UN international accessibility review
These always seem to end up on here, so I thought I might as well mention it.
The UN asked us to do some research on the state of accessibility across the world, to help underline the "International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations":
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20843&Cr=disab&Cr1=
The main press event is today, probably about now, so other releases will follow.
The results are fairly predictable, with a few exceptions (some sites for the heads of state) the outcome was quite poor. The method was a manual audit on the home pages of 5 sites from 20 countries, choosing representative sites from retail, state, banking, media & travel (basically things people would want to have access to).
The BBC covered it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6210068.stm
(Btw, I hope the other person they spoke to about this was misquoted, as there is an annoying section in there. At least to me and people who join in here.)
And last but not least, our own press release with more details (although the full report isn't available quite yet, the exec summary is):
http://www.nomensa.com/resources/research/united-nations-global-audit-of-accessibility.html
[edited to point to research page rather than press release]
Last edited by Alastc on 05 Dec 2006 05:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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You mean this bit?
| Quote: |
| Accessibility consultants and oranisations for the disabled clutch their knowledge of user requirements to them like they are the key to future profits - which indeed they are.
"If they had any interest in raising standards, they would be sharing their findings with the world and opening dialogue with the design and business community about how best to integrate techniques with standard processes |
Yeah, in line with everyone else I've ever come across in the field of accessibility, the difficulty is in getting people to close their mouths again once they've started wittering on about how to make everything accessible.
Yourselves, the RNIB, AbilityNet, and pretty much everyone else I've ever encountered are only too happy to help. (e.g. today when I emailed yourselves asking for more info on the report and got a response back within the hour)
Jack Pickard The Pickards Information Services| Blog | Twit
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By now I'm sure most of you have seen my comments on the BBC's website regarding the UN commissioned research by Nomensa.
Having read the piece , I do realise that it appears to suggest that accessibility specialists are a bunch of money-grabbing b***ards, which was obviously not my intended point at all. While I don't deny that I said it, it was part of a much larger rant that many of you will have heard before.
Alistair and Léonie, I would like to apologise to you both directly if it appears that I believe that you or Nomensa don't do anything to help others. I know first hand how much of your time and expertise you give to others in this and other groups. I would also like to apologise for all of you in this group who similarly give your time and efforts to help others.
If possible, I would like to share my thoughts and the points I was attempting to make with this group.
This type of report comes out several times a year, and is picked up by some publication or other as the horror story of the day, but nothing actually changes.
The fundamental issue behind the failure of accessibility to take off is the lack of skill and knowledge in the design and development industry as a whole. Accessibility is not easy enough to teach, because there is no definitive right answer - different users have different requirements, and different techniques have different impacts on user groups.
For example, our collective fascination with text alternatives has left icons and ‘earcons’ (audio indications of actions or changes © Patrick Hoffmann) largely out of consideration. These areas are essential to those with learning difficulties and to those for whom English is not the first language.
I believe that the continual publication of research that use the WCAG as if it is a succeed/fail checklist rather than knowledge of user requirements has helped hold back the industry-wide adoption of a core technique. It certainly hasn’t helped on any major level.
There is nothing new or surprising in this report, and that's what’s frightening. The Internet is the biggest tool of social change I've seen in my lifetime, but the disabled are being left out. This is too big an issue to leave to individual, unregulated 'specialists' giving inconsistent advice with nobody holding them to account.
As members of this industry, you know as well as I do that there are good people and bad people out there - those that want to make the best accessible sites they can, and those that want to make a fast buck.
At it's best, all that this 'naming and shaming' approach achieves is driving a few clients to ask their agencies about accessibility. Who knows what they'll get back - there is no standard, no available qualification and no definitive way for the client to tell who is best.
Accessibility is an essential technique if the Internet is to help bring equality to the world. It's too important to wait for legislation or for the industry to self-regulate - we've seen that doesn't work. We've got to create a framework where information on the requirements of disabled users is freely available - and comes directly from the users themselves.
I appreciate that this is a radical solution, but I want the world to be a better place. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result, and I'm bored of being insane.
I believe that people are understandably cynical when they see commercial companies producing research that directly promotes a demand for their services. We've got to try and build bridges with businesses and the web design community - we can't just stand in the middle of a river shouting 'look at my lovely island utopia'. Nobody is stopping to listen.
Again I apologise for the fact that my comments were a) taken out of context, and b) urinated on the research’s parade. This wasn't my intention.
However, I have been waiting for some time for an opportunity to try and find a way of driving some radical action from the accessibility community. We’re all too damn nice and I’m sick of being ignored.
Let’s stir up some controversy and attempt to create a national/international debate about how we can raise accessibility up the priority list of governments, businesses and the web industry.
Mark
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Personally, I don't hesitate to tell people I work when the way they are doing things is wrong. I always back it up with a this is why and a here's how you should do it, though. This normally produced an "ah-ha" moment and they do it the better way from then on. Using <ul> for lists of links (with border-left instead of a vertical bar in horizontal ones) is a typical example of this.
And given the amount of stick some of our members have given DTi, I wouldn't say we're too nice at all.
Research does trickle into the public domain now and then. But having an Alertbox style thing for accessibility, somewhat like you're suggesting, would be a big help for those of us who can't afford user testing.
I would say that over the past couple of years, I'm noticing a lot more big companies are using headings, lists and paragraphs in their markup instead of <font>, <table> and <br> respectively. Of course, markup is just the first step but it seems better practises are becoming more common all the time. Albeit slower than we might wish.
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Welcome to the forum Mark 
Thanks for putting forward your corrected views.
It is a sad fact that a lot of journalists look for the controversial in everything said and done without thinking of the implications. Take the case of Polonium 210, yes, it can kill if ingested and is 100,000 times more radioactive than Plutonium, what you must also appreciate is that the radiation can be stopped by a piece of paper, it has a half life of about 140 days and it is extremely rare. So what if they have found traces at the Emirates stadium, it only shows an evidence trail not a wholsale attempt at death and destruction.
As I said, welcome, and stick around, another viewpoint is always welcome
Mike Abbott
Accessible to everyone
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| MarkG wrote: |
| By now I'm sure most of you have seen my comments on the BBC's website regarding the UN commissioned research by Nomensa.
Having read the piece , I do realise that it appears to suggest that accessibility specialists are a bunch of money-grabbing b***ards, which was obviously not my intended point at all. While I don't deny that I said it, it was part of a much larger rant that many of you will have heard before. [...] Again I apologise for the fact that my comments were a) taken out of context, and b) urinated on the research’s parade. This wasn't my intention. |
Have you complained to the BBC, yet?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
Birmingham, England
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| Alastc wrote: |
| The UN asked us to do some research on the state of accessibility across the world, to help underline the "International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations":
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20843&Cr=disab&Cr1= The main press event is today, probably about now, so other releases will follow. |
This made me very sad and angry.
The UN site Alastair suppied the link to doesn't meet basic accessibility standards itself
Its great the UN are getting involved with this and employing companies such as Nomensa to review web sites but wouldn't it be nice if the UN got its own act together..............
If it can go wrong it will. So don't worry about it.
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Just a general FYI on this article the BBC has opened it up to feedback at the base of the article.
Mark, since Cerb mentioned about the DTI any thoughts on or off record about the role in the testing of the site?
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2006/fresh01s-redesign-questions-dti/#more-262
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for replying, I assumed it was taken out of context at least to a degree, I know you're a nice guy.
| Quote: |
| I believe that the continual publication of research that use the WCAG as if it is a succeed/fail checklist rather than knowledge of user requirements has helped hold back the industry-wide adoption of a core technique. |
I appreciate what you are saying, and I've made my thoughts on the reporting of accessibility public. As you know the media will only really work with black/white, clear answers and concepts, there isn't the time/space for the detail this topic requires and deserves. Without a standard way of applying better grading of results, there isn't really any other option.
I'm not sure that your radical solution is possible, partly because of the conflict you raised:
| Quote: |
| Accessibility is not easy enough to teach, because there is no definitive right answer - different users have different requirements, and different techniques have different impacts on user groups.
... We've got to create a framework where information on the requirements of disabled users is freely available - and comes directly from the users themselves. |
User will provide lots of good feedback, but quite a lot of it will:
a) conflict with other user groups. Not that there isn't a good answer, but based on the feedback you could easily implement something that isn't the best solution.
b) depend a great deal on the user's knowledge of their technology.
That's why standards are required for this area, it gives a level playing field for the multitude of user-agents and content creation tools. Not that they are perfect, but a standard is better than chaos.
| Quote: |
| Let’s stir up some controversy and attempt to create a national/international debate about how we can raise accessibility up the priority list of governments, businesses and the web industry. |
I was hoping that is what we were doing? If it doesn't work at the UN level, I don't know what will.
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Hi Mark, nice to see you here.
| MarkG wrote: |
| We've got to create a framework where information on the requirements of disabled users is freely available - and comes directly from the users themselves. |
It's called the "internet" and there is more than enough information on requirements on it already. I disagree with your analysis, for me the real reason behind the "failure of accessibility" as you call it isn't a lack of skill or knowledge, but a lack of will and commercial return.
Anyone can find the information they need to produce an accessible website today, with very little effort. There is no lack of information.
So long as site commissioners are willing to pay for inaccessible web development the majority of commercial development companies will continue to peddle it. If they aren't going to be held to account where is the business case for expending time, effort and money on learning new skills and going through additional pain during developments? If it looks nice, shiny and readable under IE6 with standard settings that's good enough for most commissioners.
| Quote: |
| Let’s stir up some controversy and attempt to create a national/international debate about how we can raise accessibility up the priority list of governments, businesses and the web industry. |
It's a laudable aim and one I have pursued myself for some time, but I've come to the conclusion that not enough people really care for it to matter. If the government, even with their lovely guidelines and rhetoric can happily and shamelessly publish such appallingly bad rubbish as the DTI website, visa4uk, etc etc, we're going nowhere fast.
Nomensa are an exception, and I sincerely hope the UK government continues to push work their way, but the fundamental problem remains that there is still no serious threat to organisations who do not embrace accessibility and web standards. For every Target there are a million companies with inaccessible sites with no motivation to care about accessibility. The argument "what about the x% of people who could access their site if it was accessible?" is irrelevant unless you're Tesco - the vast majority of businesses aren't searching for an extra 1% margin, they will get much greater returns from traditional marketing.
I'm not saying we should give up, quite the opposite. What we need to acknowledge is that things are not going to improve overnight, and that reports like this one only reflect the view from space. On the ground there is progress, particularly in sectors like local government and higher education. A report showing how far accessibility had come in these sectors probably wouldn't make the news, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
We should be promoting the work of the Nomensa's of this world, and shouting about the increased market share such companys are getting through developing accessible sites. We can only expect a sea change once there's commercial pressure on the competition to achieve the same standards.
Dan Champion, Champion IS, Mooch Marketing, Revish
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Out of interest, Mark, how is it you were asked for comment. (Not that I imagine you are not qualified to do so, but many others are too...).
Cheers.
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How much is it a technical problem, in that so many sites are created by, say, Dreamweaver or Frontpage or a CMS that hasn't ever considered accessibilty? (I haven't used any of these so I hope I am not maligning any.) How easy is it to adapt such a site to make it accessible?
I presume that most designers don't hand code their sites, in which case doesn't there also need to be pressure on the suppliers of web design software to include accessibilty features in their programs?
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| tierce24 wrote: |
| How much is it a technical problem, in that so many sites are created by, say, Dreamweaver or Frontpage or a CMS that hasn't ever considered accessibilty? (I haven't used any of these so I hope I am not maligning any.) How easy is it to adapt such a site to make it accessible?
|
Like most things in this arena the answer is it depends. In this instance it depends over the tool you use. For those writing tools I'll happily go into some of the steps pro's and con's etc. (sig removed since I don't want this sounding like a sales pitch).
- We try to be front end agnostic: This means we try not to force any particular style on anyone for their public facing part. For accessibility it means we are only as good as the person that designed that front end. It also means we deal very much in content, and very little in design.
- We try to force all rich assets through libraries where users are prompted to add alternatives. The positive points here are obvious, the negative ones are that users have to jump through extra hoops.
- We limit standard use of controls such as WYSIWYG. Out go font options, H1's (okay so we do have a little non-agnostisism over design - but it does encourage better formed documents). In comes forced summaries over tables etc. This again pushes us very much away from a design tool, but does tie eventual users into using corporate themes. Of course a more advanced user can get around our limitations by just typing raw HTML
.
- We tidy all input so that it should be valid XHTML.
- We strip JS code from input should someone try to be clever (we do provide common functionality in a JS file that makes use of Behaviour).
As those that have written content management systems for accessibility would agree it's a tough task (or is it just me?). The trade off's between allowing creativity and avoiding inaccessibility for non-expert users is a fine line.
Mods sorry if this has gone a bit off topic.
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| Richard Conyard wrote: |
| Just a general FYI on this article the BBC has opened it up to feedback at the base of the article. |
None published, yet. Perhaps they're overwhelmed by criticisms of their own site's accessibility?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
Birmingham, England
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| pigsonthewing wrote: | ||
None published, yet. Perhaps they're overwhelmed by criticisms of their own site's accessibility? |
Article has now closed for feedback
If it can go wrong it will. So don't worry about it.
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