ICT Consortium NI Web Accessibility Workshop, Belfast
By Gerard McGarry on 28th September 2005, filed in Accessibility. You can leave a response below.
The Accessibility Dilemma
As a web designer, one of the most frustrating things about the job is accessibility. Building it into the site, validating it and making sure it works. But without access to expensive assistive technology, how can a designer or the client ever be sure that the website is truly accessible?
Not that I consider accessibility an inconvenience. Quite the opposite. Building accessibility into a site and ensuring it validates is as important to me. Not only does it vastly increase the possible audience for your website, but it provides search engine optimisation benefits. If you’re selling online, there’s a market of 1.3 million to 3.2 million potential customers who experience accessibility issues with web browsers.
My problem with accessibility is one of empathy. I can try to build sites with attention to accessibility. I can even validate them against a number of free tools online. All very good, but give the designer little appreciation for the reality of using assistive technologies suck as screen readers or alternative input devices.
Jon Gooday, AbilityNet
Jon Gooday from AbilityNet demonstrated this by looking at a number of websites that had accessibility issues. These ranged from not allowing the user to resize text on-screen to poorly named links in documents which caused screen readers to spew forth confusing obscure rubbish. Hardly an exhilarating experience for those people reliant on screen reader software to browse the web.
Web designers tend to get hung up on visual impairments. Jon explained that these were not the only causes of accessibility problems. He also cited hearing, mobility and cognitive/learning disabilities as key areas to consider when creating website content. He demonstrated a baffling range of alternative input devices that people with disabilities might use to navigate web pages. A particular point that was raised was that for someone with motor difficulties, trying to click on minuscule links was a serious problem. These are the details in accessibility that we rarely think of….
The remainder of Jon’s presentation focused on creating a strategy for web accessibility and implementing it. Ensuring that staff were aware of the issues and anyone involved with the website undertook training to ensure they created accessible content.
Demonstrations Of Assistive Technology
There was quite an array of assistive devices on display during the workshop, and I was able to spend some time looking at the Jaws screen reader software. There was also a demonstration of how inaccessible Flash content can be. A flash website was loaded into a browser and the screen reader sent off to read the content. It helped to close your eyes for this part. “Button. Button. Button. Button.” was read out repeatedly until the software announced, “End Of Flash Movie” (or something like that!).
It’s not that allFlash content is inaccessible, just that few designers go that extra step toward accommodating disabled users.
The Legal Case For Accessibility
As I commented to someone during one of the breaks, at the moment we’re relying on people’s sense of moral and civic duty to build accessible websites. There is no existing case law in the UK surrounding web accessibility. Perhaps when a legal precedent has been set the issue will gain more widespread public attention.
Until then, forward-thinking companies will be building websites that strive to include all Internet users, regardless of the technology they use to browse the web. There are a number of guidelines and information available freely to anyone interested in improving the accessibility of their website content. In addition, many disability groups such as RNIB provide information.
I’ll be looking into access issues myself over the next few weeks, and will hopefully get the chance to post some more information up here for anyone interested.
Our website contains numerous accessibility guidelines and might be of interest to you:
There is plenty of free advice about how to quickly create accessible content for websites.