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To be honest, my considerations in regard to "usability and accessibility" extended to making sure sites were cross-browser compliant. That changed when I was handed the task of developing content for several sites that by necessity must be accessible to people with impaired vision.
Ergophobe's excellent thread on color-blindness helped considerably. [webmasterworld.com...]
But it didn't touch on developing sites for people that are nearly sightless or people with no sight. To find out exactly what was involved in creating a truly accessible site I turned to people that had to deal with websites in the real world, with real obstacles. They provided insight into problems that a sighted person just wouldn't recognize as being a problem.
Screen reader software is a wonderful thing and text to speech capabilities have increased to the point where they are a very useful tool, or they could be if sites were designed with text to speech in mind. Unfortunately, most designers never consider text to speech in their design. There's an excellent article that explains a number of the pitfalls involved with typical websites. It's a N.Y. Times article so you have to register but the registration is painless, I promise. :) [nytimes.com...]
In working with the designer on content presentation it didn't take long to realize that many of the elements that are considered sound web design are stumbling blocks for people that rely on text to speech software. If you'd like to experience a small portion of the frustrations that people using text to speech software must deal with you can download ReadPlease for free here: [readplease.com...] Simple items like navigation elements become painfully repetitive. In order for you to get the full effect, simply highlight an entire web page and use the text to speech software to listen to the page. I used the N.Y. Time's page on accessibility for a simple test. Then I tried to imagine "reading" the entire site with reader software. The Times does have a nice printer friendly version, but even in that version they opted for a graphic "T" which changes the first word of text from "There" to "Here".
Some of the reader software we tested with reads alt tags which at first glance seemed a positive thing. Unfortunately, with navigation elements that are placed on every page the user is once again forced to listen to every navigation link. This becomes a nightmare when some SEO stuffs 10 keywords into every alt tag.
A few of the pieces of screen reader software we tested used arrow keys for navigation from hyperlink to hyperlink, which is of course entirely negated by using Flash elements to create navigation structures and is sometimes defeated with javascript pulldowns. In fact, hyperlinks need to be looked at from an entirely different perspective. If images are used, the text to speech rendering becomes a stilted, imcomprehensible mumble of colon slash slash w w w dot webmasterworld dot com slash p dot cgi question mark action equals sign new and sign forum equals sign numeral twenty one.
We're still developing these sites and we've learned to consider such things as allowing for a "skip navigation" feature that allows screen readers to get to the content without reading all the nav elements and we've opted for a complete text-only version of the site which will accommodate screen readers. We've also learned to limit the use of abbreviations, something I rarely considered in regard to text translation. After all, if we're going to make the site accessible, shouldn't it be accessible in as many languages as possible? Not to mention that unless abbreviations are written with spaces between the letters, a screen reader can turn abbreviations into mush.
I'll let you know how this project turns out. Hopefully, we can all learn something from it. I've been a huge proponent of the World Wide Wide, seems a shame to leave part of the world out of it.
DG
The ability to bypass the navlinks sounds like an interesting feature.
One other thing that has stuck with me for a while now relates to Celig's now famous, CSS box model hack that uses the AURAL property VOICE to trick IE into stop parsing code. Could this cause a problem for screen readers? I honestly don't know. Of course, if an alternative AURAL stylesheet is included there sould be no problem as the screen reader will then grab the style sheet specified for it.
I'm anxious to hear more....
To some extent, the problem is the screen reader as much as it is the Web site. It should be possible to design a screen reader that can digest a table column full of links on the left side of the page and think "Aha! Navigation links," or that can cache navigation links and not repeat them when the user clicks to another page on the same site. Let's face it: Even if every Website owner were to create only "screenreader-friendly" pages from here on out, there would still be millions of legacy pages on the Web that screenreaders would have to deal with. And, realistically, every Website owner *isn't* going to design "screenreader-friendly" pages until HTML editors, WYSIWYG authoring tools, and content-management systems perform that chore automatically.
I'm not sure about the implications of the hack you mentioned Papabaer. I'm kind of at the tip of the iceberg on this and the testing phase is in full swing. We're still running into problems with finding applications that have full CSS2 support. SpeakThis has decent support, but not full support for the specs yet. It does provide a way to enable site-diminished people to surf and listen to content.
Another consideration was whether to use an application like SpeakThis, which gives the web designer complete control over the variables, or to design the site for the end user's own text to speech software. Right now we're opting for allowing that choice to be made by the end user, which means of course that we end up with more code.
Europe, you're correct in your assertion that part of the problem is the screen readers. With no concrete specifications the applications are varied in implementation and usage. That's part of the reason we looked at software like SpeakThis, but that only works for site-diminished surfers, dyslexic surfers and reading impaired surfers. It is a big step for accessibility but not a total solution. We haven't even begun to contemplate the usability/legacy issue but from here on out, accessibility will be a major consideration for at least 3 people I know of. ;)
For those that are interested in web accessibility, you can find quite a bit of information here: [w3.org...] and the W3C specs here: [w3.org...]
This experience has definitely changed the way I look at websites.
DG
NetObjects Fusion took this "Quark or Pagemaker for the Web" approach. The program wasn't without its faults, but the underlying concept--"you create the page, and the program will create an output file--made a lot of sense. It makes even more sense as Web standards become more complex and accessibility becomes trickier to implement by hand.
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<acronym title="Java Virtual Machine">JVM</acronym>
As always with accessibility, it helps your regular/average user as well.
Although learning code- I'm going to divert for a few days and read up on W3C, accessibility, and the link Marcia has presented.....looks like I am going to be busy :)
Although less webmasters take accessibility seriously (just like colour blindness as mentioned example in WMW) - it seems that time would be better invested (for results) by reading up more to this topic.
Has there ever been any substantial movement to increase awareness about these accessibility issues or have they always played second fiddle to bleeding edge technology and short-term minded sites sort of thing?
Or has web accessibility always been held in high regard by other webmasters and I have been sitting in ignorance ? :)
We've had more attention paid to standards here than I've seen anywhere and it's a challenge. A whole segment of the surfing population seems to get forgotten sometimes.
Quite true and unfortunately at least in part it is an economics issue. Spending the extra bit of time and money to make a site accessible is discounted because the numbers don't support it. One of my friends was quick to point out that if he goes to the trouble to find a product online, he's apt to purchase it, however, if he can't access the site the sale is lost.
For those interested in the numbers: [afb.org...]
Two of the complaints I hear most often involve pop-ups, (no suprise there) and navigation embedded in Flash. If you use a "skip navigation" link, provide an "access navigation" link. I've been pointed to more than one high profile site that strands users by removing ALL navigation after the first Skip Nav option has been utilized. Use of tables should be restricted to tabular data, again no suprise but tables as layout devices arose more as a result of html limitations than a choice until CSS was embraced. Now that there is a choice, CSS for layout is a W3C recommendation.
Finally, we're working on forms. You know those aggravating drop-downs people use for such things like what state you're from? Well, it's much easier to type TWO letters than to scroll through 50 odd choices and select one. :)
DG
One browser does in fact have a speak page command: iCab for the Mac. Macs have had built in speech capability as far back as the old Mac Plus in the 1980s. Why Apple hasn't jumped on this I don't know, but then they let HyperCard die also. The iCab speech command doesn't use any CSS rules, it just reads the screen; but it can be an instructive way to "look" at your page. If you're a Mac user, give it a try.
heise online -- 06.05.2002, 18:30
Barrierefreies Internet für Behinderte [heise.de]
The interresting first paragraph states that the "Bundesgleichstellungsgesetz" (law for equal oportunity) came into effect on Mai, 1st. That means all governmental sites will have to be made accessible for people with disabilities. I guess it's similar to "U.S. Section 508 Guidelines".
You know how all these public building have ramps that allow wheel chairs access to the building and lifts/elevators to allow them accessing all/most parts of the building? That's the way, web sites will have to be constructed in the future.
Some more links: I hope you're auto translator works well or that some of the links within these documents point back to English sources. :)
heise online -- 25.03.2002, 18:47
EU-Minister fordern leichteren Internet-Zugang für Behinderte [heise.de]
heise online -- 25.09.2001, 17:27
EU will für Behinderte bessere Websites [heise.de]
Very short list ... Guess that's why I am still posting. :)
Then there's the general issue of the law getting in the way, in nowhere is this more so than in Germany. This particular issue only affects government and public service websites (fair enough, they should be accessible), but knowing German law, how long will it be before all sites have to implement these techniques no matter how irrelevant they may be -- even Herr Müller's Holiday Photo Page? Already, it is illegal for a commercial website to include a form that does not have a reset button. (Reset buttons are user-friendly for lengthy forms, maybe, but to make them a legal requirement...?)
Whether aural browsers ever catch on will depend not only on how aural-friendly websites are, but on how well the browsers perform. Personally, I'm willing to bet that people will find browsing with them too frustratingly slow, and take-up will be low. A little more likely will be braille readers, which already exist (I once met a schoolgirl who is allowed to use a laptop with a braille reader for her assignments and exams). But they're expensive and tricky to use.
It is. Now. The idea is to make surfing bulletin boards and web sites less tedious.
>>and since the web is still primarily a visual medium, I can't imagine many partially-sighted webmasters out there
I can't tell you the number of partially sighted webmasters I now know, there are too many of them but I know ten that are completely blind. In fact, part of the thrust of the current project I'm working on is to encourage and facilitate web site development by people that are faced with visual challenges.
I don't think the law will be getting in the way of developing sites that are accessible to everyone.
>>I'm willing to bet that people will find browsing with them too frustratingly slow, and take-up will be low
Of course they do, because sites aren't designed for them. Braille readers are indeed expensive and they face some of the same obstacles that screen readers face, namely, sites that aren't designed to faciliate their use.
I certainly can't see the "there aren't many of them out there" attitude in any better light than I can see a site not being compatible with Netscape or Opera. Right now the choices are screen readers and braille readers. Without considering either of them you alienate both of them. Don't let the pursuit of perfection impede progress.
DG
