the 200ok weblog

Colour contrast is not just about accessibility for people with poor vision. Recently I've had a great example of contrast issues caused by LCD screens.

My machine at work has problems with light grey. During a site build I once had our designer enquire when I was going to put the background into a column - only to be a bit taken aback when I said there wasn't one.

Me

What background?

Her

Err... the one in the right-hand column. There's a gradient.

Me

No there isn't. Not in the mockup you sent me.

Her

There really is, I'm checking the file now.

Me

*pause while I hit the offending column with magic wand*

Hmmm.

Ummm. OK, it's there, but I can't see it.

Her

You realise that doesn't make sense, right?

Eventually we compared monitors - on hers it was clear as day, on mine it was invisible. I tried tweaking the settings and no combination of brightness and contrast was acceptable (I suspect there's a gamma setting hidden somewhere in the labyrinthine driver settings, but I'm yet to find it). By the time I could see the greys, everything else was looking insane.

In the end, I implemented that gradient flying blind. I knew it was there, Magic Wand could find it. So I cut up the image and we tested on someone else's machine. These days I have a second monitor which shows things a little bit better.

having not learned...

I got caught out again while redeveloping this blog. I decided to put a nice, subtle, light-grey quote mark on the block quotes. It was fine on my home machine. But then I checked the test site on my work machine and did a double-take, thinking the images had broken somehow. The quote just wasn't there.

This is what should have been there. Note the quote mark to the left of the indented blockquote:

This is what I saw:

The only way I could tell the images hadn't broken was to take a screen shot and take a stab with my good friend the Magic Wand:

So in the end I cranked the grey up to a darker grey. It's not quite as aesthetically pleasing, but at least you can see the bugger on most monitors. Even so, it still isn't a fully accessible shade of grey; but it is a decorative image (and the large indent also indicates quotation) so on this occasion I'm living with it.

it's laptops too...

I've been using an old laptop during meetings and it has the same problem. In fact it's not just grey, it's any light colour.

In Gmail, the read/unread background colour difference is invisible. The only way you can tell which emails are unread is the fact they're bold.

This is what I normally see:

This is a rough simulation of the laptop screen:

Lucky Gmail does the bold/normal weight change as well. Remember the checkpoint - do not indicate meaning with colour alone? That's why.

so, always test contrast

None of this should come as a surprise - we know that colour combinations need sufficient contrast for all kinds of reasons. Had I tested my quote marks with the Contrast Analyser I would have picked it up sooner.

But it serves as yet another demonstration that accessibility requirements benefit just about everyone at some stage. Jump onto my workstation or an old laptop and suddenly you have a low-contrast vision impairment.

Labels: accessibility, colours, contrast

I don't know if you've ever tried to use TV captions in Australia or not, but from my small experience I sure wouldn't want to rely on them. Most shows have some level of captioning via teletext, which is good; but I've rarely seen a show with flawless captioning. Meanwhile, others are simply unintelligible.

I can understand that live broadcasts are quite a challenge; but I can never really understand why captioning remains terrible on stuff that was created well ahead of time.

Anyway, I don't have to rely on captions. I just like to use them when I'm trying to watch TV in a noisy environment, or I don't want the noise of the TV to bother people around me. They're also good for shows with thick accents or murky sound. We use them on DVDs to decipher mumbled lines as well.

Apart from all those reasons, I suspect deaf people probably find them handy too. That's where this issue really gets important. The modern world uses video a hell of a lot, for both fun and serious reasons. It's about time people who need captions weren't marginalised by being unable to rely on video.

The issue around the world is that captioning sucks. Joe Clark has been telling us this for years! His current project, The Open & Closed Project, aims to help the situation by creating standards for captioning. This is an important step, as it's much harder to advocate "good captioning" when there's no definition of "good".

To raise awareness of the problem, Joe is now launching the Captioning Sucks! website...

...and despite the fact it's April 1st, he's deadly serious.

So what is your experience with captions? Good? Bad? "Depends"?

Labels: accessibility, captioning, captions, joe clark

The source order question came up again on an email list recently - ie. should content or navigation be first in the source order?

This is a "jury is still out" issue since so far nobody has comprehensive data, just studies with a small number of respondents and opinion informed by observation of a relatively small number of users.

The paper Source Order, Skip links and Structural labels is the best research currently available; and its findings suggest either that the order is less important than other factors, or that there's a slight overall preference for navigation first.

However, the small number of participants in the study means we can't be 100% sure if the findings would be the same with a larger sample size. It's likely and it's backed up by anecdotal evidence, but it's not confirmed.

So, what I think we can say for sure about the source order of content and navigation:

1. No matter which way you go, be consistent across the site so users can learn how your site works and trust it to work the same way as they move through the site.
2. Either way, include skip/jump links; but...
   • Include visible skip links where possible, or use invisible-but-accessible skip links (ie. do not use display: none; to hide skip links as a very large number of users will never be able to access them).
   • If they are hidden, try to make them visible on focus so sighted keyboard users can see them.
3. Use meaningful link text and a logical heading structure. Not only is this just good practice and good for SEO... the accessibility-oriented reason people say this is that some (many? most?) screen reader users don't actually read a page from top to bottom. They use features which extract all the headings or links into a list; read just that list then use that to jump around content. Once they identify that they're on the page they really need, then and only then will they read the whole page.

Please note that I am not saying all screen reader users navigate by link and/or heading. Screen Reader users have habits which are just as varied as other web users. No two people use the web in precisely the same way - but overall trends and common approaches can be identified. Enough disclaimer? :)

Related links

• Source Order, Skip links and Structural labels (study methodology and findings)
• OZeWAI presentation: Source Order, Skip links and Structural labels (presentation slides)
• Max Design - About structural labels (includes a good method for hiding links and supplementary headings)
• SonSpring | Accessible display: none (an alternative method for hiding links; although with some noted problems it's still better than display: none;)

Labels: accessibility, keyboard users, screen readers, source order

Most standardistas encounter the "standards and accessibility limit creativity" argument at some stage. Yes, even in 2007. In fact these days it often morphs into "don't criticise AJAX just because it's not accessible", but I'll save that rant for another day.

Personally I don't think standards compliance adds any limitations beyond the natural limitations of the web (all media have their limits). But even if it did, does that prevent creativity?

rewind...

ANSI art by sq2 of esquemedia.com. Cheers for the permission, Rauri!

I've seen some impressive artistic results from people using limited media. One of the greatest and certainly an influential example in my life was ANSI art. ANSI is a joy I recall from BBSes, back in the day when my internal 14400 modem was hot and my computer's hard drive had less capacity than my current thumb drive.

ANSI was the basis for BBS interfaces, with a whole 16 foreground colours, 8 background colours and 256 characters. Shading was achieved using using combinations of foreground and background colours, a very small number of dithered blocks and the four half-filled blocks. That's it.

Big chunky blocks of colour couldn't possibly produce great art, right? Well no, actually here was an entire international art scene devoted to ANSI art. Plus if you ran a BBS, you had to have a great scroller for when you logged in. So people pushed the boundaries far beyond expectation, they took an incredibly limited medium and created rich artwork.

In a way, ANSI artists worked hard to produce great work because the medium was limited. It took skill to create a great ANSI artwork. You really couldn't fake it, although many people tried. So the greater the skill and the greater the kudos for producing an elite ANSI.

back to the present

I was reminded of ANSI art when I saw the results of The Man In Blue's blobular competition (the peacock is definitely my favourite).

The medium allows for blobs of colour. That's it. Did that create a limitation which prevented great work? No! Instead artists looked at the possibilities - the potential of the medium.

I think the peacock demonstrates that well-executed artwork uses the given medium to the best advantage. For best results work with the medium, don't struggle against it.

The point? The limits of a medium simply define the creative space. They don't prevent people being creative within that space.

standards aren't limiting

Web standards just don't limit creativity the way people claim they do. You aren't prevented from producing great web pages just because you make them validate. Standards-based pages don't have to look like useit.com. CSS Zen Garden has proved this ad nauseum.

If you work in the web you have to accept the medium for what it is. You need to accept its limits, play to its strengths and try not to bring unrealistic expectations to the table. You have to accept that you need to make things validate and make them accessible, then add the funky design and behaviour over the top.

Sure, the web isn't a perfect medium. There's no such thing as a perfect medium! Print, photography, video, paint, music... they all have problems. Watercolours can run and ruin a wash; photos can get overexposed; printing presses can screw up colours; guitar strings can break during a gig.

Every medium has limitations. Part of creativity is getting around them and coping with the problems.

So anyway... that's my response to the claim that standards and accessibility mean you have to create boring pages. A canned answer to a canned question ;)

Labels: accessibility, ansi art, blobular, creativity, limitations, web standards

It seems that Firefox 3 will include an option to treat meta refreshes much the same way as popups - blocking them and alerting the user what the page wants to do. It's another step forwards in letting the user take control.

Of course, Opera users already have this option; using opera:config#UserPrefs|ClientRefresh. Neat, although an alert would be good; as would site-specific settings. Hopefully the feature will be refined in future versions.

Really though, either way is good as it gives the user a little more control over their browser. Automatic refreshes and redirects break accessibility recommendations. They're one of those things which gets written up as "until browsers provide a way to control...".

As these features become more widespread, the importance of fallback options will become even more critical. Just like scripts need a <noscript>, meta refreshes need a link in the document. Many pages don't have them, though; so no accessibility or SEO juice for them!

It serves as a good reminder that we should provide alternatives any time we modify the behaviour of a page. I have had people say in the past that meta refresh was so simple nothing could go wrong. Well, that assumption will bite them on the arse...! :)

We should always assume that somehow, somewhere such features will be disabled. It's not hard to provide an alternative, so it should remain our habit to do so.

how to disable meta-refresh

• In Opera 9 (Win/Mac): browse to opera:config#UserPrefs|ClientRefresh, then deselect the option and restart Opera.
• Firefox 2 (Win/Mac): install the Web Developer's Toolbar and click Disable → Disable Meta Redirects.
• In Internet Explorer 6 and 7: go to Tools → Internet options → Security tab → Custom Level button → Miscellaneous category → set "Allow META REFRESH" to Disable.
• Safari 2: currently I don't know of a way to disable it in Safari.

Labels: accessibility, browsers, disable, firefox, ie, meta refresh, opera

[Semi liveblogged]

Being aware of verbosity settings in screen readers - it's the setting which controls how things like punctuation are handled. Some users will turn off brackets - ie. brackets aren't read out. With that setting enabled, page links may get missed - really it's a bug, but you have to be aware of it.

Best practice is to make links make sense out of context; but at the same time users know they can "go back one line" to find context.

Screen reader users often get much more information from their UA than sighted users - the status of links may be read out "this is a visited link, this is an unvisited link..."

"Back to top" links... do we really want to go back to the top? Or do we really want to go back to the start of the article we just read? Where exactly should the link take you? This is not just an accessibility issue, it's a usability issue as well. If you don't have a skip to content link, they have to listen through all of your header and navigation content...

Regarding skip to content and skip navigation links, Derek believes the browsers should be handling things like this.

Derek: "As a keyboard user, Opera is the best browser out there right now." Yay Opera! ;) It's very powerful and lets you jump between forms AND links; or through headings; or you can ensure the accesskeys don't clash with anything.

You know the way we only use about 10% of our brains? Well it's the same with our software - we only use about 10% of the functionality.

Russ Weakley: we found that source order didn't really matter so much to a lot of screen reader users.
Molly: what about other disabilities?
Derek: Did you see CSS Naked day? That day was hell for me! Nothing worked for me! I lost all my context. "I couldn't read blogs that day and that's my crack man!"
Molly: I do think that it's a concern; that we shouldn't be too quick to give a message that source order isn't important. For screen readers it's not so important...
Russ: One thing we did in that test was to label each content section - structural labels were really useful. [Helped context]

Derek: on source order... what about things like sidebars? Do they go at the end, or the start? We need to research this stuff because we don't know what we're doing.

Andrew Arch: Visual order... there are plenty of people out there who can get very confused if the visual order doesn't match the source order. Tabbing through content can suddenly get way out of order compared with the expectation set by the visual design.

Derek: we think we know it all but we need to do more actual research.

Andy Clarke: What do you think about microformats and using them to set up labels for content areas?
Derek: I like the idea, but how do we get everyone to adopt it and implement it?

John Allsopp has started a design pattern to explore this issue.

"I know we can do this... I'm getting goosebumps again!"

Example: a login screen example where the page gets modified based on input. Notifying the user is an issue because they've moved away from the relevant inputs; so you should update other things like the LEGEND, TITLE, or status bar.

Status bar - screen readers can access the information in the browser's status bar. How appropriate! Put status messages in there. Needs full testing and probably depends on screen reader settings as to whether it's read out or not. But you could also alert the user that they should check the status bar before they submit a form.

Labels: accessibility, derek featherstone, wd06

[Semi-Liveblogged]

Eight steps for taming the accessibility monster

1. Step 1: Choose the right developer
• You need people who really do know what they're doing, who know how to build for accessibility.
2. Step 2: Don’t outlaw anything
• Work to fix the problems, don’t just blanket ban things
• Try to say "yes" instead of "no"
3. Step 3: Disseminate knowledge
• help get people on side by sharing the knowledge
• ran lots of training sessions
4. Step 4: Keep trying!
5. Step 5: Be the good guys
6. Step 6: Put it in writing
• get accessibility into contracts
• make sure you can hold people to a standard
7. Step 7: Test, test, test
8. Step 8: Listen
   
• Listen to the people who are testing, listen to complaints, listen to everything…

At one stage Gian actually heard a site owner claim "disabled people don’t use our site". As it happens, Gian had a friend with a vision impairment who had used the site in question just days earlier...

Q&A

What are the top priority actions to start moving towards accessibility?

1. Alt attributes for images
2. Ensure the site works for keyboard users
3. Code tables properly
4. Degrades ok without CSS
5. Equivalents for js flash etc
6. Forms – really important. Labels, etc

What is the state of accessbility-related litigation in Australia?

There have been three HREOC claims since Maguire vs. SOCOG, all three were mediated out rather than going to court.

Re: litigation; is the problem having an inaccessible site, or refusing to fix it once there’s a problem?

HREOC are required to try mediation first, so you don't suddenly get sued with no recourse.

Is there a big gap between WCAG 1.0 and testing with real users?

Yes – the guidelines are really old and reality has moved on. That’s why you need to do real testing.

What is your position on alternatives that take more effort to use…?

No, it’s not fair; but life’s not fair. Disabled users also tend to be more used to dealing with less than perfect situations.

Labels: accessibility, gian sampson-wild, wd06

[Semi-liveblogged]

Real subtitle should be 'Where do we go for beer?'

Checklist syndrome: bringing down accessibility
Leads to a compliance/QA impersonal approach

But accessibility is personal, it’s about user testing and it’s about removing barriers.

“What if screen readers could access microformats? How cool would that be?”

Where should we be looking for inspiration for web accessibility?

• How about the gaming industry? Gamers have some crazy keyboards and input devices.
• The physical world - eg. pedestrian crossing buttons which vibrate as well as click/beep. "How cool is that?" Or the braille/raised lettering sign that put the tactile signage on a comfortable angle for ease of use. It doesn't just comply, it creates a good user experience.
• How about the car industry? They solve all kinds of issues, maybe they've got ideas we should be taking on board.

Discussed the accessibility features being created for Blackberries. Also admitted he sleeps with his Blackberry; said he wouldn't tell us where on Flickr you can find the image, but "hey with tagging no doubt you'll be able to find it...". Well, yup: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glsims99/14020019/

Cognitive disabilities: people don't seem to know what to do, although some companies are starting to work on it. Some new phones are being built with simple interfaces; consistent toolbars and uncluttered menus. The obvious thing to note here is that making things consistent and easy to use helps everybody, not just people who would identify themselves as "disabled".

Let's make things easier for everyone. Thing about tagging - "these are the same people I tag on Web Connections, d.construct, Flickr, Cork'd... we all tag each other, that's all we do now!!!"

What if we let users define their own access keys so authors don't have to do it? Not to mention they interfere with people's existing key profiles. Why not create a microformat which stores this information? Think of the power of that. What if we get to a point where we don't supply any CSS any more? Users set up their global stylesheet and have their preferred styles applied to everything! "...the power! POWER TO THE PEOPLE! That's what this is about."

What if the browser could learn? It could recognise that the last three times you visited a site you bumped up the text size, then just do that for you.

What if we replaced all the browser controls with a button that says "I can't read this page", which launches a wizard to help you change it so you can read it.

Q&A

How to convince people that it's important?

One thing - show people assistive technology users. "It's a life changing experience. I don't know anyone who didn't find it a life-changing experience to see a screen reader user or a mobility impaired user with speech recognition software."

Labels: accessibility, derek featherstone, wd06

[Liveblog - liveblogging may continue depending on batteries and wrists ;)]

Jeremy Keith is running through 'am I AJAX or not'. Good points about the definition of AJAX - it's such an abused term; people tend to equate it directly with 'Web 2.0' (another abused term!).

I guess ultimately from the point of view of the user, they simply don't care. It's not about whether something is AJAX or not, so much as 'does it work'; and AJAX techniques (used for good and not evil) can create that sensation. Users can get small bits of information back quickly without waiting - people like the feeling of speed and the page hasn't triggered boredom responses.

Jeremy goes on to suggest that the way to choose when to use AJAX is to get into pattern recognition - what user behaviour and expectation will benefit from AJAX? For example adding a product to an online shopping cart - the user doesn't want the whole page to go away and reload just because they added something to the cart. When you don't need to update the entire page, then it's a good time to use AJAX.

But, a bad time to use AJAX might be to have entire pages of search results - you're keeping less than you're changing. Traditional paradigms hold true and the user's experience isn't disrupted.

A great way to illustrate the principle of 'keep the user informed': Jeremy (like me, as it happens) likes the window seat on planes so he knows when the plane is about to actually land. The moment of impact is scary if you can't prepare, but really not too bad when you know it's about to happen.

Jeremy echoes somehing that Derek discussed yesterday in the Accessibility 2.0 workshop: if you emulate an interface feature, you must emulate it completely. Which is a great argument to support being a bit more choosey about when to use certain UI features. Do you really need to have drag and drop in a web app? Will your users expect it? Have you emulated every possible outcome of the drag/drop motion? You need to be aware of all the implications of what you're doing.

A big reminder: if it's not accessible, it's still no good! Things must still be accessible and usable. You don't get to dodge the accessibility requirements just because AJAX is 'new and shiny'. The good news is that AJAX does not preclude accessibility, but you have to be really aware of what you're doing and what will happen in screen readers.

In closing, Jeremy once again quoted Tim Berners-Lee: The power of the web is in its universality... In my opinion, I don't care if it is cliched to use that quote. For me it never gets old. It is and will remain an incredibly important statement about what the web should be.

I think it's a great thing for our industry that a talk on AJAX finished with a discussion of accessibility.

Labels: accessibility, ajax, jeremy keith, pattern recognition, wd06

The latest product of Google labs shows Google managing to do the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time: Google Accessible Search. It's kind of spectacular that Google can produce a search specifically for accessible resources and still not make a best-practice search form or results page.

It's a pity to see Google miss such a great opportunity to prove they understand accessibility. The pages are a mass of tables and font tags just like any other Google product (ok, so the FAQ does at least use semantic tags, even if it skips the DOCTYPE). Then to cap it off, they promote "accessibility" but only talk about vision impairment. A trap for young players, perhaps; but Google is not a young player.

The service does at least show that it is possible to rank accessible sites higher than tag soup; perhaps we should by lobbying Google to add this to their general search. Creating a separate search reinforces the perception that disabled users should be segregated; or that accessibility is somehow incompatible with "normal" sites.

doesn't it work anyway?

Now, I know that Google's search page is so simple that effectively it's probably "accessible enough". Similarly, the results pages are probably usable despite being sloppy markup. The problem is that it's only by accident that these pages are still accessible. If you're doing something wrong, getting away with it doesn't turn it into doing something right.

To really compound the problem, people use Google's non-compliance as "evidence" that accessibility doesn't matter. They say If Google doesn't do it, why should I bother? That's about the time when accessibility advocates think briefly of belting them one, then instead smile and do their best to explain their point of view ;)

do no evil

I have no doubt that individuals at Google understand accessibility and web standards. However Google the corporation can only be judged by its actions.

Google's refusal to use web standards or meet accessibility guidelines helps perpetuate bad practice across the web. Regardless of cute slogans that may have been scribbled on a whiteboard at Google once... through inaction on standards and accessibility, Google does a little evil every day.

Labels: accessibility, don't be evil, google

CATS: Home: The CATS Project has established a framework for good practice that provides information and resources to assist universities to create equitable access for students with disability and to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Standards for Education.

There are a huge number of accessibility/equity challenges involved in education. The CATS resource not only covers the what and why of accessibility, it goes beyond discussion and into the practicalities. For example, Making information systems accessible recommends that you should Consult with students with disability... and it then links on to a guide on how to actually go about it (Accommodations: Consulting with students with disability about their needs).

Well done to all involved!

Labels: accessibility, education

I've been thinking about the Presentation Zen post Nobody's Perfect. Thankfully not due to some presentation going horribly wrong, but instead because it reminds us that we can't get a perfect score every time. Standards advocates would do well to keep this idea in mind.

Because we shoot for the highest standard, sometimes we are too inflexible - unwilling to compromise or accept that something less than perfect may still be an excellent step forward. We can also fall into the trap of trying to say no instead of trying to say yes. Worst of all we might swap high standards for a high horse (or possibly a shetland pony).

People may think standards guys like me are critical of other peoples' work (we pretty much have to be), but the truth is we're probably much tougher on our own work. If we're not careful we can end up focussed on what we haven't achieved, without giving ourselves any credit for what we have achieved.

making hard work of it

I fell into the "but it's not perfect..!" trap a couple of weeks ago. I had a bad week: good work being hijacked with bad work; copping personal attacks for professional duties; getting a reputation for being "anti" because I don't change my opinion of a bad product just because some time has passed.

Everyone has those bad days where you think about chucking it all in; but ultimately I came back to the realisation that I didn't choose the web standards path because I thought it was easy, I chose it because I thought it was right. That's right sportsfans, I'm a true believer.

What I hadn't done was take my own advice and stay sane in the middle of it all. So I took stock, reminded myself that we have actually made quite a bit of progress and it's just my impatience (and a frustrating week) that's getting me down.

so are high standards really a problem?

In general, high standards are a good thing - after all, if you aim low then you'll never hit a high target. The trick is to aim high but still within the bounds of reality; and not to aim so high we can't accept the odd compromise.

Sometimes we just have to cut ourselves some slack about where we aim and whether we fall short.

We're not perfect, the industry is not perfect and we're not going to attain worldwide web standards perfection tomorrow (probably not ever, actually). We have to accept the imperfections of our industry just as we have to accept our own flaws.

Labels: accessibility, advocacy, web standards

The big news right now is, of course, Target(.com) being sued: box of chocolates | Taking Aim at Target(.com).

I've looked around at a few threads, some within the web industry and a couple of legal sites. Some of the comments I've seen are appalling. People saying the suit is ridiculous, a waste of time, that nobody is getting hurt if Target's website in not accessible. The word "freedom" being tossed around to justify treating disabled net users like they're second class citizens.

I think I'll scream if I see one more person trot out the idiot line "blind people can't drive so let's sue the car manufacturers". Discrimination through ignorance is a galling thing.

it's discrimination, not free trade

One point people are missing is that we really are talking about discrimination. Making an inaccessible website means treating some customers as second-class citizens. Target is refusing to serve them, just as effectively as if they turned their backs on them instore.

This is not trivial, this is not some minor detail which really makes no difference to the people involved. The net has become fundamental to many peoples' lives. The net can allow a person to do a large number of mundane tasks from the comfort and safety of their own home. It can save huge amounts of time and leave energy for more important things in life.

Why should disabled people be denied this simple convenience? Not forgetting that for some users, shopping online goes beyond mere convenience, it could be the difference between needing assistance and being independent (at least for one more task).

it's the law

Now let's cast aside the moral highground, since it doesn't motivate business. Plain and simple, accessibility is the law. As Joe Clark has pointed out, Target is bound by law not to discriminate against someone based on skin colour, religion or disability. It's one of those rare laws which are based on enforcing some basic humanity on the free market.

Around the world, there are many different implementations of the basic concept; usually with a clause about not causing undue harship on the provider. There is no undue hardship on Target to make their website accessible. They have in fact demonstrated how easy it would be for a company with their resources to fix the problems, by fixing some of them within 24 hours.

so why does it still happen?

So if it's the right thing to do and it's the law anyway... why do we still see so many inaccessible websites?

In part, I think it's ignorance.

People don't know that it's the law, they don't understand why it's the right thing to do, they don't know that it's entirely achievable. Even if they are aware of the issue, many people think it's not serious or that it's too hard to do anything about it.

We, the advocates, need to inform the uninformed.

we already know

An accessible web would be a great leveller (would be, we're certainly not there yet). Online, who knows or cares if you have a disability? People can only see what you say, you can be judged on what you think without being judged on what you look like. You should be able to do anything and everything the same as anyone else who can access the internet. People can love and hate you for it, just like anyone else.

Advocates of accessibility and web standards are, obviously, convinced that these things are worthwhile. We know, in our hearts and minds, that accessibility is right. We know, because something has convinced us.

Perhaps we know someone with a disability, perhaps we've simply heard about the challenges they face. Perhaps it was enough to realise that the technology exists to make the web accessible to everyone.

we have to attack ignorance

Not only do we need to work on the technology that makes accessibility possible, we have to convince people that they need to use that technology. We have to find people who don't understand, yet could make a difference if they did. We need to show them, in ways that makes easy sense to them, why it's right and why it's possible.

If they still don't care, then we have to show them why it's the law anyway and they don't have a choice. Carrots and sticks, honey and vinegar, however you like to say it. People cannot be allowed to live in the blissful ignorance which lets them perpetuate online discrimination.

We also need to inform the bystanders, who quite clearly don't realise that this issue is important. This is difficult, since the default state of most people seems to be apathy; but with enough hard work even the biggest issues can start to turn around. Pushing for web accessibility would be just a little easier if the general public had a better understanding of what it's all about.

If we can attack ignorance, if we can inform enough people, then maybe one day the lawsuits won't be required so much any more. I suspect that sometimes the big stick will still have to come out, but maybe afterwards people will be more receptive to the carrot.

Labels: accessibility, advocacy, law, target