That “text only” link you see on some websites winds me up. It really makes me see red. To me it shows lack of understanding and laziness when it comes to accessibility. It goes against the accessibility initiative.

This type of ”alternative” site is providing a second class service for those who would benefit from accessibility enhancements. Some sites I’ve seen actually run these as completely separate sites generally of lower priority which leads to out of date or inaccurate content in comparison to the main website!

As I’ve been banging on about for ages there are easy ways to makes sure the main website is available to everybody without the need for a text only version - if web best practices are used you’d be surprised how many ticks you’ll already have in your accessibility boxes.

However an article that has made me think a little more about this subject is one about accessibility being in a post-guideline age. The basic premise being that following the guidelines is not enough to ensure good website accessibility and user testing is key. This of course is correct although I feel not always realistic in every case - I’ll come back to this later.

The thing that jumped out in this article is the mention that maybe “alternative” versions of a website are now acceptable. Not in the same scheme of things as the text only cop-outs I mentioned earlier but in the respect that everyone is receiving tailored content for the individual so why not use this to enhance the site for everyone? Perhaps this tailored content could actually mean that, for example, people using screen readers could have a particularly optimised experience to fit them?

My personal opinion is this should only be an extension of existing accessibility functions on the site but certainly has potential. Different users have different needs and therefore some techniques can boost their experience - possibly even making other user’s experience not as good.

User testing would be imperative to ensure every personalisation made the best for a particular group but this is where I come back to my earlier point about not being realistic in every case.

User testing isn’t cheap and there is an iterative process involved which too can increase development costs for a website. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done but not all companies can afford to spend the extra doing this. The situation currently still has accessibility proponents having to convince some companies to look at accessibility at all.

Accessibility standards I believe are becoming mature and with the British Standard in the future I can only see more and more companies seeing this as essential. I don’t believe the web development community is yet in a position to support this across the board although knowledge is spreading and maybe the nay sayers are beginning to have their heads turned by the convincing arguments of the accessibility community.

It’s still a process that is going to take time - larger companies (or those very reliant on being inclusive to all) will set the standard and user testing for accessibility will become the norm. In the meantime the guidelines are of exceptional importance and the accessibility community must be supportive to companies that make unintentional mistakes.

HTML 5 is estimated to arrive in 2012. Allowing time for browsers to support the new standard and for these new browsers to become the majority is going to take at least 3 years. Therefore the next version of HTML is still 7 years away - a lifetime for the web.

The last standard to come out of the W3C was XHTML 1.1 in 2001. So 11 years between new standards is that acceptable?

It of course has to be understood the difficultly of producing standards for the web community but the time this seems to be taking for a technology as fast moving as the web is so far off the pace it’s incredible.

No wonder that proprietary systems are gaining more and more ground over time. They are simply filling the vacuum of new technology left by the standards bodies. Adobe Flash and Microsoft SilverLight provide the medium to extend web pages far and beyond what can be done with HTML. Certainly AJAX is being used heavily now as an extra layer on HTML and I never cease in being surprised at some people’s ability to use this lightweight scripting language for more and more impressive web applications but can this keep pace with the “designed for purpose” contenders like SilverLight?

Flash already has a deep penetration into the web market and various actions like Google crawling Flash better could extend its market further. SilverLight is the new boy on the block but already is picking up speed with some predictions of hugely increased market share (you’d never bet against Microsoft).

Is this good for the web? At the moment I believe yes it’s always good to have rival technologies. Competition spawns innovation. However in the long term it may not be.

If it takes, as estimated, 8 years to produce a new web standard how can this new standard bear as much relevance to the web 8 years later? If a possible Flash / SilverLight features war kicked off then the standards process would very soon be left behind - HTML would simply be the base to display the web application (or if the desktop / web blurs even more maybe HTML wouldn’t be needed at all).

In the long term if we effectively see the use of proprietary web technologies in the majority of cases, this could kill the standards process as it stands now altogether. Not good news as this standards process is inclusive allowing the general web community to be involved. Proprietary technology of course will be fashioned to the companies vision which doesn’t necessarily gel with the wider community.

So what to do? Tough one. Maybe the process needs streamlining, maybe there are just too many people involved (although decreasing this could erode the current inclusiveness), maybe the new standards are too ambitious and perhaps rather than whole new versions we should be looking at smaller incremental updates that can see new features pushed out the web quicker.

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.