The Other Web Accessibility 2.0

There is plenty of dis­cus­sion hap­pen­ing on the upcom­ing ver­sion 2.0 of the WCAG. For­tu­nately, there has also been some good dis­cus­sion regard­ing impact of the Web 2.0-volution on acces­si­bil­ity. The rush to ajax­ify user inter­ac­tions and the open­ing of the flood­gates of user con­tributed flood­gates has not nec­es­sar­ily been a good thing for accessibility.

Bruce Law­son noted his con­cerns back in 2005:

I also worry about acces­si­bil­ity. It strikes me that peo­ple are so busy adding extra Ajax love­li­ness that the separatestripped-down “html-only” ver­sions they offer are unthink­ingly accepted as a legit­i­mate sop to peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. We reject sep­a­rate “text-only sites” in Web 1.0 ; why should we accept them in “Web 2.0″?

Roger Johans­son echoes those sen­ti­ments (with some good com­men­tary from his readers):

There is some truth to Bruce’s obser­va­tions, and it would be a sad step back­wards if the per­ceived cool­ness of “Web 2.0” brings back the old days of non-graceful degradation.

Ian Lloyd com­ments with a post titled, AJAX, Acces­si­bil­ity & Screen Read­ers:

There’s some­thing of an oxy­moron going on there in the head­ing. Can you spot it? The words ‘acces­si­bil­ity’ and ‘AJAX’. They really are not the best of bed fel­lows, as many peo­ple have discovered.

Joe Clark pro­vided notes from a pre­sen­ta­tion titled Build Half a Prod­uct: Is Ajax acces­si­ble? At all?, includ­ing the results of some usabil­ity tests on pop­u­lar Web 2.0 appli­ca­tion Base­camp.

There’s more where all of that came from:

• AJAX and Screen­read­ers: When Can it Work? by James Edwards,
• AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity Overview from Becky Gibson,
• AJAX and Acces­si­bil­ity from Peter Krantz,
• Is AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity a major issue? by Chris Cor­nutt (also note some of the other posts in their acces­si­bil­ity cat­e­gory),
• Web 2.0: A step back­wards for acces­si­bil­ity? by Cath Everett, and
• Devel­op­ers Work­ing to Over­come AJAX Acces­si­bil­ity Issues by Dar­ryl K. Taft.

Every­one seems to agree that there is a prob­lem. For­tu­nately there are also some great resources to set you in the right direc­tion if you are work­ing to cre­ate an acces­si­ble Web 2.0 application:

• Acces­si­bil­ity of AJAX Appli­ca­tions from WebAIM,
• Web 2.0 & Acces­si­bil­ity for Dis­abled Users by Kath Moonan,
• Acces­si­ble Web 2.0 Appli­ca­tions with WAI‑ARIA by Mar­tin Kliehm, and
• a great list of other resources from Max Kiesler (via find­abil­ity).

In this out­dated com­ment on Bruce Lawson’s above post, some­one from Wild Apri­cot states:

Unfor­tu­nately, we could not afford to make the sys­tem back­end sup­port all the acces­si­bil­ity stan­dards because it would mean two or three times more cod­ing (not 10% or 25% — and I am NOT exag­ger­at­ing). Cre­at­ing inter­ac­tive AND usable inter­faces is very hard — and I do not know if many devel­op­ers can man­age to do it on their own. Devel­op­ment frame­works and browsers have to help too.

What is your expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing acces­si­ble Web 2.0 sites or appli­ca­tions? What AJAX/Javascript frame­works do you use that encour­age acces­si­ble best prac­tices? What are some good exam­ples of acces­si­ble Web 2.0 experiences?

Where to Discuss Accessibility– Forums, Mailing Lists and Blogs

Let’s say that you have a burn­ing acces­si­bil­ity ques­tion that you are dying to ask some­one and your roommate/spouse/pet are no help at all– where do you go? Here are a few good places to start:

• Acces­sify Forums from the good folks at Acces­sify. The forum has been around since August of 2003 and has over 6000 mem­bers and more than 50,000 posts. If your ques­tion hasn’t already been asked and answered, chances are there is some­one hang­ing out over there who can answer it. The top­ics range from begin­ner to expert and runs on a mod­i­fied ver­sion of phpBB.
• Web Acces­si­bil­ity E-mail Dis­cus­sion List from WebAIM. The list archives show that the first posts showed up in Novem­ber of 2003 and there have been hun­dreds of posts since then, with over 1400 posts that include “pdf” alone! If you are not a list­serv per­son, you can also use their WebAIM Acces­si­bil­ity Forums run­ning on PunBB.
  (Update 9/13 The WebAIM List started in 1999)
• The Guild of Acces­si­ble Web Devel­op­ers offers a few meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but they are pri­mar­ily off-limits to any­one who is not a mem­ber. GAWDS has an IRC chan­nel #gawds on irc.freenode.net as well as a forum and mail­ing list that are both for mem­bers only. I am not a mem­ber, so I don’t know how much any of these are used– any­one have more infor­ma­tion on any of these resources?
• The UACCESS-L list­serv from the Trace Cen­ter is per­haps more gen­eral as a “dis­cus­sion of uni­ver­sal access to infor­ma­tion sys­tems” list with posts in the archive going back to Decem­ber of 1998. They also have a sep­a­rate Sec­tion 508 list­serv.
• The Web Acces­si­bil­ity Ini­tia­tive Inter­est Group (WAI IG) mail­ing list may not be for every­one, but the archives there go back to April of 1997 with thou­sands of posts. The WAI also has a num­ber of other groups, includ­ing the WCAG Work­ing Group.

If none of those suit your fancy, there are a few other options. Some of the largest web devel­oper com­mu­ni­ties have forums specif­i­cally for acces­si­bil­ity issues, such as the acces­si­bil­ity and usabil­ity forum at the Web­mas­ter World and the acces­si­bil­ity forum at Webdeveloper.com. Even if there isn’t a spe­cific forum at your favorite web devel­op­ment form, peo­ple are likely still talk­ing about acces­si­bil­ity (from Dev Shed).

Also, while you may not be able to ini­ti­ate the dis­cus­sion, there are always lots of great dis­cus­sions hap­pen­ing at your favorite acces­si­bil­ity blog (thanks Jared) or web mag­a­zine.

If you are look­ing for a more spe­cific cat­e­gory of acces­si­bil­ity, it may be out there some­where as well. For exam­ples, check out the fairly active Yahoo! Group on Cap­tion­ing or the Java Access list­serv from Sun Microsys­tems. Sim­i­larly, there are a num­ber dis­cus­sion lists and forums that are spe­cific to a dis­abil­ity pop­u­la­tion, such as the Com­puter Use by and for the Blind list

Lastly, don’t miss out on any local groups. There are a num­ber of uni­ver­sity and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide venues to dis­cuss acces­si­bil­ity issues with peo­ple in your own back­yard– any­one from the Phillip­ines?

Where do you go to ask that burn­ing acces­si­bil­ity question?

10 Reasons People Care About Accessibility

I don’t know why you are read­ing this blog, but I there are a num­ber of rea­sons that peo­ple become inter­ested in acces­si­bil­ity issues. Do any of the below cat­e­gories sound famil­iar to you or maybe some­one you have worked with? Pre­sented with no author­ity and in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Why do you care about accessibility?

1. Fol­low­ing the Crowd. My favorite A-list blog­ger keeps talk­ing about acces­si­bil­ity and I don’t want to be left behind.
2. Curios­ity Killed the Cat. Enough about alt tags already, what’s the big deal with accessibility?
3. Work­ing for a Liv­ing. My boss cares and there­fore so do I.
4. The Plain­tiff will now Approach the Bench. The lawyer guy keeps telling me that I need to care about accessibility.
5. Me, Myself and I. I have a dis­abil­ity– I cre­ate acces­si­ble sites so that I can use them.
6. We are Fam­ily. I have a fam­ily member/friend with a disability.
7. We are the World. You know, “It’s true we’ll make a bet­ter day. Just you and me”.
8. Pow­er­ful Mar­ket Forces. Why on earth would I make my site harder for cus­tomers to use?
9. Pride cometh Before the Fall Of course my site is acces­si­ble, it also val­i­dates as XHTML Strict, I have never used a table in my life and I read W3C meet­ing min­utes for fun.
10. I don’t. Oh, okay– fine. (there– that makes 10).

Any oth­ers you would add to the list?

As long as a web devel­oper is moti­vated to cre­ate an acces­si­ble site, does it mat­ter what their moti­va­tion is?