My idea of accessibility
Make stuff accessible! This has become a general dogma in the web. Rightfully so. This is particularly true when working for public institutions, since they are bound by law to be accessible from as long as 2002. And yet, if you do a tour through the websites of councils (Ajuntaments), province administrations (Diputacions), ministries and so on, it will only make you laugh (or cry). It is a law no one knows how to enforce.
Impaired/disabled people, users accessing through different architectures, platforms or reading software, machines trying to classify your webs, spiders, search bots, they are usually denied access to most websites content. I find it to be specially outraging for impaired people, since they are no less citizens nor content consumers than others and yet they’ve got no other alternative of access.
Sadly enough, if you are just a normal content creator and try to understand what the WCAG2 regulations are about, you will probably end up crazy. In my real life, I try to tackle accessibility as a philosophy for doing stuff. Most of the principles are the same my parents told me when I was a kid: Tidy stuff up, be organized, be clear,… If I create some content, I’ll try first to express it clearly and organize it (index, sitemaps, categories, tags, clear titles, beautiful permalinks). When that’s done, I’ll try to give as many ways of access to it as possible (HTML Standards, RSS feed, MP3 reading, etc.). Of course, I’ll take it into account in all details I code, for example if I insert an image I’ll provide it with an alternative description (in case someone can’t see it, or it is not rendered). If I post a link, I’ll provide it with a title (so it displays a tooltip indicator of where I’m taking the user). If I insert a script, I’ll wonder and handle the usage-case in which the user can’t interpret it. All of this should not be considered once I finishing my work, but right away while I’m doing it. As my mother used to tell me, stuff is extremely easy and simple when you address it right away and you make it become a habit, if you leave it for later, it will pile up and be an unbearable burden.
All this thoughts came to me today while I was thinking of the nice and clean design of Marcelino Llano’s website (he is a user experience engineer). Why not all blogs give the possibility to listen to the posts instead of reading them? After all, it takes nothing to read the post after writing it, you do it anyway to check your spelling… I’ll start with my own =)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Tags: accessibilityread postscreen readerswcag2
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Great initiative! ^^
Reading your blog posts is a great idea, but normally, blind people use screen readers, and if the web page is accessible enough, the screen reader will be able to read it for the user.
Normally the usage of ajax makes the screen reader to be unable to notice that something has changed.
The field of screen readers is dominated by one open source project and one or two private companies, and there is still a LOT of work to do.
In Spain, and in the ONCE (the national organization of spanish blind people) they use the private software (€1000) because its easier to use, and everybody is used to it (it was the first to exist).
If technology change management is complex in a normal environment with normal users, imagine when we are talking about blind people.
The thing is that if those readers were good enough, they would detect the audio enclosure of the post and read that instead. It is always better to listen human voice than a robot reader (even though I’m impressed how they’re improving over time).
Thanks for the insight for the current projects of screen readers. Unfortunately, I believe there isn’t a lot of research in screen readers, and they often lag behind the new technologies that appear. Once you could use no javascript at all if you wanted those readers to understand the content, and that meant saying bye bye to Web 2.0…
As they get better, it’s only in people’s attitudes to make their stuff accessible. And creating your content in as many formats as possible is just one way of doing so…
oh, I almost forgot, and not creating flash websites either…