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W3C Finalizes Disability Guidelines

Posted by timothy on from the smoothing-the-way dept.

AltImage writes "Bringing a five-year project to a significant milestone, the World Wide Web Consortium finalized guidelines for building browsers and media players that work better for people with disabilities. Read the full story here."

6 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Guidelines will have other uses by bbonnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "One of the things that has been both intriguing and promising from early on is that accessibility solutions didn't just help solve the problems they were created to solve," said Judy Brewer, director of the WAI. "We encourage the use of Web graphics. But someone accessing the Web through a PDA can't see a graphic, table or chart that well. For accessibility, you'd want someone to be able to visually scan it if they could, query it, run through it in a linear mode. Those flexibility user choices are precisely the things that people accessing the Web through alternate devices need as well."

    She brings up a very good point. Like the products that were initially developed for space flight but found their way into general consumer use (Velcro, etc.), general web accessibility has a number of other benefits besides making the web accessible to people with disabilities.

    This brings up a question which I'd like to see discussed either here, or in a new topic. I do not have a disability that prevents me from accessing the web via traditional means. However, I'm curious to ask people who use assistive devices: what is your experience going online like? How much content can you access? How do you feel about it? I know these questions have been generally answered by the document, but I'm curious about personal stories.

    1. Re:Guidelines will have other uses by Jon-o · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Very true. Getting more web designers to follow these guidelines is good for EVERYONE, not just those with disabilities. If disabled people are able to view the page the way they *need* to, then everyone else is also able to view it the way they *want* to. The more the web is held up to the ideals of flexibility and customizability the better.

      I personally almost always send a note to the owners of web pages that don't follow these guidelines - I don't think it often has much impact, but if more people did it, maybe it would. In any case, people making these bad web pages deserver to be bothered by people complaining about them! Whether it's because you need to be able to access it through a screen-reader, or you can't handle a mouse, or you just hate annoying javascript, guidelines like this can help you set up your browser to display the information and manipulate it in the way you choose, which is a good thing.

  2. Re:pfft.. by Noodlenose · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Microsoft is part of the W3C, and help make many of these standards.

    ..when has their membership of the W3C ever stopped them to develop their own standards and do what they like?

  3. Re:pfft.. by jilles · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well it is easy to point the finger at MS when even this open source safe haven called slashdot does not meet any w3c standard. If standards are so important, why can't this site adhere to them?

    --

    Jilles
  4. Re:pfft.. by Fweeky · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This explains why hugely respected accessibility expert Mark Pilgrim slated the MS site redesign

    Yes. Microsoft's web team leaves quite a lot to be desired. But then, so do most other so called "professional" web developers who wouldn't know a standard if it jumped up and down screaming "I'm a standard! I'm a standard!".
    Tantek Çelik [tantek.com] (who's site kicks major ass BTW)

    Tantek's website is awful. It does at least degrade well when I turn off CSS, but it's not very nice to use. He even has a splash page ffs :)
    but MS doesn't seem to want to listen most of the time...

    But Tantek is Microsoft. So is Tim Lacy, and Chris Wilson, and Ed Tecot, and Laurie Anna Kaplan, and David Meltzer, and Stephen Waters, and Scott Isaacs, and.. well, you get the point. Microsoft are not a single entity out to be incompetent and ignorant, it's a whole bunch of people, mostly incompetent and ignorant. Just like any other random collection of 50,000 people ;)
  5. Re:Focusing on the wrong thing. by JohanV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like screen readers are the solution to all problems. How are better screenreaders going to help deaf people? How are screen readers going to help people with a physical dysability that prevents them from using a mouse? How are screen readers going to help those with ADHD? How usefull is a screenreader if the navigation is on the bottom of 200 lines of text?

    Accessibility is not about reading webpages aloud to the blind.