Ask an Expert About Web Site Accessibility

Joe Clark is an expert on handicapped accesibility for movies, TV, the WWW, and other media. The launch party for his new book, Building Accessible Websites , is Dec. 3, which is also the International Day of Disabled Persons, so this a perfect time to ask questions about how to make a Web site -- or a TV show or movie -- accessible. As usual, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Joe, and run his answers verbatim when we get them back.

Comments

Accessibility

[acehole]

Do you think that where companies are being sued or forced into updating their webpages at great expense to include accessibility for the blind in their webpages when the blind could easily find another similar service offline is reasonable?

nice example right here

for testing purposes

[DarkSkiesAhead]

Could you list the names and sources a few of the most common tool with which handicapped users would be browsing?

Also, is there anything special that webmasters should keep in mind while testing out the accessibility of their sites?

What "enhancements" most threaten accessability?

[RobertB-DC]

The AC poster made a statement that shows a potential problem:

The Opera Browser is very good for acessabillity [...] Not forgetting the useful mouse gestures.

I would suggest that the "mouse gestures" are the antithesis of "accessible". They require a level of fine motor control that might not be possible for someone with decreased motor skills. Imagine someone using a pointing device keyed to eye movement -- if Opera's gestures were turned on, a quick look to the side could generate an unwanted "Back" action.

Mouse Gestures, then, are an "enhancement" that may actually decrease usability for the disabled. What other "enhancements" that are in the works or becoming part of the standard actually derail disabled access to web browsing and other applications?

Better Software?

[AltImage]

There is obiviously a lot of emphasis in coaxing web developers into making their sites 508 compliant. To me, this seems like the difficult and inherently flawed approach. There is never going to be 100% compliance when you have billions of pages on the Internet. Wouldn't it be easier and more efficient to invest all the time and resources involved into simply writing better screen reading software. Sure, it's probably a difficult task, but so was putting an man on the moon and sequencing the human genome. This is not un-solvable and it clearly seems like case where one piece of perfect software could fix the issue for everyone, developers and disabled alike. Also this appears to be the perfect place for open source software. So now onto the actual question. What are 1 or 2 of the major technical issues preventing such a piece of software from existing. Are there any Section 508 open source screen reader projects in development? And, if funding is the question, do you believe that this is something that the goverment should underwrite to help with Internet compliance of the laws that they passed?

But will it increase sales?

[Animats]

Can you demonstrate a significant sales increase for a major site achieved by making it more "accessable"?

How many is sufficient?

[paranoic]

That is, do we know how many blind Web users there are in the world?

And how many would it take to make you do your web apps so that a special needs person could use them? Is 10 sufficient, 100?, 1000?, 10000? ....n? And just what will you tell the n - 1 user?

This is not featureset prioritization, it's education on your part.

Re:How many is sufficient?

[bratgrrl]

keep in mind that many families of disabled people, like mine, will not do business with companies that refuse to cater to disabled people. So you lose more than just the disabled person's trade.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to spend a huge amount of money to capture a tiny market. But refusing to even look at ways to make your business more accessible, as so many do, is foolish, and hardhearted. First it takes the will, then the means follow. And, don't forget that disabled persons are a growing demographic.

Have you even done any research on who your customers are, and who you are losing through poor site design? I bet you haven't. Most small businesses don't. That is why they make incorrect assumptions, like "Oh, it's only one or two customers I'm losing, who needs them." When actually they're chasing away a lot more than they think.

How does one make a site appeal to the disabled?

[Maul]

This question is mostly directed at making web sites accessible to the blind.

Most people who design pages think visually when creating their sites. A good web designer will place text and images in a way that looks visually appealing and brings attention to important information on the page. Even those who make pages with little or no images are still likely to think visually.

For someone who is visually impaired, however, much of this appeal will be gone, even if the important content of the page is still accessible.

Any ideas on how to make a page that is more appealing aesthetically to the visually impaired?

Physical vs. Cognitive & Political Clout

[Aquitaine]

Dear Mr. Clark,

I am a web developer for the Program on Employment and Disability at the School of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University. Web accessibility is a serious issue for us, and we try to keep abreast of innovative approaches to design so we can find that elusive place where universal accessibility meets intelligent and aesthetically pleasing layout. We recently spoke with Cynthia Waddell (one of 8 authors of Constructing Accessible Web Sites, also out fairly recently) on this subject, but I found her unwilling to commit to anything other than 'suggestions' rather than real technical solutions.

There are two sticky issues that I have encountered. The first is the notion of universal access. Mrs. Waddell indicated that, working with the W3C, she was coming up with a list of web sites that met Priorities I-III of the W3C WAI and were still aesthetically impressive (she did not have a list ready). As you are no doubt aware, many sites that tout universal access are themselves victims of poor design -- the problem of 'yes it's W3C/WAI compliant across the board, but it's ugly as sin.' Do you believe that a site can have a single interface that is truly 'universally' accessible, or do you believe that sites should have alternate interfaces? (the web equivalent of 'do we have a ramp and stairs or just a ramp?')

Along those lines, it is apparent to me that the accessibility guidelines are designed to be useful in a manner proportional to the lobbying power of disability rights groups. That is to say, blind people and deaf people, although they comprise extraordinarily small percentages of people with disabilities, have an enormous amount of political clout when compared to people with cognitive disorders -- ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Schizo-affective disorder, Schizophrenia, et cetera. Because these disability groups lack the considerable power of a strong advocacy group, do you feel that they have been left by the wayside when it comes to Section 508 or WAI? (and do you personally believe that total-WAI compliance is necessary, or just Section 508?)

My apologies for several questions at once, but we take this issue very seriously here and your answers will go a long way to helping us do what we do to better suit the community that ILR serves.

Thanks so much,
Samuel W. Knowlton

The REAL question

[GodHead]

Why doesn't anyone ever listen to you guys?

Seriously, I've seen TONS of studies, articles, and books on this. But I don't see many sites - even large ones - following through.

Re:Is it worth it?

[bratgrrl]

yes it is worth it. You not seeing wheelchair users on buses means nothing. The world is very hostile to disabled people. Perhaps the buses are accessible, but there is no good way to get to the bus stop. Perhaps it is not publicized. Maybe the buses are not as accessible as you think they are. Most 'accessible' designs are very poor. Obviously not tested by real disabled people.

Anyone can do a quick Google search for statistics on the numbers of disabled people. In the US, about one-third of citizens have a physical impairment of some kind.

I challenge you to spend one day in a wheelchair. Then come back and tell me how accessibility for disabled people is not important.

Web integration to the Real World

[CodeShark]

To me the WWW seems like a near perfect solution for people whose "disability demographic" can be in a wide number of disabled groups, but only if service infrastructure forms around the 'Net to serve these individuals.

For example, if regardless of disability (deaf, blind, motion disabilities come to mind) an individual could access a common site to call for a local taxicab service, etc. However, I doubt that there's a cab company in existence that would spend the money to create and maintain a web site designed from the ground up with accessibility in mind.

So my question is this: how can we as programmers etc. make accessibility to a web site (or set of web sites) translate into increased accessibility to service resources, etc. in the real world?

blind users and skimming

[Anonymous Coward]

[This question is directed to Joe.]

Do blind users have the ability to quickly skim through text? Is verbose writing that is full of irrelevant information as annoying to blind users as it is to sighted users, or more so?

Pragmatic considerations for stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems as if stylesheets are being pushed as the ultimate technology for accessibility. Yet many sites that use stylesheets have unreadable text (for sighted users) when using the Internet Explorer option to ignore font sizes specified on a web page. The letters on different lines overlap.

I wonder if you have some suggestions for stylesheet features or combinations of features to avoid, to balance accessibility concerns for blind, low-vision, and sighted users.

Blueskying

[Fjord]

If you could carte blanche make changes to the HTML standard (new tags, entities, or attributes to existing tags) for the purpose of making it easier to create accessable sites, what would they be?