Inaccessible websites widen the digital divide
Most websites are ostracising disabled people by failing to adhere to the most basic accessibility standards, according to a United Nations (UN) commissioned survey…
It makes you wonder if there shouldn’t be some sort of universally recognised accreditation for web designers and developers - to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
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December 7th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Why the focus on web?
Where’s these guidelines for TV commercials, print brochures, flyers, newspaper ads, etc.
Web has been singled out and honestly it is all f**king bullsh*t.
December 7th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
TV etc aside and the Chinese government might disagree, but I’d say the web’s greatest potential isn’t so much to share funnies on YouTube as it is to make information freely available to all people, at all times.
Responding to findings that only reiterate what we already know with “why are they picking on us?” doesn’t mean that the general standard of content delivery on the web isn’t inexcusably poor, or that the industry doesn’t suffer from a shocking lack of professionalism that devalues the common perception of what we do.
December 7th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
general standard of content delivery on the web isn’t inexcusably poor, or that the industry doesn’t suffer from a shocking lack of professionalism that devalues the common perception of what we do.
But are guidelines and standards the answer?
Take some of the most heavily regulated industries, utility and telecoms. In both instances level of service is exceptionally poor. It is quite clear that regulation, standards and enforcement of strict reigemes just doesn’t work.
So why pick on the web? Surely if internet sites must adhere to accessibility guidelines, then so MUST EVERY OTHER FORM OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION TRANSFER.
So lets apply them to Word, Notepad, Email clients, etc… Why is it *JUST* the content we use an internet browser for that must comply with these things?
Did you realise that UK law makes it a criminal offense to create a web site that isn’t deemed ‘accesible’ to disabled people? That’s right, throw a basic ‘about me’ site on geocities and you could well go to prison. Sure, the likelyhood of that law being used against you is slim, but it is an insane position for a Web Developer to be in.
Seems to me there’s just a lot of self-important assholes handing out decrees on what the web *should* be like there were stone commandments instead of allowing the natural evolution of the internet.
I seem to recall it was these same fucking idiots that crowed about how useless Flash was. Thank god nobody listened.
December 7th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Maybe standards and guidelines are not *the* answer, but in the absence of anything more useful they will have to do for the time being.
So why pick on the web? *I’m* discussing the web because that’s what I do for a living. I’m not sat here writing the next version of Word, I’m building websites.
So your point is what, that such concerns should be ignored? That it isn’t worth taking reasonable steps to make your product accessible to others?
… that just because a person might make a living knocking out any old shit in their WYSIWIG editor of choice, that they are a professional in any sense of the word, and are naturally evolving the web?
Thank heaven for those useless fuckers. At least I’ll never be short of work while they’re around.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
That it isn’t worth taking reasonable steps to make your product accessible to others?
My point is, that if these steps were reasonable, they’d be enforced in all other manner of information delivery.
Websites need to be text reader compatible? Fine, where’s the braille version of The Sun?
Websites need to be accessible without a mouse? Fine, why aren’t all TVs forced to come with a voice activated channel changer?
These standards aren’t being written, enforced or called for by those they’re supposed to help :
After working on WCAG 2 for five years, WAI gave the entire industry and all interested parties, including people with disabilities, a whopping 34 days to comment on WCAG 2
(http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohellwithwcag2).
Oh and said white paper was only available as a text document. So if you had a disability these web guidelines are supposed to help, you wouldn’t actually be able to review them and submit your comments without help.
You talk of professionalism and seperating the wheat from the chaff, but that just makes web developers seem even more self-absorbed and intent on disappearing up their own ass, that they need ’standards’ so they can go ’see, see, I *AM* a good developer, I adhere to standards’.
I’m a developer. Have been for years. The web has ensured any tool with a copy of notepad calls themselves a web developer these days. Here’s a hint, if you’re using PHP you aren’t a developer.
I’m not crowing for standards for developers because I’m concerned about the flood of clueless fuckwits calling themselves developers, I just get on with what I do and let my reputation and portfolio speak for itself.
And that’s why the web is singled out for these standards over every other industry. Not because there’s a need, or because there’s a growing number of irate people with disabilities frustrated at not being able to order stuff from Amazon.com, but because the ‘Web’ attracts a certain type of insecure retard that needs some form of ‘gold star’ to make them feel special.
If a ‘Standards compliant’ badge is what does it for them, more power to them. Serious professionals won’t give it a second thought though.
(and I doubt businesses are going to be quick to double their project time just to ensure compliance with a small percentage of lost audience)
December 7th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
So attempting to follow standards and make your site as accessible as you can justify within budget isn’t worth doing because a) Other media don’t concern themselves with such things b) The W3C and the WCAG are less than perfect c) the only developers that do attempt to do so are doing it out of insecurity and to get a ‘gold star’.
Ridiculous.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
So what IS the reason then?
the nonexistant pressure from standards commitees?
the overwhelming voice of protest from the disabled community?
or how about the pressing business case for fluffing projects by 10-50% of man hours simply to make content accessible by a tiny fraction of your audience, one who most like won’t care or even be able to use your product?
Answers on a postcard to …
December 7th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
fluffing projects by 10-50% of man hours simply to make content accessible
So putting a little thought into colour choice and contrast, setting proportionate text sizes instead of fixed ones, putting on an alt and title tag here and there, a table summary, maybe a handful of accesskeys on your navigation… stuff like that.
That would add 10-50% of man hours to one of your projects? Christ, you need to hire some new front end guys - did they get hired off some sort of ‘Equal Opportunities for the Inadequate’ programme?
I have two guys who increase the size of text for comfort, just in my office. My dad has poor colour perception (as apparently so do 1 in 10 males).
I find it surprising that you, considering the high standards of elegance, robustness and maintenance you seem to apply to backend development, are arguing so vigorously for what appears to me to be a bodge-it-and-scarper attitude to the user experience.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
So what IS the reason then?
How about taking a little care and pride in the quality of your work, or if that’s too touchy feely, what about “a sale is a sale.”
one who most like won’t care or even be able to use your product?
Hahaha fantastic. Because as we all know, people with any type of impairment: mental, perceptual or physical, of any degree no matter how mild or severe, are not potential customers.
People like that don’t wear clothes, eat food or use household goods. They don’t study or have jobs, so they don’t need to find information. They don’t take an interest in current affairs and they don’t travel. They don’t watch films, read books, listen to music or use any other form of entertainment. They don’t get ill, so they don’t need medical products.
In fact, because they have no concept of money, they are unable to buy your product or anyone else’s.
Silly me
December 8th, 2006 at 3:22 am
That would add 10-50% of man hours to one of your projects? Christ, you need to hire some new front end guys
fine, lets do some maths taking your comment about ‘throwing on a few alt tags’.
Say each page on a site has 30 images, for a 300 page website (not a massive site for one with an audience where those with disabilities using it number more than a mere handful).
Now, our front end guy works at a breakneck speed of adding an alt tag to each image at 5 seconds a tag. No mean feat given they have to locate said tag, come up with some text that is both indicative of the image but textually performs the same function as the image (part of the guidelines).
Works out at 12 and a half hours. Of course that’s 12 actual hours and so will most likely be billed/scheduled as 37-38 hours, most decent project managers will multiply a task by three to account for much of that lost time unfortunately occurs.
That’s four and a half billable days. For a single guy, to do just ALT tags. That’s before we start adding in crap like rewriting all content or providing alternatives so that anyone with a ‘high school’ education can read and understand it.
I have two guys who increase the size of text for comfort
These are ‘accessibility’ standards, not convienience ones. Doesn’t that just highlight my point these standards are for everyone BUT the people they are supposedly for?
are arguing so vigorously for what appears to me to be a bodge-it-and-scarper attitude to the user experience.
Not at all. I’m just pointing out that when someone like myself or any development team take on a desktop application project there’s not a single standard to adhere to.
Many of the arguments FOR web standards (not just accessibility) just don’t hold water. If our standardistas and usability gurus are to be believed, ignoring their advice is the road to a virtually unnavigable internet full of differing interfaces and designs, a horrible mish-mash of unreadable presentations making the task of simply finding and retrieving relevant information utterly impossible.
Fire up any application on your computer. Most of the time you’ll know your way around without a manual.
This is true on EVERY OS… but not just desktop computers. Most phones provide simliar interfaces and OS navigations.
These are all done without standards. No-one enforces any design or interface standards on software designers, let alone any ACCESSIBILITY ones.
are not potential customers.
No, that’s not what I said. I said in many cases the product being talked about on the site is most likely not suitable.
Case in point, why should Amazon.com be forced to pay $$$ to redesign their site so it can be screen read. Said person is going to buy a book? Ok sure they might order one as a present, but is the friend of a blind person present industry really strong enough to justify it?
Or perhaps it is one of those aforementioned pieces of software. If IT isn’t accessible by those with disabilities, then what’s the business case for making sure the website is?
My point was not that people with disabilities aren’t potential customers, but that when you look at the products and services offered on the internet, the vast majority are themselves inacessible to them.
December 10th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
These are ‘accessibility’ standards, not convenience ones.
Um, increasing the text size because your eyesight isn’t what it used to be, is a perfect example of an accessibility point.
If our standardistas and usability gurus are to be believed, ignoring their advice is the road to a virtually unnavigable internet full of differing interfaces and designs, a horrible mish-mash of unreadable presentations making the task of simply finding and retrieving relevant information utterly impossible.
If the likes of Jakob Nielsen are to be believed, that is what we have. I stopped listening to that bore when he u-turned on Flash (because Macromedia had hired him). “Did I say Flash was evil? What I meant to say was misunderstood.” Which is true - I think Flash is great and use it all the time and it is used horribly badly by most designers. Nielsen can kiss my ass though, if his principles are for sale.
A certain degree of non-compliance with standards is essential for innovation - the trouble for the most part, is that browser developers deviate and extend, when they haven’t got the basics right. They’re adding half-baked CSS2 support when they haven’t even got CSS1 sorted… *sigh*
Design and accessibility are not mutually exclusive. There’s all the room in the world for innovation, but if your design is fundamentally inaccessible then it could be argued that you need to come up with a better design. Good design, to paraphrase a well known designer, is about communication not decoration. A designer who thinks only about the latter might be happier icing cakes for a living.
Obviously, you have to use your own judgment on where to draw the line between the commercially justifiable and the purely academic. I actually draw that line rather sooner than some of my colleagues. For instance on the John Smith’s site - if I swallowed WCAG whole - I should have put text transcripts of the television commercials on the page. Which I didn’t do.
Hell, if you wanted to be facetious you could argue that all the tags and attributes in the world can’t make a site accessible unless you provide the content in every language spoken in the world.
I think the point that article was making was this: Most websites are not put together in a way that could meet ANY definition of well done. In my own opinion, most don’t even have the saving grace of looking good. You can’t argue that considering usability would have compromised your Grand Creative Vision, when your end result is a miserable load of old toss anyway.
They make no accessibility provisions, nor do they apparently plan to at any point in the future. The simple, rather sad reason for this is not because they have investigated the breadth of techniques currently discussed among developers and deemed them fragmented and questionable (as you have). It’s that they just couldn’t give a fuck and haven’t bothered to do anything at all.
As consumers we have a huge variety of options. Products and providers who are all, more or less, selling the same thing. As Stephanie has been battling with this last few days with her broadband, quality of customer service is one of the few ways in which a company can distinguish themselves.
A tricky thing about the web is that unlike a shop, you don’t know who your visitors are on a personal level. You don’t know that ‘mr.smith@hotmail.com’ who buys a hundred quids worth of CDs a month, EVERY month, is a lawyer with cash to burn who happens to be blind and buys a shit load of music because it’s his greatest pleasure. If you had a bricks and mortar shop, you’d be a bloody fool if you put all the tables at awkward angles so he smacked his legs and moved everything around every other month…
The way I see it, accessibility is a point of customer service. The only real solution is open and ongoing dialogue with your users, inviting them to find fault with your site so that you can address their difficulties.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Um, increasing the text size because your eyesight isn’t what it used to be, is a perfect example of an accessibility point.
But you’re justifying that point by saying two office members use that functionality ‘for comfort’.
That’s not a conclusive argument proving that it is an ‘accessiblity’ point, or that it is required or indeed useful for people with poor eyesight. ‘That sounds like a good idea, throw it in’ seems to be the mentality, with the designers sold on it, preaching it as though it was set in stone that this was a requirement from those with poor vision.
Which is true - I think Flash is great and use it all the time and it is used horribly badly by most designers. Nielsen can kiss my ass though, if his principles are for sale.
Wasn’t long ago that you were preaching the virtues of such usability zealots. This, in my mind, only serves to prove this ‘accessibility’ crap is nothing more than the next buzzword and will equally die out once everyone gets bored and finds something else to play with.
The rest of the software and media industries work fine without such restrictive guidelines, that should be the guide, not what some supposed ‘expert’ slaps in his blog.
A certain degree of non-compliance with standards is essential for innovation
But you can’t have ’sort of standards compliant’. Especially when governments, like the UK, start making these things part of legislation. ‘Well it sort of complies, but I’m innovating!’ will be followed by ‘You’re nicked sunshine’.
If we’re already putting forward the argument for non-compliance before we’ve even got the guidelines worked out, let alone sold people on the idea of compliance, then that should indicate serious, serious problems with those guidelines. Again, such a flimsy flip-flop attitude just enhances my own opinion that these standards aren’t standards to benefit anyone but the designers so they can have a W3C branded ‘chufty badge’ to stick on their site (but only if they aren’t ‘innovating’).
is that browser developers deviate and extend, when they haven’t got the basics
As I’ve said before, that’s a piss poor argument. It is the OED’s duty to report and compile a dictionary based on ‘modern english’. There’s no point in it refusing to accept use of W and instead spelling it as ‘VV’. There’s be uproar if they simply re-badged 17th century English and told everyone they weren’t complying to standards and should adopt the language THEY say is correct.
Apparently the W3C think this behaviour is not only acceptible but needed for the survival and growth of the web.
Sorry but that attitude is utter crap and as you yourself accept a spur to the death of creativity and innovation.
It should be the W3C’s job to identify key areas and draw standards from what is BEING USED, not dictating what SHOULD be.
Blaming it on the browsers is a shitty excuse, especially given the self-contradictory and utterly incomprehensible style of standard writting coming out of the W3C.
Good design, to paraphrase a well known designer, is about communication not decoration
I don’t disagree, however I will say it is an utterly fruitless endeavour to spend your time communicating to an audience that doesn’t exist, or the wrong audience.
If market research could show that there was a need and interest for the product or service among those with disabilities, fine, make it accessible.
That’s what happens with almost every product decision, branding, product design, advertising. ‘Who’s our target audience and what’s the message they want to hear?’
Sony don’t advertise the PS3 to housewifes, just because ‘they buy things too’. So is the case for not making every site accessible (and therefore it not being a standard) but something related entirely to the product/service or information on offer.
can’t make a site accessible unless you provide the content in every language spoken in the world.
That’s not an invalid argument. Especially in light of the original article.
Most websites are not put together in a way that could meet ANY definition of well done.
Hang on, they said accessible. There’s a world of difference. Take furtherdown, for instance. Ok so not the prettiest girl on the street, but it works, people use it and like how it works. Is it accessible? Hell no, red links and white text? A nightmare for all number of various colour-blindness. Screen reader? Alt tags? not a chance.
That doesn’t mean the site is ‘not put together in a way that could meet ANY definition of well done’, it just means it isn’t accessible.
It’s that they just couldn’t give a fuck and haven’t bothered to do anything at all.
For which, as I’ve pointed out, there’s a huge bucket of reasons: Not profitable, too much time, product/service itself is unusable, contradiction within standards, etc.
And to be fair, I can’t blame them. W3C need to sort this crap out with the browsers and BY that I mean they need to listen, instead of dictating this shit and ‘tut-tut’ing when the browsers don’t comply.
The way I see it, accessibility is a point of customer service. The only real solution is open and ongoing dialogue with your users, inviting them to find fault with your site so that you can address their difficulties.
Agreed. But that’s a dialogue. A unique one to your site and your audience. The topics and work that comes out of it will be different for everyone. That’s not standards compliance. That’s a blind and universal adherance to a set of guidelines appropriate in every situation.
The very fact is that they aren’t and we all know it. As you point out, the only REAL way to ensure your site is accessible to your disabled and non-disabled visitors is to involve them in the process and get feedback.
If THAT were what the guidelines were advocating, I’d feel a little better about people being so adamant about compliance. As it is, I’ll ignore the screetching and wait for everyone to finally abandon this particular lost bandwagon.
December 12th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
I’ve never preached the virtues of Jakob Nielsen. You’ve got quite a habit of misquoting me!
I say putting on an alt and title tag here and there, you quote throwing on a few alt tags to imply a careless attidude… It doesn’t help discussion.
You also misunderstand my point about sort of standards compliant as you put it.
I meant I have no problem with getting the basics right and innovating on top of that, (we wouldn’t have the likes of httpxmlrequest otherwise), but not when fundamentals are poorly implemented.
[can’t make a site accessible unless you provide the content in every language spoken in the world] - That’s not an invalid argument.
Yes it is, it’s willfully perverse and unhelpful to anyone.
I think the crux of the debate is that you think that accessibility is an added extra of some sort. I think accessibility - given a well constructed, semantically sound document - is something that poor design and construction removes.