24 posts tagged “accessibility”
The Designing for Disability
A recent blog post by Neil Witt on The VC’s New VLE inspired me to provide a new introduction to a talk I gave at the “Designing for Disability” seminar held on Friday 5th December 2008 at the British Museum.
I was an invited speaker at this event was organised by the Museums Association and the Jodi Awards. The title of my talk, the final talk of the day, was “Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility“.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Let me tell you the tale, I began, of the benevolent emperor. He was kind and wished to do his best for his subjects. So when he was told of a secret formulae produced by a wizard from a far-off land which would ensure that all of the subjects of his empire would be able to access all of his edicts, he wanted to know more. He was told that the secret formulae would ensure that the blind, the handicapped and the crippled of his land (this story, I should add, took place long ago, when,sadly, such politically incorrect words were the norm) were would all be able to read his edicts. “This sounds truly wonderful” the emperor announced (thinking that it would also be good if they could also read about the new taxes he intended to implement - for even in fairy tales, there is a need for financial prudence and long term sustainability).
And so the emperor announced that henceforth all official pronouncements, all new laws, all new taxes must comply with the WAI way (as the magic new approach became known. And so the lord chief justice issued the proclamation and the Knights of the Accessible Table rode through the kingdom to ensure that the magic was being used everywhere. “Anyone for fails to comply with the magic will be banished“, it was announced.
Life was good, in the land. And when one of the knights who was made blind in a battle complained that he could read the edicts but couldn’t understand them, he was ignored. And when rumours appeared that there were places in the far-flung regions of the empire where the magic wasn’t being used, but people could still read the emperor’s edicts, this was dismissed.
“But it’s true!” said a little boy. “There’s a new magic, that’s even better. It’s not the WAI way magic, it’s called ‘Inclusive design“.
And in my talk I described the story which the little boy told.
And this story is true, dear friends. For I was that little boy - and so, too, were David Sloan, Liddy Nevile, Jane Seale, EA Draffan, Helen Petrie, Caro Howell, Lawrie Phipps, Andy Heath, Hamilton Fraser, Elaine Swift and many others. For that little boy was a member of the Knights Who Gathered Evidence. And here is the tale I told, which is available on Google Video.
The Evidence From The Day
This tale introduced the talk I gave, in which I summarised the various peer0reviewed papers I’ve contributed to since 2004. I described the limitation of the WAI model and the WCAG guidelines, the evidence from a number of Web accessibility surveys which demonstrates that conforming with the guidelines does not necessarily provide accessible Web services and Web services which do not conform to the guidelines have been found to be very accessible. I went on to describe some of the challenges to be faced in understanding what accessibility means in the context of learning and cultural appreciation.
I was particularly pleased that the holistic approach to Web accessibility which I described seemed to apply so closely to the various case studies which were described during the day.This included:
- Andy Minnion’s talk on “New Media for Access and Participation by People with Learning Disabilities“. He concluded that universal access with a single interface and minor changes of style and appearance do not meet the needs of this group. Content itself needs to be adapted and technical compliance, while important for other groups, is not in itserlf and accessibility solution.
- Linda Ellis’s talk on the use of British Sign Language video guides to improve access for deaf visitors to Bantock House and Park. She argued that content aimed specifically for Deaf visitors was needed and that, as BSL is a language in its own right, information provided in BSL is needed, since Deaf visitors may find it difficult to understand information provided in English.
- Andrew Payne, The National Archives, on a project to maximise access to the Prisoner 4099 archives. Andrew mentioned how “Flash can be accessible, but you need to be careful”. Based on experiences such as this Andrew concluded by suggest that we “Don’t believe the box tickers”.
I very much agree with Andrew - don’t believe the box tickers. And don’t believe anyone who suggests there’s a simple solution to difficult and complex challenges - whether they be wicked elves or government policy makers!
Posted in Accessibility, EventsBack in September I presented a paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” at the ADDW08 conference in which I described my criticisms of the WAI approach to Web accessibility and argued the need to explore alternative approaches. Shadi Abou-Zhara, who works for W3C WAI was in the audience and after I gave my talk he said that he didn’t disagree with many of the points I had made in my talk, but didn’t see what relevance they had to the WAI approach to Web accessibility. Shadi had made a similar point after I presented a paper on “Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes” at the W4A 2007 conference.
But if Shadi has no fundamental disagreements with the holistic approach to Web accessibility that myself, David Sloan, Lawrie Phipps and other have been developing over the years how does this relate to the ongoing work of Shadi, his colleagues in W3C WAI and those involved in WAI working group activities over the years?
Reflecting on the comments Shadi made and the discussions I had at the ADDW 2008 conference with David MacDonald, an invited expert to the WCAG 2.0 group it seems to my that there is a mismatch between the work being carried out by WAI and the expectations of users of the WAI guidelines.
In response to a question about the relationships between usability and accessibility it seems that WAI’s interest is in usability only as far as it affects users with disabilities significantly more than most users. And I think this view which focusses purely on the needs of users with disabilities results in an approach which is blind to real world complexities and to the actual take-up and effectiveness of their solutions.
The developers of WAI accessibility guidelines seem to have a narrowly defined scope for their work. This seems to cover the development of technical guidelines which will enhance accessibility for users with various types of disabilities. In is not in scope for people at WAI to address the resource implications of conforming with their guidelines, the complexities of implementing the guidelines or to consider alternatives ways in which accessibility challenges can be addressed.
If these issues are out-of-scope for WAI, then there’s a need for the issues to be addressed by the user community. And this will include addressing these difficult issues. It is the user community to decide when the WAI guidelines may be the best way of providing accessible services, when other solutions may be relevant and to ensure that cost-effective and sustainable solutions are provided.
The WAI guidelines have an important role to play in helping to enhance the accessibility of networked services - but the user organisations have to make the more challenging decisions of deciding when to make use of WAI guidelines and when other solutions may be relevant.
Posted in AccessibilityThere’s an interesting discussion taking place on the JISC-Repositories JISCMail list, following a post from Jenny Delasalle who asked:
Do any of you know how long it takes you to process a single item, before it is available as a live record in your repository? Please can you share that information with the list?
Jenny provided details of her experiences:
Here at Warwick it takes at least 2 hours to process a single item. We are adding to our repository at a rate of about 15 items per week. I’m desperate to try to speed this up as we are receiving items faster than we can process them.
My colleague Pete Cliff somewhat tentatively suggested “why not put the items in the repository with minimal metadata“.
Pete and others seemed to feel that such compromises may be needed “in the current climate where quantity seems to have more impact than quality“. But this is where I would disagree. This argument seems to be simply a cry for more resources in an area of interest to those making such a plea. But people will always be asking for more resources for their areas of interest - and, as there will always be limited resources, others will argue that their areas are more worthy of being allocated more resources. And it strikes me as being somewhat disingenuous to have developed an approach which is known to be resource-intensive and then to make a plea for additional resources in order for the particular approach to be effective. A more honest approach would have been to develop a solution which was better suited for the available resources.
This was an argument I made last week in my talk on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future“. As I described in my talk (and note a 30 minute video of the talk is available). I pointed out that evidence suggests that Web accessibility policies based on conformance with WCAG AA have clearly failed, except in a small number of cases. And rather than calling for additional resources to be allocated to changing this we need to acknowledge that this won’t happen, and to explore alternative approaches.
And it is interesting to note that apprarent lack of interest on the JISC-Repositiories list in discussing the accessibility of resources in the repositories rather than the metadata requirements for aiding resource discover. Indeed when this topic was discussed a couple of year’s ago Les Carr, with a openness which I appreciated, argued that:
If accessibility is currently out of reach for journal articles, then it is another potential hindrance for OA. I think that if you go for OA first (get the literature online, change researchers’ working practices and expectations so that maximum dissemination is the normal state of affairs) THEN people will find they have a good reason to start to adapt their information dissemination behaviours towards better accessibility.
Here Les is arguing that the costs of providing accessibility resources in Institutional Repositories is too great, and can act as a barrier to maximising open access to institutional research activities. I would very much agree with Les that we need to argue priorities - as opposed to simply asking that someone (our institutions, the government - it’s never clear who) should give us more money to do the many good things we would like to do in our institutions.
In the case of Institutional Repositories we then have competing pressures for resources for metadata creation and management and for enhancing the accessibility of the resources. In this context It should be noted that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines have reached the status of Candidate Recommendation, and that WAI Web site states quite clearly “We encourage you to start using WCAG 2.0 now“. And note that, unlike the WCAG 1.0 guidelines, WCAG 2.0 is format neutral. So you can provide resources on your Web site in a variety of formats, but such resources need to conform with the guidelines if it is your institutional policy to do so.
So shouldn’t institutions who have made public commitment to comply with WCAG guidelines ensure that this applies to content in their institutional repositories, even if this will require a redeployment of effort from other activities, such as metadata creation?
Or, alternatively, you may feel that complying with a set of rules, such as WCAG, without doing the cost-benefit analysis or exploring other approaches to achieving the intended goals is mis-guided. In which case perhaps Pete’s suggestion that you might wish to consider “put[ting] the items in the repository with minimal metadata” might actually be a sensible approach rather than an unfortunate compromise? And in response to Philip Hunter’s comment that “achieving interoperability through dumbing-down the metadata has a strange attractiveness in a world not overly crazy for quality” perhaps we should be arguing that “achieving interoperability and accessibility through labour-intensive manual efforts is a perverse solution in a public sector environment in which should be demonstrating that we can provide cost effective solutions“?
Posted in Accessibility, RepositoriesI previously mentioned a joint paper on “Redefining Accessibility for a Web 2.0 World” which has been accepted for the ADDW08 conference to be held at the University of York on 22-24th September 2008. David Sloan, the lead author for the paper, will present this paper.
In addition to this paper Liddy Nevile and myself have had a paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” also accepted at the ADDW08 conference. This paper describes three scenarios: it explores the limitations of a vision for Web accessibility based on use of the WAI approach to provide “universal accessibility” and then describes the limitations of the “holistic approach to Web accessibility” developed initially by myself, Lawrie Phipps and David Sloan. The paper describes how these approaches focus on, in the first scenario, on the accessibility of individual resources and, in the second scenario, on institutional approaches to enhancing the accessibility of the purposes of the Web services. However neither of these approaches seems to have much relevance to the accessibility of the globally popular Web 2.0 services. And if we are serious about Web accessibility we should be looking at the accessibility of the global World Wide Web, and not just individual resources or the resources managed within our institutions.
But how should be go about addressing such large-scale challenges? In the paper we suggest that we should be exploring how the relationships between resources might help to provide users with access to related resources and how personalisation approaches might provide users with access to resources which are accessible to the individual user, rather than being universally accessible. The vision, Liddy and I feel, can be regarded as an implementation of the W3C’s vision for the Semantic Web. But we also argue the need to have the scepticism which failed to be applied to WAI’s model for Web accessibility.
The slides which will be presented at the conference are available on Slideshare and are embedded below.
And as we argued the need for a critical approach to proposals for Web accessibility (which we have taken in the past to the limitations of the WAI model and the WCAG guidelines) we invite your comments on our paper and this presentation.
Posted in Accessibility Tagged: addw08On the The thoughts of a Code Gorilla blog a post on Videos from Repository Fringe 2008 provides a link to a number of videos of talks given at the Repository Fringe held recently in Edinburgh. The blog is written by a software developed who has been “identified as “a free thinker” by JISC“.
The post states that the videos “will be made available via a Streaming Server at some point, however this is a microsoft-specific platform, so non-windows/non-Internet Explorer users struggle to access the data“. In order to maximise the access to the videos Code Gorilla has “uploaded them to google video“.
As I mentioned in post on the Open Standards and the JISC IErecently at one stage there was a fairly hard line view that open standards must be adopted in order to provide device independence - in the case of multimedia, W3C’s SMIL standard wold seem to be particularly relevant for synching audio, video and other resources such as presentation files. However as we see in this example, the vision that we had several years ago has failed to have any significant impact, as instead it is the popular services such as Google Video and YouTube which are being used to deliver such resources, as well as providing additional functionality, such as user comments and the ability to embedded the resources in other pages, as illustrated below.
It is also interesting to note that this also provides a good example of a pragmatic approach to the accessibility of such resources. At one stage, when the SENDA legislation was being deployed, there was a feeling in some circles that institutions would need to remove videos from their services unless they could provide full captioning. We now, however, widely accept the view that we need to take ‘reasonable measures’ to provide accessible alternatives - and that removing resources does not improve their accessibility.
So my congratulations to the ‘free thinker’ who has so clearly demonstrated that the naive views that we used to have can, in circumstances such as this, be ignored in order to maximise benefits to the user and provide cost-effective solutions.
It is appropriate to embed this video of Dorothea Salo’s keynote talk at the Repository Fringe 2008, with her comments that “idealism isn’t enough” and “programmers are moving towards flexibility”.
And finally I should add that at the end of this video clip (45 minutes in) Dorothy mentions the impacts that both Paul Walk and Andy Powell are having in questioning some of the assumptions which have been made in the past regarding the technical approaches taken to institutional repositories.
We do need more ‘free thinkers’, I feel.
David Sloan and myself have had a paper on “Redefining Accessibility for a Web 2.0 World” accepted for the ADDW08 (Accessible Design in the Digital World) conference which will be held at the University of York on 23-24th September 2008. The paper reviews our work in Web accessibility from the early days of promoting the WAI model and use of WCAG guidelines through to our realisation of the limitations of this approach, initially in the content of e-learning accessibility and then more wider concerns. This work led to the development of alternative approaches to enhancing the accessibility of Web resources which were published in eight peer-reviewed papers (not included the two papers which have been accepted for the ADDW08 conference).
I order to collate the historical data for the paper I created a Dipity time line of my involvement in accessibility work since attending the WAI launch meeting in July 1997. This is illustrated below.
I found the timeline very useful in giving me a bigger picture of my work in this area and provides me with fresh insights which I was unaware of from just looking at my lists of papers and presentations. In particular I can spot several different phases in my work which are summarised in the table below.
| Date | Phase | Comments |
| 1997-1999 | Naivity | The first few year were based on learning more about the WAI approach to Web accessibility, including the WCAG, ATAG and UAAG guidelines. Advice was provided based of this approach. During this time I was also a member of the DISinHE Steering Group. |
| 2000-2001 | Silence | The timeline indicates little activity in this period. Perhaps there was little new to say, as the view then was that WCAG conformance was all that Web developers need concern themselves with. In this case, best practices would primarily be a training issue to be carried out by bodies such as Netskills, rather than a development/innovative activity which is a key aspect of UKOLN’s work. |
| 2002 | Evidence-gathering | During 2002 a number of automated accessibility surveys were carried out in order to gather evidence of institutional adoption of WCAG guidelines. The findings showed low levels of conformance, and as further manual testing would be needed in order to provide proof of conformance with the WCAG guidelines, it was starting to become clear that the WCAG approach was failing to have impact amongst practitioners, despite its clear political success. |
| 2003 | Debating alternative approaches | Panel sessions on “Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?” at the ILI 2003 conference and ”Web Accessibility: Will WCAG 2.0 Better Meet Today’s Challenges?” at the WWW 2003 conference and a debate on “Web accessibility is difficult to implement” provide opportunities to raise doubts over the effectiveness of the WAI approach. |
| 2004- | Alternative approaches for e-learning accesibility published | Lawrie Phipps (then at TechDis) and I discuss alternative approaches for e-learning accessibility and, together with Elaine Swift (then an e-learning developer at the University of Bath) have a paper on Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning Accessibility published in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. These ideas are further developed for a prize-winning paper on “Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility” presented at the ALT-C 2005 conference and a paper on “Holistic Approaches to E-Learning Accessibility” published in the ALT-J journal in 2006. |
| 2006- | Alternative approaches to Web accessibility framework published | A paper on “Forcing Standardization or AccommodatingDiversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG in the Real World” was presented at the W4A 2005 conference. This paper was co-authored by myself, Lawrie Phipps and David Sloan, who have been the main driving force behind this work. Further papers which further developed our holistic framework for accessibility and applied the approach beyond e-learning accessibility were published at the W4A 2006 (”Contextual Web Accessibility - Maximizing the Benefit of Accessibility Guidelines“), W4A 2007 (”Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes“) and W4A 2008 (”One World, One Web … But Great Diversity“) conferences. |
| 2006- | Alternative approaches to Web accessibility disseminated | From 2006 to date the alternative approaches to Web accessibility have been disseminated to UKOLN’s core communities, including the UK’s higher and further education communities, the library, museum and the public sector organisations. This work has included taking part in a panel session on “Web and Access” at the “e-Access’06 Conference“, chairing a Public Sector Conference on Accessibility, helping to organise the Accessibility Summit II, giving a talk on “The Accessible Web” at the “Web Adept: Museums and the Web 2007 conference”, facilitating a session on “What Does Accessibility Mean To The Blogging Community?” at the blogs.ac.uk conference, facilitating a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred Approach To Web Accessibility” at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference, giving an online interview on “Web Accessibility” in an Access to Experts interview organised by CHIN, contributing a chapter on “Accessibility in the Future for book on “Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional” as well as writing a series of posts on accessibility on this blog. |
The timeline has helped me to gain a better understanding of my work in Web accessibility over the past decade and how this work, led initially by myself and Lawrie Phipps and later supported by David Sloan) has been furthered developed and refined by ever-growing numbers of accessibility practitioners and researchers in the UK and Australia. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank the co-authors of my peer-reviewed papers for their contribution to this work: in order of date of publication these are: Lawrie Phipps, Elaine Swift, David Sloan, Helen Petrie, Fraser Hamilton, Caro Howell, Liddy Nevile, Ann Chapman, Andy Heath, Stephen Brown, Jane Seale, Patrick Lauke, Simon Ball, EA Draffan and Sotiris Fanou, not forgetting Stuart Smith, although the publication of that paper has been delayed.
What lies ahead, I wonder? The release of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines should provide an opportunity for institutions to rethink their approaches to Web accessibility as these guidelines remove some of the more flawed of the WCAG1.0 checkpoints and are, I’m pleased to say, format-agnostic. But what of the implications of the popularity of many Social Web and Web 2.0 services? And can the Semantic Web finally start to provide useful benefits to the user community, including accessibility benefits? These are some of the questions which Liddy Nevile and myself will be raising in our paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” which will also be presented at the ADDW08 conference. More of that work in a later post.
I was recently reading the EDINA Newsletter. EDINA, a JISC-funded national datacentre based at the University of Edinburgh, has announced its strategic plan for 2008-2011(PDF) and amongst its priorities are “improving engagement with our user communities” and “appropriate use of Web 2.0 social media and collaboration tools“.
It seems that EDINA has already started implementing these plans, as the newsletter also describes the EDINA Digimap blog which has been launched as a way of “exploring alternatives to email for distributing information about the service“. It is interesting to note that the blog is hosted on Blogspot. This strikes me as a sensible - rather than having to find technical expertise in-house to install and maintain blog software EDINA are using a well-established and mature externally-hosted service. It was also interesting to note that they are using Blogspot rather than WordPress. I suspect that, after lagging behind a few years ago, Blogspot may have caught up with WordPress in its functionality and ease-of-use.
The newsletter also mentioned that the Suncat service (the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK research community) now has a “search application that anyone on Facebook can easily add to their profile, enabling them to search for journals held in over 60 UK research libraries” - and if you have a Facebook account you may wish to try the application.
Externally-hosted blogs and Facebook applications - it does seem that EDINA is embracing Web 2.0. And reading the strategic plan for 2008-2011 (PDF format) it seems this decision was made in order to enhance accessibility of its services. The plan describes how “EDINA recognises the growing user-base arising from delivery of service to a widening client community and integration with other environments, especially those using mobile technologies. In addition, the growth in popularity of Web 2.0 social media and collaboration tools is important for the support of learning and research activity.” I was also pleased to read that although EDINA is committed to improving the utility and usability of its services for “the full range of its users, including those with disabilities” EDINA has acknowledged that
“adopting too conservative an approach risks disenfranchising many users and therefore EDINA will evaluate how its services can be presented and personalised to address changing information-seeking and user practices, including access through devices other than computer screens, such as PDAs and mobile phones.“
It is good to see a national JISC service such as EDINA embracing Web 2.0 and making a commitment to enhancing the accessibility of its services by providing personalised services and supporting a variety of devices (and it is noticeable that no reference is made in the plan to achieving such accessibility be simply mandating WAI-compliance).
I commented previously on the Public consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites (TG102) which proposed that “all government websites must meet Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines by December 20082009“. It seems that this proposal has now been implemented. Some may feel that this is to be welcomed, but as I have argued previously, mandating use of a dated set of Web accessibility guidelines which have been shown to be flawed will, I believe, be counter-productive. And judging by an article by Julie Howell (formerly of the RNIB and currently Director of Accessibility at Fortune Cookie and chair of the British Standards Institution’s committee on web accessibility) entitled Web Accessibility. Life In the Post-Guideline Age I don’t think I’m alone in my views.
The updated Chapter 2.4 to the Guidelines for UK Government Websites document is now available as a document on Delivering inclusive websites (MS Word format; a PDF version but no HTML and HTML versions are also available) states that:
- The minimum level of accessibility for all Government websites is Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines. Any new site approved by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Public Engagement and the Delivery of Service (DA(PED)) must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication.
- Continuing standalone sites must achieve this level of accessibility by December 2008. Websites which fail to meet the mandated level of conformance shall be subject to the withdrawal process for .gov.uk domain names, as set out in Naming and Registering Websites (TG101).
That’s right - if Government Web sites don’t achieve WCAG AA compliance by December 2009, their domain name may be withdrawn. That’s bound to enhance the accessibility of the service, isn’t it?
I wondered about the accessibility of the 10 Downing Street Web site. Putting this through a HTML validator I find mutiple validation errors. And as HTML compliance is mandatory (in WCAG 1.0), this means that the Web site fails to pass the Government minimum standards for accessibility. And if this is still the case in December, the No 10 Downing Street Web site will be forced to shut down - with processes for shutting down Government Web sites have already been documented (in MS Word and PDF formats).
Will we see a drastic pruning of the Central Government Web sites which aren’t included in the table at the start of the 2009? Or will we see vast amounts of tax-payer’s money being spend on ensuring that the Web sites manage to pass the automated tests? Or perhaps we’ll simply see a withdrawal of the services.
What we can’t say is that the Web sites which fail the automated tests are necessarily inaccessible to people with disabilities. And we also can’t say that the Web sites which pass the automated tests are necessarily accessible to people with disabilities. This approach is all about passing artificial benchmarks, not addressing the needs of citizens with disabilities.
An unfortunate aspect of this new policy is that when the JISC TechDis Service together with UKOLN organised the Accessibility Summit II event on A User-Focussed Approach to Web Accessibility we ensured that as well as inviting accessibility researchers and representatives form the disability community (including Kevin Carey founder of HumanITy and Robin Christoperson, head of Accessibility Services, AbilityNet) we also invited a representative form the central Government. The participants at the meeting agreed on the need “to call on the public sector to rethink policy and guidelines on accessibility of the web to people with a disability“. As David Sloan, Research Assistant at the School of Computing at the University of Dundee and co-founder of the summit reported in a article published in the E-Government Bulletin “the meeting unanimously agreed the WCAG were inadequate“.
What is to be done? The cynic, disillusioned by the current Government, might relish the embarrassment Gordon Brown and his Cabinet colleagues may face when the implications of this decision become more widely known. And we can expect opposition Shadow Cabinet Ministers and papers such as the Daily Mail using this as an opportunity to undermine the Government, with initial questions of “Will the minister explain why almost 90% of Government Web sites can’t be accessed by people with disabilities?” to be followed by “Will the minister give the costs of changing Government Web sites to comply with WCAG accessibility standards which are now obsolete?” or “Will the minister explain why the Government has caved in to European demands to implement a set of politically-correct guidelines which researchers have shown to be flawed?”“. And if the Government does carry out its promise to shut down non-compliance Web sites: “Why has the Government shut down its Web sites? This is political correctness gone mad“.
But to take satisfaction in such embarrassment is to miss the point. Implementation of this policy is likely to result in a deterioration of the quality of Government services to all:-)
A blog post on the Justin Thorp’s Oatmeal blog informs me that “all the major browsers are now doing something to support [WAI-ARIA]“. And I quickly find that the Paciello Group confirms IE 8’s support for ARIA: their blog posts describes the Microsoft’s announcement that “Internet Explorer 8 uses ARIA role, state, and property information to communicate with assistive technologies” as “amazing news in terms of WAI ARIA implementation!“.
And, as might be expected, the Firefox browser also supports ARIA (Accessibility Rich Internet Applications) - W3C WAI’s guideline for ensuring that richly interactive Web services which make use of technologies such as JavaScript to enhance their accessibility, usability and functionality can be used by a variety of client devices, including assistive technologies.
The support for ARIA by mainstream browsers is clearly good news and, with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines now available as a Candidate Recommendation, it is now timely for institutions to begin planning how they will respond to these pleasing developments - especially for those in the educational sector who should be in the process of planning upgrades to their technlcal environment and corresponding policies, training, etc. during the summer vacation.
The simple response would be to suggest that institutions should migrate to the latest version of Firefox during the summer vacation (and note that the Firefox 3 Candidate Release was announced a few days ago). However when I suggested last year that Firefox was the researchers’ favourite application both Mark Sammons and Phil Wilson pointed out the difficulties of managing Firefox across the enterprise. And Mark has recently posted that the situation does not appear to have progressed significantly since then - indeed Mark, creator of the Firefox ADM enterprise administration tool in a post on The Firefox Enterprise Issue Hits the Media has argued that “the real problem with Firefox in the enterprise: Mozilla“.
But if Mark is correct and organisations are likely to find it difficult to manage the deployment and maintenance of Firefox across the enterprise at least IE 8 (and, also, I should add, Opera) are available which have support for the ARIA guidelines.
We also know that institutions have regarded support for WAI WCAG guidelines as important with many institutions making policy statements regarding their support for the guidelines. But as WAI have also regarded the WCAG guidelines as just one of a set of guidelines which need to be implemented in order to ensure that resources are widely accessible, surely it is clear that institutions should also be supporting the UAAG guidelines and ensure that the browsers deployed across the organisation support these guidelines. And surely that means upgrading to the latest version of IE, Firefox or, possibly, Opera.
Or to put it another way, if you fail to do this is your institution likely to be in breach of accessibility legislation which requires organisations to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t discriminated against unfairly?
In May 2007 I presented a paper entitled “Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes” at the W4A 2007 conference. This paper reflected discussions which took place at a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred Approach To Web Accessibility” which took place at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference.
Yesterday Frankie Roberto, a Web developer at the Science Museum, emailed me with details of a recent conference entitled “Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom“. Now the use of the 2.0 meme to refer to a renewed and user-focussed approach is nothing new, so we shouldn’t be surprised at seeing the ‘Accessibility 2.0′ term being coined by independent bodies. But what was pleased was to see that the ideas andf approaches which Lawrie Phipps and myself first described in a paper on “Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning Accessibility” back in 2004 being reflected by those more directly involved in accessibily support and advocacy.
The Accessibility 2.0 conference was described as “the first ever conference focussing on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world. By Web 2.0 we mean rich web applications which allow users to create content by writing blogs, uploading videos or commenting on other user’ content and creating networks.“. The conference Web site went on to say that “The title of the conference was inspired by T.V. Raman, a Google Research Scientist, to describe the current wave of creativity and innovation brought about by the development of web applications“.
The introduction to the conference was given by Robin Christopherson of AbilityNet. I’ve met Robin on a number of occasions and Robin participated at the Accessibility Summit II hosted by the JISC TechDis service for which I was one of the event co-facilitators and speakers. A report on the meeting was published in the E-Government Bulletin. The participants at the meeting “call[ed] for change in the way web accessibility is advocated particularly in local and central government, education and the museum and cultural sectors.“ Although we have not managed to organise a follow-up meeting, I feel the “Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom” conference has reflected the views and approaches expressed at the summit and brought those ideas out to a wider community.
The blog post about the conference which Frankie referred me to was entitled “Open Data“. In the blog post, written by Jeremy Keith, a Web developer living and working in Brighton, England, Jeremy expands on the talk he gave at the conference. Jeremy drew parallels with approaches which can address long term access to resources. He commented “Open formats are better than closed formats” whilst acknowledging that the ”terms “open” and “closed” are fairly nebulous“. Jeremy went even further by admitting that “Standardization doesn’t necessarily lead to qualitatively better formats. Quite the opposite in fact. The standardization process, by its very nature, involves compromise“. He goes on to support the simplicity of HTML, but, in response to the diversity provided by a Web 2.0 environment “instead of battling against the anarchic nature of the Web, go with it” and “embrace flexibility in your attitude towards accessibility“.
Jeremy argues that in today’s Web 2.0 world, users are now making use of publishing services (he himself mentions Flickr, Twitter, Pownce and Magnolia). In a world in which users may read and write in equal measures “accessibility guidelines that deal with Web content just don’t cut it any more“.
I very much welcome this contribution to the debate and, indeed, the image of Accessibility 2.0 reflecting a renewed approach to accessibility in which we encourage ‘a million flowers to bloom’. And it’s great to see this approach being advocated by those actively involved in the accessibility arena, such as organisations like Abilitynet, which hosted the conference. But how, I wonder, should we address the conservatism we’re likely to face within the institutions which have adopted an approach to Web accessibility which is based on simple conformance with checklists which simply cover the Web content? And what about the Web developers and content creators who, possibly for a period of almost 10 years, have prided themselves on implementing such guidelines? How should we change this culture?
