Website accessibility still misunderstood

I’ve just read an excellent article about blind users still struggling with computer obstacles. Now I can only comment from a web perspective but it seems to me people are still missing the point when it comes to accessibility.

Firstly accessibility doesn’t just apply to blind or partially sighted people there are many other groups that it can advantage from the physically disabled right though to dyslexics and even the elderly.

Creating an accessible website is seen as a chore and perceived as difficult to do when the reality is that when developing using web standards and best practices you are nearly there. Adding other accessibility tools to a site may take a little extra time but think about the huge untapped market that you are opening your website up to! There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK alone. An excellent article by WebCredible shows how much an accessibility can increase the reach of a website.

A couple of comments on the original article show how much people just don’t get it:

“When I’m trying to convince the suits how important it is to code our web pages to the W3 standards for accessibility I never get very far arguing that it is the right thing to do for visually-impaired users. It just doesn’t seem to be all that important to them.

I have much better luck when I point out that compliance with these standards helps out the biggest blind user on the Internet; that is to say Google. Search rankings they care about.”

Again the argument that it’s “the right” thing to do doesn’t usually wash when it comes to business but the extra reach from an audience (and potential new customers) and also search engine penetration perspective is a difficult one for “the suits” to ignore.

“Sorry to bust the thread going here but computing has for the most part always been a visual thing and probably will be for a while to come. The last thing needed in this world is more guidelines or legislation telling us how to do things. I sympathize with people with disabilities but when you start suing private business over accessibility issues, the sympathy stops there.”

Why does accessibility stop computing being visual? It doesn’t. Websites that create a text-only version of a website show little or no understanding of what accessibility is about. All these websites do is create a two tier system with a text-only website that doesn’t provide the same user experience as the graphical site. It’s just laziness.

“Its time the disabled learn that their disability is not caused by everyone else on earth. Nor is it the responsibility of others to help them overcome it on demand. The disabled have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used. The principle is the same.

I adapt at my own expense and effort and you should too. If you can’t, you will have to depend on other’s voluntary charity and not act like a thug and use the gun of government to fulfill your whims.

Its too bad you are disabled but its not my fault nor is it my responsibility to fix. If the government says I must then to hell with government! I am not your slave nor are you mine.”

Again a total misunderstand of what can be done or the advantages of providing access to these groups. No problem - carry on as you are going and other companies will be happy to take the customers that you don’t want to spend your “expense and effort” to attract.

I do apologise if I have taken any of the quotes out context as I can’t personally comment on anything but website accessibility however I do find they cover a lot of arguments I hear about online accessibility.

Web 2.0 causes more of an effort for accessibility. Essentially any AJAX used must have a fall back to ensure everyone can use applications. In some cases this might mean the fall back user interfaces might not be so interactive but they should provide the same functionality as the whizzy scripts. Again there is an argument here to do this for the addition audience and search engine access (large areas of some AJAX sites are just search engine no go zones). However I believe a lot of this lays at the door of AJAX framework providers. When I use an AJAX control why shouldn’t this be built into the control rather than me needing to have two versions of the page? Certainly some are taking this on board but other could take a more inclusive attitude.