Avoiding the Gray Areas

I just caught the last of Shawn Henry’s SXSW panel. Key take­way– there are white areas of things that are good to do for acces­si­bil­ity and black areas of things that are bad for acces­si­bil­ity– avoid wor­ry­ing about the gray area in the mid­dle. She men­tioned the abil­ity of web acces­si­bil­ity experts to end­lessly debate the ins and outs of alt text. For example:

• Should alt text be used to paint a thou­sand words?
• Mini-FAQ about the alter­nate text of images
• Alt Text, Less Can be More
• “Alt Text” search on WebAIM Dis­cus­sion List
• Search fo “alt text” on The Web Acces­si­bil­ity Ini­tia­tive Inter­est Group (WAI IG) mail­ing list

These dis­cus­sions are help­ful and essen­tial for estab­lish­ing best prac­tices. How­ever, these dis­cus­sions are harm­ful to the extent that a devel­oper becomes tied up argu­ing about “gray areas” instead of build­ing acces­si­ble content.