Social Networking Accessibility

Via Accesssites.org, a summary of a 21 page report on the accessibility of social networks from AbilityNet. The report analyzes Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo and Bebo and reports that they all stink. Of those 5 sites, Yahoo was the only was to receive a two-star rating- that’s two starts out of five. The other four all received one star indicating they are ‘very inaccessible’.

The Dataportability.org group has been in the news of late as a number of major social networks have become involved. While their stated mission is not to make social networks accessible for users with disabilities, the goal that they are working towards should have that overall effect over time. They are working to promote the use of existing open standards to facilitate the sharing of social network user content outside of that network. Over time this will open the door to the creation of more accessible interfaces to access at least some of the data that is currently available only through proprietary, inaccessible systems.

Hopefully, the process of making user content more readily available will also lead to improvements in accessibility along the way. In the meantime, are users with disabilities being left out of the social networking revolution? Is anyone doing this right?

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?