Jun 20
Accessibility, Veerle’s point of view
2005 at 02.15 am posted by Veerle Pieters
I’ve been reading a lot about accessibility the last few days. One of the latest articles about this issue is over at Andy Budd’s place. He is saying that it is in a small part up to the law to make people/companies aware of those issues. Well I can only follow to a certain degree. Yes the law/gouverment should have a role in all this but not necessary a legalization with a negative tone by forcing things or fear by legal action. It’s very good that people in UK have a legal route if they feel that they are discriminated but I personally think a lot of those people just don’t bother to go through all the hassle that is associated with it.
First I think countries must abounded the idea that this is a local issue, it is not, the web is a global thing so if there is going to be some sort of legislation is should be on the European level or even better on global level. So the rules are defined by a world wide organization but are put into practice on a country level.
I don’t know the Belgium Law that good if there is something like an accessibility chapter in it that concerns the web. I don’t think so to be honest but could be wrong. I see the whole accessibility matter more as something that should be motivated by rewarding companies who care about it. Let’s face it most companies only care about money so paying extra to test their site for accessibility is low on the agenda.
For example here in Belgium you are financially rewarded if you use materials that are good for the environment. Well If there could be something similar for accessibility I think it would become a catalyst for companies to think about it. The main problem of course to get this to work is setting up knowledgeable people to check if sites are valid for this bonus.
Only recently I had an unbelievable experience with this when I read the local paper about my home town’s website being rewarded the Blind Surfer label. My first reaction was ‘cool they care!‘. But then I did a little trip to site and I literally fell off my Stokke chair :-) If you take a look at the code of that website you’ll understand what I am talking about. Believe me when I say it is a mess. If that site is rewarded by the organization that represents the blind people it make me seriously doubt their competence. When I saw this, this organization lost its credibility. A real example that it isn’t easy to find knowledgeable people :-(
In my opinion the role of the government should be an educative one. It should be their task to make the business world aware. A task force of experts within the EU (or world wide) for example could set up guidelines that business can consult. In that part I agree with Andy Clarke’s article about the role of the government in web accessibility.
However I see talking about accessibility as a chapter in a bigger part because first we need to do much more work in spreading the word of using web standards. Be honest, our ‘little ideal world’ is only a drop of water in a big ocean. When we conquer this ‘challenge’, the next logical step is accessibility on a next level. What I’m trying to say is that accessibility is a lot more then just focussing on blind people and screen readers. Using Web standards is (I think) the first step in the right direction. Roger Johansson did a superb job explaining this in his article Web standards vs Accessibility. Not that I’m an expert on this matter but it’s only now that I begin to grasp how difficult and complicated it all is (Roger, Derek and Joe and Ian Lloyd I’m counting on you guys to guide me along the way ;-).
My end conclusion : we have much more work to do. It’s up to you readers to spread the word and make us heard.
38served
1
good to see atmedia and all the other (recent) accessibility-related-posts inspired you to dive into the subject too. i’m looking forward to read more articles about this subject on your blog.
next year we’ll be working on a website for an organisation (from gent, be) that wants to educate / help people on / with autism as a final project for my studies. since it involves people with (cognitive) disabilities i’d like the site to be conform standards and be accessible. but how d’you explain all this to your teachers and promotors who think web development isn’t anything serious/difficult?
i thought belgian blindsurfer would have been a good instrument to motivate them to care. my idea was to try and get the blindsurfer label for this site. *oowkeeeej* think again ... if you look at that deinze.be-site it just doesn’t make any sense ...
2
I’ve seen the Blindsurfer label showing up on several sites that didn’t seem really accessible. I sometimes wonder whether Blindsurfer is a good or bad thing for the whole webstandards/accessibility case. It certainly would be if the used the WAI/W3C rules tot evaluate websites, but that’s not the case today.
3
From the announcement on the website:
“This label was given to website that were found accessible by using magnifying, speach- or braille-aids. The guidelines by the W3C needed to be implemented strictly. The site has to be conform the official W3C (X)HTML standards.“ - Deinze.be
html validation - section 508 validation - [url=http://www.contentquality.com/fulloptions.asp?rptmode=2&url1=http://www.deinze.be/Home/Homepage.htm&EMSG;=
The+maximum+allowed+URL+submissions+has+been+reached+for+the+Host:+www.deinze.be.
Only+1+submission+for+a+host+is+allowed+in+1+minute.]wai validation[/url]
i know accessibility isn’t the same as / is much more then validating code, but ...
“Heb ik u nu net betrapt op een leugen, Michel?“ - Bucky Laplasse
4
Even the website of the Flemish organisation for Accessibility (as in: public places and such) is Bobby Approved. Do look at the source code though! sheesh… ;-)
5
<meta name=“GENERATOR” content=“Microsoft FrontPage 4.0”>
<meta name=“ProgId” content=“FrontPage.Editor.Document”>
Says enough?
6
Een andere leuker is www.zottegem.be
Naast het blindsurfer label staat de boodschap “werkt enkel met IE”
Navraag wees echter uit dat het enkel om bepaalde functies gaat, zoals de speech die enkel in IE beschikbaar zijn. De rest zou OK moeten zijn.
Best wel verwarrend.
7
<meta name=“GENERATOR” content=“Microsoft FrontPage 4.0”>
<meta name=“ProgId” content=“FrontPage.Editor.Document”>
Yeah, I saw that as well. This is such a guarantee for open standards and accessibility :-(
8
Speaking perhaps from a different perspective (I’m a law student, please don’t shoot me), I must say that people probably will not litigate to force compliance, unless they are aware of their rights and are willing to run the gauntlet: issues of standing to sue, proof of discrimination, et cetera. Usually, they may be encouraged to do so if they can obtain pro bono representation, and competent pro bono legal representation, at that. It’s difficult to say. I know that the HREOC (human rights and equal opportunity commission) in Australia, recommends adoption of the WCAG guidelines as an aid to interpreting the provisions of our Disability Discrimination Act.
As for having a “global organization”, I’m skeptical. I’ve read the proceedings of a number of such “global organizations”, and had to study how to interpret treaties in relation to domestic law, and let’s just say, it’s a pain in the legal posterior to do so. Most global organizations tend to end up fractious and unable to come to a good result, so they end up making a compromise that satisfies nobody and is either unwieldy or thoroughly impracticable to enact into domestic legislation.
I think there may be some merit in, for example, a differential taxation regime, where corporations are taxed if they fail to meet accessibility criteria. Not strictly a penalty, since there is nothing illegal in not complying, but if you don’t, well, we might slap a 10% surcharge on your yearly corporate tax. Or something. I’ve found that individuals tend to be willing to do quite a lot to get out of paying extra taxes.
9
I recently conducted a phone interview with one of the “top-ranked web design agencies”. The company I work for is considering outsourcing a major redesign of our site to them. I asked them their opinions on accessibility, and they actually scoffed at me! Pressuring me, they said that’s not typically something that their clients ask for. I brought up the fact that there are legitimate legal concerns about not doing it, and they really blew me off. I was shocked. Even heartless business men should see the business case for supporting more customers. If you want to be really cold-hearted about it, better accessibility = more customers = more money. I guess people are just lazy??
10
They must have made a mistake, surely? I think that one of the problems is that potential customers think it is easy to design a site; one of my customers said recently that my price was too high as “it’s easy to design a site, it’s just a case of chucking some tables together, filling them with graphics and that’s it” or words to that effect.
I tried to explain the skills needed to design an accessible site (and I’m still learning, I’ll admit) and you could tell she didn’t believe me.
On the subject of insisting on accessable sites, I don’t think you can ever police it, maybe a better way would be to promote a site that is ‘accessable approved’ by adding an approved logo on a site, rather like the CSS2 logo, but more obvious to general users.
Most people have no idea what the CSS2 and XHTML validation links mean, so it would be better to have a sort of “click here to check this site is accessable by all users verified”.
Just my penny’s worth ..
11
I think that compliance with Section 508 standards, as we call it here, is important, and I am noticing that more and more web companies in Wash, D.C. are trying to become compliant with their designs. However, by and large it is the government web sites that are required absolutely to use it most, or web sites that require usage by handicapped individuals. I think designers are trying to learn more about how to implement the standardized code, but it is not yet totally widespread, or being enforced. I think rather than trying to enforce legal standards or levying a tax or fine on people, as the web is still an evolving medium, and legal standards cannot possibly control everything, that it is best to just continue to try to “spread the word,“ to designers and the public, by observing other web sites that have implemented it properly, through education, for ex., making it a required course in schools, and setting sites that are well designed and accessible, as examples to follow.
Maybe you should email the people who designed that site in your town, and let them know how they could have better designed it - and in that way, you are educating the public about what standards should be used.
12
There’s really a broader issue at play here:
Most developers don’t understand accessibility.
Be they creating content for the web or designing desktop software, most developers have never seen how users with special needs (be they motor-, vision- or hearing-impaired) will use their content/software/whatever. My statement shouldn’t be taken as a criticism—thankfully, the majority of us have all our senses and abilities fully intact, and it’s very very difficult to really imagine what it would be like without them.
That being said, it’s very enlightening to watch someone with, say, a vision impairment browse your web page and critique it. Once you see that happen, you probably won’t need any legislation to convince you to clean it up, and will instead do it yourself because it’s so fascinating to you. (Really; try it someday. If you’re doing software, try MacVisionaries.)
13
5 years ago I wouldn’t have thought much about the accessability of my sites, it’s only through the last year really to be honest that I’ve dived into accessibility on a bigger scale. None the less I now see this is a very big matter that needs to be integrated into our culture much more than it currently is.
For my limited “educated” knowledge on the subject of accessibility within the web-age, I see various chapters of web design that people just aren’t aware of, or choose to ignore.
One is this craze; that everything needs to be minute and unreadable, small pixels, teeny-weeny buttons, you know what I’m talking about? I must say I think there’s one main reason for this, sites with big fonts and big pictures look really bad on low resolution screens, especially for fonts if your not using a Mac, and it kind of became a trend.
The second is the overall mark-up of a site, ie making it readable even without style sheets applied, or designing it so it’s compatible on handhelds. Or even the mere fact of it displaying correctly on different browsers.
Theres a theory that I have of mine, perhaps some others share the same view. I believe that some technology that is invested by a business can sometimes overpower the underlying importance to its customers. Again this relates to a cultural aspect.
If like you say Veerle, there was some kind of acknowledgement, or reward for companies that actually spent the time and effort to improve the accessibility of their site, then perhaps some sort of a culture could slowly develop from this?
It will be interesting to see how far, and how fast this subject matter goes.
14
One of the better websites from the government is Aminal.
15
Veerle, you are ritght in this: the situation in Belgium is a bit confusing. Currently, you have the blindsurfer label, which is an initiative from ‘Licht & Liefde,‘ a non-profit organisation for the visually impaired. In one respect, this makes sense: the people who test your website are the real target audience and they use real assistive technology.
On the other hand, the testers don’t really seem to be aware of the requirements an accessible website has to meet. E.g. I’ve had my weblog validated years ago, when it was really far from accessible, but when it was very unclear what guidelines they used.
Now the label is supposed to be awarded to websites that meet the WAI (W3C’s accessibility guidelines) specs with priority one.
And yet, there’s indeed, as you noticed yourself, a lot of websites out there with the blindsurfer label that are as accessible as a video-movie with no sound and subtitles. Moreover, one could argue that there’s little sense in paying for a blindsurfer audit, when you can have it checked with freely available validators from the W3C. (You won’t be entitled to use the blindsurfer logo then, but who cares since it’s butt-uggly?) Should DUOH ever be contracted by a local governement to design their website, it will be a requirement though.
As for the effort it takes, if you’re a standards advocate, as you seem to be one, it really isn’t that big of a deal to make your websites accessible as well. Yet, you could make a too often neglected audience very happy with it. IMHO, you should certainly give it a try.
16
“He is saying that it is up to to law to make people/companies aware of those issues.“
No he’s not. He’s saying that legislation has a small but part to play, in contrast to Andy Clarke who believes there should be no legal requirement for sites to be accessible.
17
I guess one of the most important things is the use of alt tags everywhere, be it for images, or even navigation and links, as descriptive information blind people can pick up on. I heard a screen reader demonstrated once at an accessibility workshop, and it was very enlightening. The voice of the reader sounded awful, and it really made you feel badly for the blind people who had to use that. Especially when you thought about how they could not see any of the colorful images, or Flash animations, etc. or even a picture.
I guess the software developers were working on trying to make it sound better, and less canned, but still, you can’t help but feel like you wish there was more you could do. I guess though, one must consider, can blind people do everything sighted people can? Maybe they can do a lot, like even climbing mountains, but they still cannot see. They can’t see T.V. or movies, so they have to hear them. I guess it is the same with the Internet. It is about the type of media, and trying to find solutions for blind people, and not just trying to make the web which is a visual media, completely accessible. Using something as simple as alt tags, I think would be a big helpa and a step in the right direction. I guess that we should all remember at least to do that, and I have to remind myself, too, because I am not used to thinking in such terms, either, but have been trying to understand the Accessibility requirements, more, but don’t really know enough at all about it.
18
@Mario De Zutter, at last a nice example ;-)
@Andy, OK but even if it is just a small part that the law would play, I think it’s just a bandage on an old wound. In my opinion we have to start from scratch and that’s with the educators who teach the generation after us. The problem should be solved on the roots. The responsibility of the government lays there. It should be their goal/task to make sure that teachers who educate web designers are knowledgeable about web standards and accessibility. If you want to enforce law there it would make sense. If you don’t have the skills you aren’t allowed to educate. The rest is like I explain in my article I see the government in a role of an educator. One exception though, all governmental websites should accessible by law. They should be the example. But for the private sector I think it should be rewarded if people do make efforts. Everything else that would be set by law would be too much, there are already too much laws, and I also don’t see it in practice/feasible either since I don’t think in ‘borders’, the web is global. Well, I just believe more in rewarding then enforcing I guess.
@Jackie, that’s so well said :-)
19
I am by no means an expert on website accessibility, but like most people, I believe it is a “goog thing”, just like accessible buildings. I also think there are many levels of accessibility, and that a website which is “fully accessible” (assuming there could ever be agreement on what this means) is either very demanding and time-consuming to construct, or probably visually crude.
For most websites, national accessibility legislation will have no effect. However the time when websites that provide a public service have a legal obligation to be “accessible” has now arrived in certain countries. Again, as in architecture, this in itself is only the first step. Moral, commercial, and public relations pressure will also come to bear as time goes by, and gradual improvements will be seen.
For my own part, I try to concentrate on the following simple measures:
1. Ensure that the page displays correctly even when the user increases the text size by two levels above the browser default.
2. Ensure that the page makes just as much sense when styles are turned off.
3. Use semantically correct and valid code.
4. Ensure that the page loads quickly.
5. Encourage user feedback.
I know there’s a lot more, but those are my priorities.
20
Today in the newspaper (Dutch): “Provinciale website volledig vernieuwdâ€, http://www.oost-vlaanderen.be, and they follow the conditions of Blindsurfer.
Not bad but I don’t like the drop-down-menu’s and the architecture of the site.
21
A lot of good ideas here. As was said before, the problem with legislation is that it is always cumbersome and doesn’t get things done. This is because it means companies feel they have to do something rather than want to do it. The best way to get private companies to do something is to make it financially rewarding so that they can build a business case around it. The other problem is to define what “accessible” means. Nobody has a real answer. My personal view is that the term “accessible” needs to be split into different variants linked to the type of people they address. Making a site accessible for blind users is not the same as making it accessible for people with low vision, auditive impairment, motor disabilities, etc.
In practice, a company will look at the problem like this:
- What type of customers do we cater for? What is the proportion of disabled users? Let’s say 1%
- Out of this 1%, how many are blind, have other types of disabilities?
- Let’s say we want to make the site accessible to blind customers, who represent say 0.3% of our market. How much more money would we derive from this extra trade? Is it more than the cost of making the web site accessible to them in the first place (i.e. is it worth it)?
Where legislation can help is in the last step. If you give a financial incentive (say a 1% tax rebate) to companies who make their sites accessible to blind users, you change the calculation by deducting the amount of this tax rebate from the cost of making the site accessible for blind users. Then you can assign a different tax rebate to making a site accessible to different types of disabled users: 1% for making accessible to blind users, 1% for making it accessible to deaf users, etc. So if a company goes all the way, they might get say a total 5% rebate. If they consider it is not worth doing the work for one particular type of users, they just don’t get that rebate: e.g. it couldn’t make any sense for a company that sells stock photos to cater for blind users but it would be unfair not to grant them something if they make it accessible to people with motor disabilities.
In short, all I wanted to say is that we need to go one step further: rather than think about accessibility, think about disabled users, their particular disabilities and what can be done to address each particular disability.
That was my £0.02 worth, I hope it made sense.
22
Sorry, this made my following comment too long so I’m posting another one:
Another thing we can do is work with the charities that deal with those disabilities, such as the RNIB in the UK (I know, as Joe Clark says, they’re not always sensible but they are the ones everybody knows), the people who grant this “blind surfer” tag in Belgium, etc. and talk to them about what it means to make a web site accessible to the users they care about. And make them understand that one pre-requisite of an accessible site should be a site that has valid (X)HTML and complies to standards.
23
The accessibility matter is a big one, you’re right on that.
Your reward idea is excellent, except for one big fact; Who should pay? As you say yourself, the web is global. Very global. And since laws for each country won’t work, I don’t think rewards from each will either.
But this problem is here to stay, let’s hope we’ll solve it one day.
24
I’ve been following this discussion with great interest. I work as an accessibility consultant for BlindSurfer, the Belgian (not Flemish; we’re also active in Brussels and the Walloon region of Belgium) organization that you and some of your readers criticized. I would like to set some things straight.
First of all, something about legislation. Here in Belgium, disabled people can rely on the anti-discrimination law if they feel discriminated for any reason. The law is pretty clear: “Every form of direct or indirect discrimination is prohibited when delivering goods or services to the publicâ€. So, what is discrimination? One of several descriptions in that same law says: “The lack of offering reasonable accommodation for disabled people is considered an act of discriminationâ€. Need to say more? In my opinion, this law can be applied perfectly to a web accessibility lawsuit, since websites are ‘services’ too. There haven’t been any real accusations yet in Belgium, but some large companies and websites that offer public services should be worried. Lately, there have been heated discussions about the inaccessibility of online banking sites, public radio and tv websites etc. on BlindForum (Flanders’ largest mailing list for visually impaired computer users). Luckily, the Flemish government has recently announced a new accessibility initiative (in collaboration with BlindSurfer): http://www.vlaanderen.be/toeweb/ By the end of 2007, all Flemish government websites should be made accessible for all disabled visitors and that’s a good thing.
Now, on to the real discussion: there seems to be some indistinctness about what the practical relation is between respecting web standards and offering an accessible website. I agree with all of you that respecting web standards is an excellent starting point to ensure that a website is accessible to everyone. But despite what we’ve all been forced to believe by numerous articles on the web lately, there’s still a large gap between theory and practice. And a website that validates, is not per definition accessible.
(to be continued)
25
The strange thing is that most web designers who strongly believe in web standards and ‘en passant’ believe to deliver accessible webstes (and sometimes even write very earnest articles about the matter), have never used a screenreader in practice. Neither have they evaluated one of their own sites with a text browser (I’m not talking about disabling CSS in your browser here). In fact, most of them haven’t even seen a screenreader being used by a visually impaired computer user! I invite you to our office where we can give you a demonstration. But make an appointment first ;)
Here’s the real problem: most developers of screenreader software have no clue on how web standards and semantic markup can improve the accessibility of websites, so the support in most modern screenreaders is very, very limited. It may sound odd, but using semantic markup could even have a negative effect on practical web accessibility. Need proof? Most screenreaders (like recent versions of Supernova or Virgo) don’t announce a bulleted list and don’t offer a way to navigate in a nested list structure. In fact, using an old-fashioned table with GIF’s (with alt=â€bulletâ€) in one column and the list items in the other column, is in many cases better interpretable by screenreaders than using the correct semantic ul/li structure. Same thing goes for headers: did you believe that using the correct headings (H1/H7) helps blind people to understand the structure of a website and allows them to easily navigate? Of course using the correct headers is a good thing, but the benefits for blind users are minimal as long as screenreaders don’t bother about them. This doesn’t mean that I encourage web designers to use non-semantic or ‘old school HTML’. I’m very well aware that using semantic markup has many other benefits and eventually screen readers (and their developers!) will grasp the idea (recent versions of Jaws have already made great improvements).
Veerle, maybe this will make you fall out of your Stokke chair: most screenreaders used today (except for Jaws) try to interpret the rendered webpage as it is displayed in the browser window instead of accessing the source code and making the best out of that. Say, your adding in some ‘skip navigation’ or ‘jump to conent’ links and hide these links by adding a CSS rule like ‘display: none’ in a CSS document with mediatype ‘screen’. Guess what: most blind people won’t notice the links either!
(to be continued)
26
Another example? Some time ago, I reworked the homepage of Vlaanderen.be (that’s the second important government website in Belgium) as a test case. Visually, http://www.vlaanderen.be/ (the original) and http://webtoegankelijkheid.be/vlaanderen/ (my version) look practically the same (I’ve tried my best). But if you look at the code, you’ll notice that my reworked version uses semantic markup, that all styling is handled by CSS and the doctype is XHTML 1.0 strict (it even validates). Does this make any difference for screenreaders users? My tests have proven it: very, very little. Does this make any difference to visitors with poor eyesight? Not at all! The practical accessibility benefits of using webstandards are minimal, believe me. And that’s mainly because of the lack of support by modern screenreaders. And yes, that’s a shame. And yes, BlindSurfer tries to do something about that (on a side note: on my cell phone, the XHTML 1.0 Strict version looked great).
Now, back to Deinze. The HTML code of www.deinze.be makes me laugh too, but the thing is that our tests prove that the website is well operable by visually impaired visitors (like me, by the way). And that’s (currently) what the BlindSurfer label stands for. In a broader interpretation of ‘web accessibility’ (device independency, backwards compatibility and even things like easy interpretable language), Deinze.be probably won’t do.
Veerle, you won’t like to hear this (and I don’t want to offend you since I’m a big fan of your work), but in terms of accessibility for disabled visitors, the website of your hometown Deinze does a better job than your recently redesigned company website Duoh.com. Yes, I know Deinze.be is ugly and the code sucks and I know that your website validates, uses semantic markup and that most of the (beautiful) layout is handled by CSS. But that’s not all there’s to it: you’re using pixels (which is an ‘absolute’ unit) to specify font sizes. This might sound trivial, but it’s a very important issue: people with poor eyesight cannot change the font size by using the standards controls that Internet Explorer offers (a browser that’s still widely used). Now I hear you mumble that you can’t be held responsible for the quirks of IE developers and that people who have trouble reading the text should use a better browser (read: Firefox). But try to explain that to your grandmother with poor eyesight! Remember that we’re talking about practical web accessibility here, not W3C theory.
(to be continued)
27
Another thing: you’re using bitmapped pixel fonts for the main navigation. I realize how much energy you’ve put in creating a bulleted list with CSS image replacement techniques that degrade gracefully. But low vision visitors are not viewing your site with CSS disabled! They expect every text on your site to be scalable (especially when you’re using tiny pixel fonts). Now, even if they use a modern browser and have the ability to scale text that is specified in pixels, they won’t be able to enlarge the navigation items. So they won’t be able to use your website at all.
I could also discuss the repetitive hyperlinks on the homepage (‘read more’) that are not interpretable without reading the context they’re used in (required by the WACG) and the lack of an alternative for Flash movies (which are altogether inaccessible for blind users), but my epistle is already getting quite long here… ;) You know what? To prove BlindSurfer’s ‘knowledgeability’ that you seem to doubt, I offer you a free and thorough website audit, performed by me and 2 ‘real’ disabled users for a website of your choice. Just contact me at roel at blindsurfer dot be.
Just a quick summary: in real world situations, designing with web standards has verly little advantages for people with physical disabilities. And in some situations, it might even impede accessibility (I refer to the bulleted lists example). In a more general context (device and user agent independency, future compatibility, bandwith savings, easier updating, better indexing by search engines and such), designing with web standards is of much more importance.
Peter also mentioned www.zottegem.be, another Flemish municipal website. Here you can read an in depth reaction on this that I wrote a while ago (it’s in Dutch): http://www.internetjournalistiek.be/reactie.php?nieuwsid=426
I would like to end by saying that BlindSurfer is currently in a ‘transitional stage’ and that we’re preparing a lot of new things (you’ll be pleasantly surprised). I also agree with Frédéric that our current logo is not one of the prettiest (or ‘butt-ugly’, as he calls it). Soon, our new logo (and a revamped, standards compliant website) will be unveiled. And yes, it’s true: our current website (www.blindsurfer.be) isn’t exactly an act of beauty or an example of modern webdesign. But, and this might surprise you: it’s been developed by a blind web developer (except for the graphics of course)!
That’s all for now.
Roel Van Gils, BlindSurfer Vlaanderen
28
Its disappointing that an organisation can undermine the whole idea of accessibility in this way. How many companies or business entities will look at it and see it as highlighting best practise and therefore something to emulate. It’s frustrating at best. Do they in any legitimate way actually represent blind people - i mean do they have blind members or something? It seems very odd they wouldn’t get bad feedback from the site in question.
I think blindsurfer must be surfing blind in these waters.
29
I’ve been reading up with web standards and accessibility for the last year or so. As far as web standards go, no major problem to find out what to do here. If only our CMS would support standards, our sites would remain valid. As for accessibility, that’s another issue. It’s only recently that I am really convinced of the benefit. Last month I watched a webcast of a press conference. A UK based organization, I believe something like Blindsurfer who did some surveys on accessibility. I believe that it was in that press conf that they made the link with the benefits for accessibility for people without a disability. It is proven that when sites are accessible for people with a disability, eventually all visitors benefit. Often generated more visibility and on commercial sites, sales.
2 examples:
Imagine all those buildings that are required to be accessible for people in a wheelchair. I’ve never heard someone complaining the lobby was too big, doors were too wide, elevators too big etc. Having to travel sometimes and jolting around with a trolley I started to notice how much I used the ramps put in place for people in wheelchairs. And I can assure you that you miss those ramps when they aren’t available while pulling a huge 120 liter/40kg heave trolley (a bit oversized, but everything fitted in one case!). Long live trams with lowered floors! Booh to those trains and one-way auto-staircases (you know what I mean).
Second example: I have found this page yesterday evening. Using the train to go to work, I kept the window open and hibernated my laptop. On the train I wanted to start reading. My screen has a resolution of 1680x1050. I prefer putting my laptop on the small table after studies have proven that a hot laptop on your lap might damage ... well ... let’s say it’s unhealthy. A wee bit too small font to be easily read. No problem, View > Text Size > Largest. Nothing happens (IE). I do not have an eye sight problem (ok, -1.50 to be honest but wearing lenses), but I could definitely benefit from some accessibility here. I hope you agree that arguing that I should use Firefox instead would be totally a-commercial.
to be continued…
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My screen has a resolution of 1680x1050.
Since I can’t convince you to use a “better” browser well do the smart next thing and set your lap-top to a smaller resolution instead. It will be big enough to read then! If you’re still not happy give Bill a call ;-)
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I saw that one coming :) If anyone has a tip for a heat protection plate… They exist in the US. Hunting them down here.
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@Alain: Font size is bigger now but if you are smart use Firefox instead or even better browse on a Mac ;-)
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Too many replies possible… can’t choose… vague memories of flame wars… must resist…
Or would I start commenting on the layout of your site? ;-)
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Resetting the resolution of a laptop screen away from its native resolution isn’t necessarily a smart thing to do. The display goes fuzzy. But I agree that a page should show a larger text size when increased in IE as well as Firefox etc, but a narrow column like this one makes for better readability - like newspaper columns.
For lap heat protection why not get one of those rectangular foam pads you can buy in mountaineering shops - the ones people use to put on the ground and sit on when out for a picnic? Or even try a mouse mat.
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Well, I am an accessibility expert. For whatever that means. In my case it means I was working on Web accessibility 8 years ago, spent 4 years working for the WAI, spend a lot of time dealing with questions about how to get it right (mostly in Spanish - apart from working at Opera I spend my spare time as the vice-president of Fundación Sidar), and have spent zillions of hours working with people who have disabilities and different problems, with technologists trying to solve them, writing specifications and guidelines and tutorials and explanations…
As Roel noted, the Blindsurfer testing process is about checking that things actually work for people with vision impairment (that’s a lot of things lumped together. Tunnel vision, peripheral vision only, low vision, difficulty distinguishing colours, total blindness, ...).
And again as he noted, standards compliance isn’t all that there is to accessibility. There are many things which meet XHTML/CSS standards but fail Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). WCAG is a W3C Recommendation, so from the point of view of W3C, of equal status as a standard with the other two).
Using px as a font size is, according to the person who developed the relevant requirement in WCAG (me) non-conformant to W3C standards. Setting tiny text sizes, or using tiny buttons, doesn’t contravene any but the most incredibly strict reading of the standards, but does create problems for users.
It is also true that there are disagreements on how to test for conformance to WCAG (the point about px is still one of them…). Blindsurfer and Sidar are two of the members of EuroAccessibility, a group that is working to get consistency in interpretation of WCAG at least across Europe, and to ensure that W3C itself gets the results of our work, checks it, and where appropriate incorporates it into new standards or as clarifications to existing standards. A project called support-EAM (funded by the EU and being done by some people who were also EuroAccessibility members) is working on a common methodology for WCAG testing, which is supposed to be usable for certification and is supposed to be made public. There is, of course, W3C itself, and as Opera is a member from time to time we officially ask the working group to clarify certain things that are not clear.
The goal is that the testing procedures are both interoperable (in the sense that whether you ask the RNIB, Sidar, BlindSurfer, VicDeaf, or Yoorralla, at least the fundamentals will be tested to the same requirements) and actually useful for people with disabilities.
Which is a broad, diverse and complex group with many different needs. Vision impairment is probably less common than reading difficulties, people who are deaf-blind are rarer but have a right to be able to use what we claim is a universal communications medium.
This diversity is one of the reasons why developing universally useful guidelines is a hard job. WCAG is, IMHO, good - very good if well-applied - but not perfect. And while there are differing interpretations of it, it is even less perfect. On the other hand, “more good than bad” is a good start, and “better than anything else” is a reason to be happy, at least for now.
So please continue to read up on accessibility. There is a lot of information and experience to work with, and like web design, music or physics, you keep learning and getting better at it. Also like web design, music and physics, the better you do it, the more real people actually benefit.
Most of all, don’t forget to think about those people. Not the warm fuzzy feeling of helping them, but trying to understand what the actual problems are, and how to make solutions that don’t create new problems. Trust me, it’s fun :-)
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@Chaals : a very in debt comment. It is such a complex matter and I’ll try to keep doing my very best to do the right thing.
It’s not that a site which earns the label (of BlindSurfer) should entirely validate, but you should at least see the efforts they made and I don’t see this in the Deinze website. I bet they never heard of WCAG. They just applied alt tags, well I’ve been doing this since I started designing webpages (in 1997), it’s just an obvious thing to do.
The thing that bothers me the most is the message www.deinze.be sends out with its label. In the newspaper they were really raving about the ‘good deed’ a lot of bla bla etc., that is totally misplaced.
I couldn’t agree more with what Roger Johansson stated and I quote “Web accessibility is first of all about making it possible for disabled people to access the web. But my opinion is that providing that access should be done without potentially breaking the web for others.“ I think that’s exactly what www.deinze.be does.
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For my part the discussion ends here. I think enough discussion has been made here and we should all try to learn from it. One thing that we ‘all’ share here, despite our differences, is that we all want the same thing and that is we all want to enjoy the web. My conclusion on this is the following:
- Valid code doesn’t always mean that the site is accessible
- The communication in the ‘visual world’ of the BlindSurfer label needs to be improved to avoid misinterpretation
- Minorities should be aware that the knife cuts both ways. Focussing only on their needs (now) isn’t always helping the general cause. We can’t ignore them and they can’t ignore us (Deinze is the example in my opinion).
I also want to set the record straight since there obviously is a miscommunication about this post about giving such label to the Deinze website. I questioned the label only for this site, not other sites nor the goal of this label in general (big difference!). The reason of my heated reaction was purely based on what I’ve read in the newspaper since they raved about it and took it totally out of proportion. It’s obvious that they see it as a big award for their ‘so called’ efforts. This proofs that they didn’t read the report that BlindSurfer also included which proves that the message isn’t heard that there is still work to do.
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As for the ‘deinze’ I found it extremely hard to navigate and I am blind though not in the physical sense.
Thus it can be concluded it appears that that site had some form of bias testing it may deserve the ‘BlindSurfer label’. Though I think that demo site focused too much on one disability group which had adverse affects for some people of another.
Not all of us who are disabled use Assistive Devices in fact I’d be insulted if you thought I required one. Albeit as I’ve said I have a disability that does affect how I interact with the web. How that data was presented could have placed a hurdle in front of me accessing the data and navigating the site if I were less web savvy.