Access Means Different Things to Different People

“’Access’ isn’t just yes or no, but really shades of accessibility, and has different dimesions.” (Access to Open Educational Resources Wiki)

The definition of access from Merriam-Webster:

a: permission, liberty, or ability to enter, approach, or pass to and from a place or to approach or communicate with a person or thing b: freedom or ability to obtain or make use of something c: a way or means of access d: the act or an instance of accessing

Depending on who you are or where you are at in life, the word access has different meanings. UNESCO has a fantastic wiki page on Access to Open Educational Resources where they define a number of different types of access. Although written for a specific type of content (open educational resources), the types of access they have identified can be applied generally :

• Awareness, Policy, Attitude, Cultural:
  • Access in terms of awareness.
  • Access in terms of local policy/attitude.
  • Access in terms of languages.
• Legal
  • Access in terms of licensing.
• Technical (Delivery Method)
  • Access in terms of file formats.
  • Access in terms of disability.
• Technical (Receiving)
  • Access in terms of infrastructure.
  • Access in terms of internet connectivity/bandwidth.
  • Access in terms of discovery.
  • Access in terms of ability and skills.

Reading through the comments on the page, it is evident that in many parts of the world, access for users with disabilities is a secondary concern (at best). Without power, bandwidth or an even an Internet connnection no content cannot be accessed, so who care if is it accessible to users with disabilities?

When considering all of the different barriers that keep people from accessing content on the Internet, all of the sudden adding alternative text to an image doesn’t feel like such a big deal. Let’s keep working on an accessible web, but in the meantime let’s not forget that lots of people don’t have access to that content whether it is “accessible” or not.

Via Stephen Downes

Also of Interest

• Accessibility, Availability and Affordability
• Access to the Web for People with Intellectual Disabilities

Web Accessibility vs Life Accessibility

After lacking the motivation to write a post for almost a year, I was finally able to admit that I don’t care about web accessibility as much as I thought I did. If you are looking for good, current information on web accessibility issues there is a long list of people who you should follow before Curb Cut.

That said, I care very much about disability issues. Curb Cut has been an accessibility blog written primarily for readers already interested in accessibility issues. However, depending on your past experience you may or may not give a crap about disability issues.

My interest in web accessibility originated from my relationships with two of my brothers who were born with Down syndrome. Like a good brother should, I wanted to make the web a friendlier place for them. Well, it turns out that Patrick has no use for the Internet. Dallin Paul is a heavy Internet user, but thus far has been able to find every America’s Funniest Home Video People Getting Hurt Collection and Power Ranger video on YouTube without any problem. If my goal is really to make the world a better place for them then it is time to refocus my efforts. There is little I could to for the Internet that would make it more useful to Patrick or Dallin Paul, but consider the following:

• Patrick has worked for over 10 years at a University food court. He works hard, is dependable and well-liked by colleagues and customers. Nevertheless, there is very little chance that he will be offered a full-time position or any kind of benefits.
• Dallin Paul still has a fear of attending church with my family because of some very unfortunate experiences he had with Sunday school teachers growing up. When he does attend, he is welcomed by some, tolerated by others and ignored by everyone else.

I have spent a number of years as a teacher in special ed classrooms, traveling with Special Olympics teams and volunteering with various disability organizations. You wouldn’t know any of that from reading Curb Cut in the past. My disability experience is the only real value I have to offer and I purposefully kept it out of my writing on web accessibility. Shame on me.

Here’s to a more authentic Curb Cut.

The Necessity of an Accessibility Checklist?

Aaron Cannon at NorthTemple shares an accessibility list he created in a post titled The Accessibility Checklist I Vowed I’d Never Write.

From Aaron:

When I wrote the below checklist, I attempted to answer the question, “What concise pieces of advice can I give to designers that will have the greatest impact on accessibility in the majority of cases?”

Other Checklists

• Principles of Accessible Design from the National Center on Disability and Access to Education
• Web accessibility: The basics from Trenton Moss at Webcredible
• Evaluating website accessibility part 2, Basic Checkpoints by Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street

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.

SXSW Accessibility Panels

I’m headed to Austin tomorrow, here is a list of some of the presentations specifically on accessibility:

• Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics QuicklyShawn Henry.
• Accessible Rich Media by Sharron Rush, Susan Gerhart, Becky Gibson and Lisa Pappas
• Everything I Know About Accessibility I Learned From Star Wars by Derek Featherstone
• Cooking up Accessible Video for the Web by Pat Ramsey
• Core Conversation: How Accessible Should Your Site Be? by Jeff Beckham
• Targeting Your Web Site: Accessibility Litigation Update by Anitra Pavka and Michael Wasylik

In addition there are sessions on internationalization, web standards and the ongoing browser wars. Audio from each of the sessions will be recorded and at some point made available on the website.

Any sessions that I missed? I hope to see some of you there, you can get in touch with me here.

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?

Accessible Web Browsers

I have mentioned a symbol-based browser before, but here is a list of three different accessible browsers:

Free Accessible Web Browsers for Learners with Multiple Disabilities

Accessible Pen and Paper?

I first heard of Livescribe from an announcement of their upcoming ‘smartpen’ and noted that a former professor, Andy Van Schaack, PhD was involved in the project. A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a presentation from Dr. Van Schaack and learned a little more about the project. I was especially interested in the note on the presentation flyer that said he would “present his current NSF-funded study on the use of the smartpen to support blind college students in science, engineering and math.”

He started off with promotional information about how the Livescribe system is a new computing platform with a great team behind it. By all accounts it appears to be a laudable effort in the arena of comparable smart pen technologies. It works by recording audio while using the pen on special paper. You can then go back to any point in your notes, tap on the page and listen to the corresponding audio. Your notes also become searchable and shareable.

Then he addressed how the project would help make content accessible for students who are blind. Currently, a student who is blind studying in a field that requires the use of graphs or diagrams would need a technology toolkit such as a laptop paired with a not inexpensive tactile talking tablet. The price point lowers significantly as students are able to use the Livescribe pen with the more affordable Sewell raised-line drawing kit. This combination of technology allows the students to draw and annotate a graph with the ability to reference the graphic later and access whatever audio was recorded at the time.

Additional Resources

• Livescribe site
• Smartpen aids blind engineering students
• New Smartpen and Paper to Help Teach Blind College Students
• NSF Grant Information- Award Abstract #0726403 and Award Abstract #0726424
• LiveScribe Smartpen Demo With Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher
• Additional Tactile Graphics Resources
• NCDAE Webcast on Electronic Accessibility in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

(Update) Andy sent me a couple of additional links to share:

• Article on the smartpen from Vanderbilt’s Online Research Magazine
• Vanderbilt Press Release

Too Much Accessibility

Hopefully, anyone subscribed to this blog also follows 456 Berea Street. If not, you missed a great post from Roger Johansson titled Overdoing Accessibility. Go read the article and then subscribe to his feed.

Mike Cherim tackled the same subject awhile back on Avoiding Extreme Accessibility.

Bim Egan ran a whole series of articles titled Too much accessibility – TITLE attributes.

The two attributes that were on all three lists were tabindex and accesskeys. The lesson? Take the time to understand your users, then evaluate the work that you are doing to make sure it is actually helping those you are trying to help.

CSS for Accessibility by Ann McMeekin

Day 13 of 24 Ways brings us CSS for Accessibility by Ann McMeekin. Ann discusses the proper use of line-height for users with dyslexia and how to use the :focus pseudo class to let keyboard users (even those using Internet Explorer) know when they are focused on a link.