designs often seems help a lot more people than originally intended. I saw a report one time (sorry, dont have exact reference) about who used wheelchair ramps. Actually just a few percent were wheelchair users. More than 95 percent were mothers with baby carriages, travellers with big suitcases, people making deliveries, roller scaters etc etc The point is: By making it accessible, you also help a lot of people that you usually does not consider diabled. THAT IS ALSO THE POINT WITH WEB-ACESSIBILITY.

So why should you make your bird-watcher site accessible? (Even if you have the right not to do it). My answer is that you should do it without asking, because it takes you just a few minutes and because "you'll never know".

I guess thats not the answer you are looking for, so Im going to give you some other reasons (Note that this is not a complete list. The point with accessibel design is that you plan for situations you cant predict):
* Mobile users. A real bird watcher site should be availiable from the field. You should anticipate that some of you power users accessing the site using a Nokia 9210 Communicator, or maybe even a 3510i or maybe even a newer model. If you follow the w3c accessibily guidelines your site will be readeable. If you dont think about accessibilty, and choose to design for the most common browser, you fail to serve your customers when they really need you.
* Search engines, robots etc. A very important part of web-accessibility is making all information availiable textual (not using only images for important information). That also ensures that the search enignes can index everything on your site.
* Slow connections. If you have a picture heavy site, some of your users, might choose to turn off images. For instance just turning it on when they have found the image of the bird they are looking for. By making the site accessibel, you have made sure that this is possible.
* Temporarily disabled users. One of your bird watchers might have fallen down from a tree. Spending lots and lots of time in his hospital bed surfing the web using a voice controlled system. Have you made your system generally accessibel, he will be able to do that.

I could come up with lots of examples. The point is: You'll never know.

Of course you should have the right to ignore this segment of the marked. Chances are however that using just a few minutes making the site accessibel will be worth it.

Morals Schmorals, It's the Market You Paraplegic!

[meh237]

Interestingly, none of these is based on a moral argument -- they are all sound reasons why it is in the interests of an organization to think about accessibility. For example, one of these sections mentions that people with disabilities in the U.S. are estimated to control a discretionary income of over $175 billion. Making a site accessible to these people gives it access to an additional market that non-accessible sites cannot tap.

This first chapter sets the tone for the whole book. It doesn't preach about accessibility for the sake of people with disabilities but rather seeks to convince the reader that accessibility is in their interests.

Actually I think it more relates to ETHICS -- as it is dealing with one's profession -- but all the same. All the analogies other people have posted about how unfair these laws are and "why don't they make magazine publishers publish their magazines in Braile or spoken-word" are completely missing the point. Using a digital medium such as the Internet, it is easy to make your website easily accessible for persons with disabilities. Is it too hard to use the use of both your hands to enter in a few extra tags so that the Internet is "accessible to all!" You Slashdotters spuge yourselves when you think of how cheap it would be to put together free or close to free Linux boxes and ship them down to South America, yet your "creative expression"? is being denied by having to put in a few extra tags explaining the purpose of a picture. Give me a break you capitalistic freaks.

Some confusion on section 508, etc.

[NulDevice]

I've seen a lot of peole complaining about the guv'ment legislating their freedom of website-expression with section 508.

Well, there seems to be a bit of misunderstanding, and it would've been better had the reviewer mentioned this.

Section508 applies primarily to governmental websites. So if you're a .gov or a .state.us then it's likely you need to comply to section508.
If you're a federal or state contractor you may have to comply.

If you're not one of those things, do whatever you want.

However, it may still be in your best interests to at least consider accessibility. You may not necessarily comply with all the W3C priority 1,2, and 3 standards but a few of them isn't going to hurt, and are generally common sense. There's a huge market out there for the disabled - if you ran a brick-n-mortar shop you wouldn't turn away $175billion worth of your customers, so why do it on the web?

It's not like *all* of them are blind, deaf quadraplegics. I know people who use expanded fonts just because their eyesight isn't *great* - they're still legal to drive with glasses, but reading fine print on a screen necessitates assistance. Variable font-sizing and alt tags would suddenly open your website up to a lot of people just like that.

Basically, to help make a site more accessible it doesn't require much - start with your alt tags, maybe longdesc if you're feeling generous, try not to deisgn with 7 layers of nested tables, and use relative font sizes. Most sites won't even need to be fully overhauled to accomplish this, just tweaked, and it can open up the availability to hundreds of thousands more people.

It's not about being politically correct, it's not about avoiding lawsuits, it's about doing what's best for your website and delivering your content to the widest audience.