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A view from the trenches
- 9 Nov 06, 03:56 PM
This week we caught up with . L茅onie heads the Accessibility Research Programme at Nomensa, who are a digital agency based in Bristol and London. We were keen to talk to L茅onie, not just because she鈥檚 such a nice girl, or because she happens to have a disability, but because she is a leading light in the field of accessibility. Leonie is visually impaired, so she鈥檚 well qualified to provide us with her own experiences when accessing the internet, assess the state of the web today, and peer into her crystal ball to see what it might be like in the future. I started off by asking what she thought of the current state of the web.
鈥淭hings are getting better. Following the and (a paper from the British Standards Institute called, 鈥淕uide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites鈥) there is greater evidence of major commercial websites and organisations making an effort. They might not be tick-box perfect, but you see signs like proper use of heading tags and skip links that making a page easier to navigate that they are at least thinking about it and trying. It might not have filtered down to Joe Blogg鈥檚 website yet, but it is getting better.鈥
Are there any 鈥渨eb 2.0鈥 sites in particular that you wish were accessible but aren't?
鈥淚'd like to be able to participate more fully with things like and some of the obvious sites such as would certainly be good to find with greater level of accessibility, although I'm not likely to want to use them myself.鈥
Have you come across anything that isn't accessible, and you've thought it would be impossible - or perhaps even pointless - in making accessible?
鈥淚've come across plenty that aren't accessible, whether I think it would be pointless to make it so is tricky. Looking at it personally, there are plenty of sites I'm never likely to want to use, so wouldn't be affected if they didn't improve accessibility. For me though, accessibility isn't about me, it's about everyone.鈥
Should we take a strictly zero tolerance attitude towards inaccessible websites?
鈥淵es, absolutely. If someone can introduce me to the lucky person who will never age, never have difficulty seeing, hearing, moving or learning, will never break an arm or suffer from , who will never use a mobile technology or interactive digital TV, who loves reading jargon and enjoys the frustration of shopping online, then I'll perhaps start to believe that a site exists where accessibility doesn't matter.鈥
鈥淧ut the question another way: Should we have a zero tolerance approach to racial, religious or sexual discrimination? It's all about choice. This is my choice and I choose to surf anywhere I please on the Internet. It's such an exciting, fast moving, intelligent, crazy place. I miss not being able to wander off on idle adventures of exploration, following links on a whim, discovering new things.鈥
Do you think the accessibility community is ready for the challenges of web 2.0?
鈥淚 think we're more ready than we were for accessibility the first time around, but only within the confines of the knowledgeable few. Perhaps I'm being unfairly cynical about that, but there are still so many designers and developers out there who haven't figured out basic web accessibility, that I fear they'll jump on the 2.0 bandwagon with the same unconcerned abandon.
鈥淭he accessibility movement is getting stronger though, so perhaps by the time we get to Web 2.5 or 3.0, the tide will have turned more dramatically. That's going to take more education, more knowledge sharing, and possibly more clear guidance at a legislative level.鈥
Would you say you were generally optimistic or pessimistic regarding web 2.0 technology?
鈥淏it of both! A lot of this seems familiar from the first time round and we must have learned from that. And a lot of access needs may be met by some of the cool, Star Trek style stuff going on, almost by accident. Microsoft鈥檚 Vista, for example, comes with . People think it will be cool to talk to their computers, which has a knock on effect of improving accessibility. Similarly, being able to play books on iPods has lead to more digital books 鈥 again, because iPods are so popular. On the other hand, where websites are built on user generated content, its going to be very difficult to make it accessible, as it will come down to the users.鈥
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Hi
I have recently set up a site charting my experiences as a disabled people and, given the subject matter, I wanted to make it as accessible as possible.
As I have CP and can use a keyboard + trackball I had limited knowledge as to what requirements people with visual impairments might have when accessing my site.
Therefore I did a Google search but all I found was very wordy documents which just referred to various standards. None of these gave me clear, simple guidelines.
(In hindsight I should have logged on to Ouch and asked a few questions on the Message Boards!)
My point is, if it was so difficult for me to find this sort of advice how can the broader spectrum of society be expected to cater for the needs of people with disabilities.
Cheers, Dave
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Good info.
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