accessability for browser application

[Spartanicus]

Lets not forget sites whose content relies on client-side scripting to
display.
IMO, that is a much more grave case of neglecting accessibility than
alternative text...

Certainly, but a different issue.

You can add "Go away and get IE" sites, Flash dependency, Image
dependency etc., all much more of an accessibility impediment than
missing alt content.

I attempted to find legislation/rules or guidelines when I encountered a
"Go away and get IE" Dutch public school site recently. There is a Dutch
workgroup and a few European initiatives, but both are currently
completely powerless when it comes to laying down minimum requirements.
Sad.

Those countries that have introduced some initiatives/guidelines with
regard to accessibility for government web sites like the Irish
government imo don't have the expertise to implement the policy. They
look for WAI and Bobby compliance, with no understanding of the actual
issues. http://openinterface.ie/ do quite a bit of work for the Irish
government. They've cleaned up their own site a bit recently, but it's
still quite poor. Yet they talk the talk about both accessibility and
usability, they claim to do their own usability tests etc, and yes those
WAI and Bobby AA buttons are proudly displayed.

I submitted a review of their previous web site to these guys, I even
included an example of how it should be done by recoding one of their
pages properly, wasted effort.

 

[Chris Morris]

I wonder how easy it would be to develop a web site that achieved a
tick-in-the-box for all the WAI guidelines, while still being essentially
inaccessible?

I think if the ticks in the boxes are being placed by an intelligent
human with a bit of experience at assessing this sort of thing, very
difficult. It could still be unusable, but about as unusable for
everybody.

However, I think it could be done if the boxes are being
ticked by an automated checker. <img alt="Elephant" src="ostrich.gif">
and all that.

 

[Chris Morris]

Well, Kevin Leitch claims this is already the case for most accessible
sites: They are not accessible to people with a "Learning and
understanding" disability. See
<http://www.juicystudio.com/wcag-myth.asp>. The article is much too
aggressive and accusatory for my taste, but he does have a point.

His basic point - that there's been very little done for that group -
is accurate, but he does make some (IMO) errors in the article.

Additionally it is a different sort of accessibility - most
accessibility problems are with the HTML-user agent-user interaction
somehow preventing the user getting at the content, whereas this is a
problem of what does the user do with the content once they have
it.

I don't think most of the work that needs doing on this is a web
developer's problem, but rather a content writer's problem. Which is
possibly why there's very little web-specific guidance on the
matter. Though some of it is covered in usability guidelines; Neilsen,
for example, has had a lot to say about writing easily-readable text
which is at least partially applicable here.

From the article:
| The much-vaunted WAI doesn't mention any disability by name but has
| a weak nod to political correctness with guideline 14, "ensure that
| documents are clear and simple so they may be more easily
| understood".

I would argue that at the very least, in addition to the parts of 14,
several other guidelines also help. In fact, the PDF from Mencap that
the author refers to (http://www.mencap.org.uk/download/webaccess.pdf)
gives guidelines that are often duplicated by other bits of WCAG.

| Guideline 1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual
| content.
|
| This guideline sounds very laudable, but it is weighted to benefit
| those with a sensory disability. Lets say that the 'visual content'
| was a concept (like an icon such as an envelope representing an email
| link) included to make it clear to those whose disability was
| perceptual based. The addition of 'equivalents' could very easily lead
| to confusion and the destruction of the concept behind the icon.

I think this is a complete misunderstanding of *alternatives* - no
browser should be displaying more than one at once under normal
operation (in general) - there should (provided the alternative is
selected well) be no point. Reading on, this has already been pointed
out in the comments.

 

[Neal]

Well, Kevin Leitch claims this is already the case for most accessible
sites: They are not accessible to people with a "Learning and
understanding" disability. See
<http://www.juicystudio.com/wcag-myth.asp>. The article is much too
aggressive and accusatory for my taste, but he does have a point.


Matthias

I'd argue that no companies are expected to make their customer materials
accessible for the learning disabled. This stricture is misapplied to web
design. Without knowing in advance the exact nature of the learning
disability, it's impossible to present content in such a way that
accomodates.

Still, a semantic, hierarchical design is a step in the right direction
here, as, aside from the acutely disabled, learning disabled adults have
learned to grasp concepts progressively - that is, headings, summaries,
then full content. Just as we'd give a thumbnail to the user, who could
then click it to get a full-size pic if desired, your content should
ideally be simple, followed by further exposition. (This is a gross
oversimplification, mind you, there are other means of achieving this.)

 

[Kris]

I wonder how easy it would be to develop a web site that achieved a
tick-in-the-box for all the WAI guidelines, while still being essentially
inaccessible?

I think if the ticks in the boxes are being placed by an intelligent
human with a bit of experience at assessing this sort of thing, very
difficult. It could still be unusable, but about as unusable for
everybody.

However, I think it could be done if the boxes are being
ticked by an automated checker. <img alt="Elephant" src="ostrich.gif">
and all that.[/QUOTE]

Accessibility and usability are two different beasts. It is rather
simple for someone with experience in making sites accessible to comply
with WCAG priority-3, but still have a site that is a disaster to use.
Sites *about* accessibility are usually good at doing that.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Accessibility and usability are two different beasts.

True; but they share quite a lot.

It is rather
simple for someone with experience in making sites accessible to
comply with WCAG priority-3, but still have a site that is a disaster
to use.

Actually, there are no nontrivial pags that comply with WCAG at priority
level 3, or even at level 1 for that matter. Claims about such compliance
are revealing, since they indicate lack of understanding of several
points in WCAG on willingless to ignore them, or to "interpret" them in a
manner that contradicts rather clear statements.

Who can really say that a site uses "the clearest and simplest language
appropriate for a site's content"? Any text can be improved in clarity
and simplicity. We need to stop at some point when improving texts, but
this does not mean that we would have achieved the clearest and simplest
language possible.

Sites *about* accessibility are usually good at doing that.

And in being inaccessible. I have even seen documents that solemnly
declare how important accessibility is - and that are available on the
net in PDF format only.

 

[Chris Morris]

Actually, there are no nontrivial pags that comply with WCAG at priority
level 3, or even at level 1 for that matter. Claims about such compliance
are revealing, since they indicate lack of understanding of several
points in WCAG on willingless to ignore them, or to "interpret" them in a
manner that contradicts rather clear statements.

Who can really say that a site uses "the clearest and simplest language
appropriate for a site's content"? Any text can be improved in clarity
and simplicity.

True. But the WAI provide 'compliance' logos, and therefore imply that
compliance is possible, which seems to suggest that they don't mean it
to be interpreted in that way. Even if that is what it says.

I'm not sure this is a clear statement at all. Though it is a simple
one.

We need to stop at some point when improving texts, but this does
not mean that we would have achieved the clearest and simplest
language possible.

Especially given that what that language is will almost certainly be
person-dependent for any significant amount of text, and that clear
and simple are often mutually exclusive (think well-drafted legal
documents, which are intended to be totally clear, at the expense of
anything approaching simple, as opposed to the WCAG, which is fairly
simple, occasionally at the expense of being clear).

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

True. But the WAI provide 'compliance' logos,

To be abhorred; even if they were honest, they would be worse than
useless; see http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html#icon

and therefore imply
that compliance is possible, which seems to suggest that they don't
mean it to be interpreted in that way.

Time to re-read Matthew 23:3- then. There's nothing wrong with most of
the WCAG 1.0 recommendations per se; making them requirements that you
set upon others and fail to obey yourself is wrong. And it's also wrong
to consider them in isolation and make Accessibility Recommendations more
important than accessibility - the universal mistake.

Especially given that what that language is will almost certainly be
person-dependent for any significant amount of text, and that clear
and simple are often mutually exclusive

Indeed. We are supposed to find a reasonable compromise. This is one
reason why no mechanical criteria can ever be adequate.

(think well-drafted legal
documents, which are intended to be totally clear, at the expense of
anything approaching simple, as opposed to the WCAG, which is fairly
simple, occasionally at the expense of being clear).

I would not quite agree on the "simple" part, but as you say, this
depends on the person. Regarding legal documents, they are not actually
clear - lawyers have little understanding of the inherent obscurity of
human language, and it is very common to find legal texts, even laws,
that have more than one completely reasonable, mutually incompatible
interpretation. But for the most of it, legal documents are quite
unsuitable for being put onto the Web, because they are _way_ too
difficult to understand even to the educated minority. If explicitly
presented to lawyers and similar people only, they might be OK, but there
are far too many "World Wide Web pages" containing absurd legalese, yet
nominally intended for public consumption.

 

[Eric Bohlman]

We actually have offered (or suggested that we would if she wanted) to
purchase a wide plasma wall mounted screen for the lady with the
disability, but she has said bluntly "Nope. Don't want such things on
my desk/office". This may or may not be relevant now, but this
statement does have potential to be quoted in future debates if
necessary.

In US law (which many other countries used as a model for their own
disability laws), an employer can fulfill their obligation to accommodate
an employee with a disability by providing any "reasonable accommodation,"
which does not have to be the one preferred by the employee. Thus if it
could be demonstrated that she would be able to do her job effectively
using the large monitor, offering to provide it would satisfy their
obligations and if she refused it, the law would regard her as simply
refusing to perform her job.

But *honestly*, fixing the menu problem is simply a matter of following
advice that is routinely given to newbies on all the HTML-related groups.
In the time this thread has gone on, you could have already corrected it.

 

[rf]

In US law (which many other countries used as a model for their own
disability laws),

Yeah, right. Not this country!

Cheers
Richard.

 

[Neal]

Yeah, right.

Then you agree?

Not this country!

Thus the word "many"...

 

[Mark Parnell]

"Judge: Disabilities Act Doesn't Cover Web
by Declan McCullagh; CNET News.com; October 25, 2002
A federal judge ruled Friday that Southwest Airlines does not have to
revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind. In the
first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces,
such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet."

Interestingly:
"A decision in the US District Court yesterday found that US disability
discrimination law does not cover the internet. However, having an
inaccessible website is definitely in breach of Australian disability
discrimination legislation."
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/media_releases/2002/72_02.html