In Accessibility , Browsers , Flash / Tags: /
On Monday, Aral and I went off to the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) to work with a blind user and go through some of the technology available. It was, to put it mildly, quite an experience.
We spent just over an hour with Mark who ran through the different technologies that he uses and how he works in the digital environment. Mark was using JAWS 7.0.1 on a normal Windows PC. He also had a Braille display.
It was interesting to find out about the cost of the different options. It’s really quite expensive for the average user. There is some basic support from the government here, in the UK. I think that Apple has the best approach – to build it all into the OS. I can’t wait for Leopard! If you have not seen the sneak peak have a look at on apple’s site. It would be really great if there was an open source tool available but apparently the ones that are around are not really good enough yet.
We chatted with Mark about what he wanted as a user and what he normally experiences. He then showed us some sites that would be common usage globally. He showed us a mix of good and bad sites.
I was very disappointed with Amazon’s support for accessibility. They don’t seem to have any. If they do – it’s not accessible! We ran through amazon.com to try and make a purchase. It is possible – yes – but not easy. I know some users that would put up with it as normal. I equate it to my recent experience with plus.net. I wanted to find out information so I tried the site. I got totally stuck in the “help” section and could not find any answers. I then tried to phone. After running through a selection of options I reached a dead end. I went through this 3 times before I gave up. If I had kept trying then maybe I could have gotten through to someone but I was not about to carry on.
How did I feel? To say I was unimpressed would be an understatement. So how does someone who users a screen reader feel when trying to shop on line? Is it even possible to do a grocery shop online if you are using a screen reader? It seems as though Tesco has the best accessibility out of all the online shopping. The complaint I heard about the accessible version was that it was a separate site and they did not get the same specials as the normal site.
But it was not all bad news. It was interesting to view a selection of sites and check what worked and what did not. I was impressed with Flash’s little accessibility panel and how easy it was to get it to work with JAWS. Flash sites can have basic accessibility with a little bit of thought and planning – before the build and not as an after thought.
I know the problem out there is that a lot of developers don’t know what it is that users actually want and how the technology works. The basic knowledge that we get is from standards that don’t really support Flash. We search, in vain, for the Magic Button of Accessibility hoping to have it all just happen in one click, with little or no work. We run automated tests and use cleaver scripts that allow us to get compliant but all we get is Check-box Accessibility (compliant but not usable).
We need to change the way we think.
We need to take the Usability Approach to Accessibility.
All the things we take for granted… We, as people in the industry, have a very high level of knowledge. Something as small as “skip navigation” may mean a lot to us but what does it mean to the user out there? What distinguishes one page from the next when the pages are being viewed in a linear manner and they all start with the same information? How does a user distinguish from a selection of sites when they all start with – home, about us, contact us. What about starting a page with an overview of the content so that the user knows if they are on the correct page.
So what can we as developers do? We need to push within our own organisations and get the message across to clients. We need to start to focus more on the user and what they need and less on what the client thinks they want. Aral has a great article on usability. Following these principles will help to create more accessible applications.
Over the next few months I am gonna be looking at the various areas of users that require assistive technology. My current focus is vision related issues as this is often the first area people think of when it comes to accessibility. This visit was the start of my research and I’ll put up the test files and results here as I move forward.
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[...] Niqui has written a comprehensive post about our visit, last week, to the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). I found the trip very interesting and received some additional insight into (and validation for) the advantages of using the Usability Approach to Accessibility. [...]
I do see the importance in accessibiltiy, but are clients bothered, and why should they be?
You say Amazon is bad, and its obviously extremely successful, so why should they bother. What percentage do u think their sales would go up, if they accessibility was the best? Very little i would presume.
Unless these markets are being targeted, clients are forced to, or they are losing a hell of a lot of money, why should they invest?
Hi Tink
That is a very relevant question. Most developers and organizations lack an understanding of how large this audience is and the potential ROI.
I will be posting more about this topic in the future and am very glad for any input and feedback I get from developers and clients as to how they feel.
In the mean time here are some statistics from an article on e-consultancy on this topic.
UK population is also becoming older which means businesses will increasingly need to tap into an older – and often affluent – demographic.
I don’t think its the case that organizations lack the understanding of how big these markets are. These are great big corporations which I would have thought would at least have researched this area.
Yes the stats are high, but high enough to warrent the amount of work required? I would say obviously not.
Maybe I’m wrong and these large companies just don’t want the money, but I would have thought that to be unlikely.
I do think though that as accessability gets easier to implement, and therefore costs less, we will see it grow.
Having done a lot of work making accessible content (mainly eLearning), I think the key thing to remember is “don’t just focus on the blind”.
There are plenty of other disabilities out there, from people with motor problems through to visual problems. When people start talking about disabilities everyone thinks access keys, JAWS etc., there’s a lot more to it than that.
For some the white background of your page would be a realy problem.
Hi Andy
Thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you on all counts. I have posted before on colour blind issues and will be posting on other issues in the future. What my focus is to work with 1 area (visibility at the moment) and find out as much as I can and then move onto the next. I chose to focus on visual for the exact reason that most people think of accessibility in that light and i need to at least know what everyone focuses on before moving onto other areas.
As I mentioned in the blog post we need to encourage people to have a usability approach to accessibility and not a check-box approach. If a site is usable for the target users then this should not even be a real topic as it really does fall into usability.
As an aside I find it difficult to read light text on a dark background. Everyone is different and in this case I went for what was better for me.
Niqui