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?

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.

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.

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?