Actually, I understand the concept of accessibility quite well. But the fact that a site developer has added an access key doesn’t mean that key is a progressive enhancement. I’ve been in quite a few development discussions in which the proposed access key was intended to achieve an otherwise unachievable function. No, we needed another fix.
I’ve also been in discussions in which it was proposed that the content was accessible because, even if you couldn’t activate the access key sequence that took you straight to the one field you needed to modify, you could keep pressing the tab key until you traveled through all 50 of the fields on the page. Um, no. “You can still do it” does not necessarily meet the standard of equivalent experience — and equivalent experience is the standard we need to meet to ensure that our content is truly accessible.
But I do appreciate your clarifying that one must always be aware of the distinction between essential function, which must be available to everyone, and progressive enhancement, which need not be.
I can’t see how that’s possible. The accesskey attribute is only valid for a limited number of element types (mainly links and form controls). All of which are keyboard navigable and have their own built-in behaviour. An access key is merely a convenient way to trigger that behaviour. It cannot achieve a function that is otherwise unachievable. For that you’d need a keyboard event listener and some client-side scripting, but that’s not an access key in the sense we’re discussing in this thread.
Um, yes. Accessible doesn’t always mean ‘easy to access’. It just means ‘possible to access’. You’re thinking about usability, which is a related, but nevertheless separate topic.
And, again, the onus is on the user to choose the best UA or AT that fills his or her needs. A person who needs (or, like me, simply prefers) keyboard navigation should choose a browser that offers good keyboard navigation functionality. The only one I’m aware of is the one I’m using: Opera. Its spatial navigation is second to none, and I never have to keep pressing the Tab key 50 times.
It’s not a definition of accessibility that I’ve encountered before. Don’t get me wrong: I agree that it’s what we should strive for! But sometimes it’s not possible. And accessible, to me, means that I’m able to access the same information and perform the same functions as everyone else. It may be less usable and less aesthetically pleasing, but that’s another thing.
Ah, then it’s your concept of accessibility that needs updating. I and all the accessibility experts I work with view accessibility as an extension of universal design, which means that the product is usable for all and no less usable for people who have disabilities affecting sight, hearing, mobility, or cognition.
And you’re right — if my only option with no mouse or touchpad available is to tab through 50 fields just to be able to modify one of them, the form isn’t usable. If it isn’t usable, there’s no way it can be made accessible.
aye4design, I’m not too sure I can entirely agree that Universal Design is an achievable goal, while I (as an accessibility specialist - of sorts) do entirely agree with the same principles as yourself it feels rather foolhardy to proclaim that the methodology put across by universal design is in-fact achievable (where as Tommy’s older but studier principle of access now, graceful later is much better in respect to implementable potential). One thing we as accessible designers tend to forget is that accessibility is about ALL potential inhibiting factors whether a disability of human or machine (used by human), as such unless you have a medical degree, are a trained psychologist and have the entire medical vocabulary to take into account any possible disease, condition, affliction, impairment or circumstance which may prevent someone using a website when they feel or wish the need to, it’s wrong to justify that such widespread design is even possible. It’s physically impossible to account for every kind of disorder that may cause some amount of friction or inhibition and as noble as universal design is as a concept of “something everyone can access and use equally”, the laws of nature, science and computing just show us that equality is impossible… of course we can aim for the best and most widespread basis of potential friction (and inhibitors) but it’s just a bit too much to design for everyone because in a certain respect… everyone is disabled by something.
In another thread (I’ll digress here as it’s important to my post and more useful here) “Checking the numbers” you made the following post…
This is a very real misconception (as denoted above), the amount of people with a disability is significantly higher than those without… if you take into account every possible situation where someone may be (in a respect) disabled or unable to browse a website as effectively as another person… whether physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, psychologically, conditionally or mechanically, it’s probably closer to 99% of the world population who fall into that category. We talk about physical disability like it’s only a remote amount of people, but just look at the amount of people who have accidents where their limbs may break, sprain or be injured (for a short period of time), very few web designers account or use those as part of the stats even though their just as debilitating as fully fledged limb loss… just on a part time basis. If there’s one thing I like to preach about accessibility it’s that you, I and everyone else needs to stop thinking of disability as a numbers game of minority reports. EVERYONE on earth could be qualified as having some kind of factor which disables or inhibits their actions… whether it’s someone with an incurable disease or just someone trying to visit a website when their drunker than an Irishman. Disability is everywhere and affects everyone, sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s permanent, but in all cases it’s accountable and should be recognised… and thus, true Universal design (IMO) is nothing more than a pipe dream.
I understand universal design to be an approach, not a destination. Fromt hat standpoint, the fact that not every human is able to use our Web page, form, or software does not mean that we’ve failed to use universal design.
Yes, the term I’m familiar with for that broader range is “metadisability.” In counting populations, I’m using the U.S. legal definition of disability, which — paraphrasing heavily here — applies only if the impairment significantly impedes the ability to see, hear, move, or process information. And, fortunately, that does apply to fewer than half of us.
And you’re right — when we include all those degrees of metadisability in the mix, the steps we take to make our content perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust benefit us all.
That said, I suspect we’re singing different choruses of the same song. I’m glad we’re dedicated to helping others make the Web more usable for everyone.
True but the problem with legal definitions of disability are that they discriminate (ironically), I never use legislative definitions of the word disability to determine who may require assistance when accessing websites I produce, mainly because such legislation was created before the digital revolution when problems accessing stores were generally down to physically apparent issues. My definition of disability is exactly that “dis-ability” as in the lack of ability to take advantage of a public service, whether it’s a commercial entity or something else. It’s a well known fact that the law in general discriminates heavily against people suffering psychological issues, and mental health on the web is an issue I think more people should take notice of, it’s certainly a wide range of disorders that go beyond “information processing”.
Alas I don’t make the laws or have any say in the matter but making the law include anyone who suffers a reasonable and visible loss of access or inhibition to access the information or services would be a much more appropriate way of wording it, that way the courts could decide if such a discrimination had occurred upon that individual and if it could have been avoided. I’m sorry to say it but when it comes to accessibility, most people are happy to say “sorry, you don’t qualify as disabled” - partially due to disabled people being able to claim money from the government (in the UK), but in regards to technology these “worse case scenario” definitions are non-sympathetic to the very audience we should cater to. As such I think that while discriminating against the disabled should be illegal, the laws should be better defined to qualify that description to a much broader level of people, even if it’s only in regards to the right to access those services. If the W3C wanted to pay me, I would happily to draft up a new web accessibility spec which accounts for a wider range of factors, but alas that is unlikely to happen any-time soon.
Sorry, Alex; seeing as how I have to comply with U.S. law, I have to be familiar with its definitions. And for purposes of the accessibility of electronic information, the definition of disability was updated after WCAG 1.0, so it does consider the technologies and realities of today.
And, no, it isn’t reasonable to say that less than profound impairment should also be accommodated. But the neat thing is, as it is working here, when we apply the principles of universal design, we actually do end up with content that is accessible to virtually everyone. And if anyone needs that content but finds it not to be accessible to them, we generally can accommodate them if they bring the issue to our attention.
That’s the reality of my world. I can’t afford to live in an ivory tower, but I do OK where I am.
I understand why you have to comply with US Law and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I was just making a note (backing up the universal design principle) for anyone else reading this thread that it’s important in accessibility to go above and beyond what a law or a standard sets as a baseline.
Sorry, Alex; seeing as how I have to comply with U.S. law, I have to be familiar with its definitions.
Man, that actually sucks in some instances.
I ran a page through Cynthia Says just to check the service out. It’ll go through like each line of section 508…one of them is, if you have any script tags in the body, you must include a noscript tag.
If you write your JS properly and unobtrusively, then a noscript tag is only there to confuse the scriptless who don’t see why it’s there (because your script is introduced purely for the benefit of the scripted and does not affect or is not required by the non-scripted content). Or, worse, if you really did write in such a way that you need a noscript tag, those running NoScript and those who have a scripts-enabled browser that gets scripts blocked elsewhere (by a firewall for example) also don’t see it. So you can’t even guarantee it either way. (why I would always keep all my unobtrusive scripts external… handily gets around the rule)
I remember checking out michigan.gov, and finding 9px sized text and strange alt text and other design flaws. But, it “passed section 508”. What a crock. What did they do, religiously follow all the requirements without looking once at the whole point??? I was sorely disappointed. Currently, JS is required to use some of the menus or something.
What I like about WCAG2 is that it has these scenarios and the goal is, you pass the scenarios. It does not say “use technology x”.
The above ranting aside, I’m generally in favour of laws, simply because it’s sometime the only stick you can use to get sites moving to accessibility. Well, and software too. You’d hope carrots would be good enough, but they are not.
