Caring about accessibility

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Caring about accessibility

Post by matthijs »

Excellent discussion.
hockey wrote:My application was designed from the ground up to run completely without JavaScript -- I then added the basic JS. I do very little right now with Javascript though. WYSIWYG...and that slider control, thats about it.
Sound like a very healthy approach to me.

@arborint: you are correct: getting the basics right really doesn't take any more effort. Writing clean, semantic HTML, using proper markup, not relying on javascript for the basic functionality, etcetera, will in many cases be enough to make your site (very) accessible.
Josh1billion wrote:Blind people surf the web? :? No disrespect, but do they watch TV and play video games too?
May I ask: was this a genuine question? If it is, it is a clear example of the many misconceptions that exist about web(site) accessibility. yes, blind people surf. Probably a lot, because for example, for a blind person it's very difficult to go out there to a shopping mall and walk around and shop. But from his own home, using just a computer he can easily access many many shops online, browse around and buy stuff! Or finding some information about the tax forms he needs to fill in. It's much easier to go online to the governments' website and download and read some brochures then it is to go to the library to look it up in some physical books.

And you know what? Forget blind users for a moment. You know who's the most important visually-impaired user of your site? Google! Google (or other search engines) don't "see" your site either. They also rely on alt-tags for your images. They also have trouble with javascript, to give just a few examples. So all those things I mentioned (writing proper HTML etc) is beneficial for search engines as well.

And back to people with disabilities using websites: blind users are only a tiny fraction of that group. To quote Andy Budd's the business case for web accessibility:
* People surfing the web using mobile phones and PDA's. These people are possibly the most affluent and technically advanced group of people suffering from web accessibility issues.
* People using old browsers or old computers. Many companies and organisations have standardised on older browser versions and don't use the latest computer equipment.
* People using slow internet connections.
* The "Silver Surfer" is one of the biggest growing markets on the web and has a large amount of disposable income. This sector has accessibility issues such as reduced mobility, reduced hand-eye co-ordination and poor vision.
* Young Internet users can also have poor hand-eye co-ordination, coupled with a low reading age.
* People who don't speak or understand English fluently.
* Blind, partially sighted and the colour blind are probably the most obvious group of individuals affected by accessibility issues. This group also makes up a very large percentage of web surfers
* People with physical disabilities, such as those with impaired mobility
Another good read is Roger's Barrier-free Web design, a.k.a. Web accessibility 2.0

So, to wrap this up:
My main problem is that there are still so many misconceptions and lack of knowledge about website accessibility. If a business decides the return of investment of making a flash game on a website accessible to screenreaders is not worth it, fine. I can understand that, as long as that decision is made with a good understanding of the matters.

But in many cases people/developers just don't know enough or worse don't care. And that has to change.
User avatar
Chris Corbyn
Breakbeat Nuttzer
Posts: 13098
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Caring about accessibility

Post by Chris Corbyn »

I agree with you. I was going to post a reply yesterday but it got so lengthy and off-topic ;)

To sum up what I was going to say: Yes accessibility is important. It's respectful and it's damn easy to do (I don't even think about it consciously these days). But am I doing it as well as I could be? No probably not. I try my best but I'm not really the guy you'd want to pay to do your front-end work. I try to keep my head buried in the guts of a system most of the time. I always learn little things I could do better and I always improve because of it. I think people should at the very least try to do the basic things such as making sure choices of color are readable, font size is manageable and markup is semantic.
Post Reply