Accessifyforum has failed....
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GAWDS has failed. Accessifyforum has failed. Accessites is fundamentally flawed. WCAG 2.0 is in trouble. Joe Clark’s WCAG Samurai remains as a glimmer of hope, so to is WaSP’s Accessibility Task Force. We need something that doesn’t repeat the same mistakes as GAWDS and Accessifyforum, but at the same time be open to involvement by the community, for the community |
from Mike Davies' BarCamp London 2: Accessibility Panel Thoughts. discuss...
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Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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I did not realise this forum was such a major hub of Accessibility, a big well done to the founders and admin. Secondly this forum has enabled me to learn when I had no other means of learning about accessibility. I have met people through contacts of this community including blind and visually impaired users that has enabled me to greatly improve the user experience of my websites. Meeting and interacting with these users we will come up with solutions unlike Joe Clarks article that came up with nothing new._________________
Johan De Silva / Portfolio | Place of Work @Flipside | Read my movie reviews punk!
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I'll repeat what I said elsewhere:
it seems to me that Mike Davies is unable or unwilling to recognise that people are entitled to hold one of two viewpoints - that accessibility means "for all", or that is means "for the disabled".
The continual attacks and criticism he sends in the direction of the "for all" camp gives the [perhaps false] impression to me that he is bitter about being unable to convince people he is right by means of reasoned argument and instead resorts to attacks.
This isn't meant to be contentious or agressive in tone: this is genuinely the impression it gives to me. I accept it may give other people a different impression. Similarly, to me, as a personal opinion, it makes him look bitter and devalues his opinion. To others, it may not.
I've always felt accessifyforum is very open to the community - everyone is entitled to chip in with their opinion, whether that opinion is that accessibility by necessity includes universality, or whether it doesn't. Heh, there's nearly always someone prepared to chip in with a different opinion here, regardless of what the issue is!
I am disappointed that Mike Davies thinks otherwise, but it is very much his right to believe what he likes. As indeed I have a right to my own opinion, no matter how much anyone else may disagree.
*sigh* Why can't we all just get along?
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Jack Pickard The Pickards Information Services| Blog | Twit
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Reading the last few paragraphs of the piece in particular gives me some insight into his thinking
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| Its increasingly obvious that people really interested in accessibility - making content accessible to people with disabilities - need an environment where their ideas are valued, their experience shared. And free of the imposing posturing of universalists. There's a need for a clean start. The current web-developer focused organisations are tainted, constrained by universality, with sour to nonexistent relationships with assistive technology providers and browser vendors. And, more damning, a pervasive poison against any content that isn't HTML.
There needs to be a grassroots movement to share the experience of web accessibility in an atmosphere conducive to such endeavours. It needs to be open to all people interesting in moving accessibility forward - without any of the ingrained dogma of universality. Somewhere where content creators can work together on accessibility, regardless of the content technology (HTML, Flash, SVG, Canvas, multimedia). Where developers and browser vendors can exchange ideas and suggestions. Where assistive technology providers can participate in improving the accessibility experience for their customers. Somewhere where genuine progress isn't drowned out by vociferous universality adherents, somewhere where genuine passion can be directed into something constructive. GAWDS has failed. Accessifyforum has failed. Accessites is fundamentally flawed. WCAG 2.0 is in trouble. Joe Clark's WCAG Samurai remains as a glimmer of hope, so to is WaSP's Accessibility Task Force. We need something that doesn't repeat the same mistakes as GAWDS and Accessifyforum, but at the same time be open to involvement by the community, for the community My support for the WCAG Samurai and WaSP Accessibility Task force remains positive and optimistic. But, we also need something else - we need a community of people working on the Web (as a content producer, as a browser - or plugin - vendor, as an assistive technology provider), focused on accessibility. And that we simply don't have. |
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| vociferous universality adherents |
Perhaps the section on Web Technology is the proper forum for advanced techniques.
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Mike Abbott
Accessible to everyone
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| JackP wrote: |
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I've always felt accessifyforum is very open to the community |
however, it has failed in attracting the wider community (including particularly a sizeable number of end users and user agent developers). it's mainly a forum by html/css coders, for html/css coders, with very little knowledge sharing beyond that point. the same holds true for gawds. in that respect, i completely agree with mike d.
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Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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| redux wrote: | ||
however, it has failed in attracting the wider community (including particularly a sizeable number of end users and user agent developers). it's mainly a forum by html/css coders, for html/css coders, with very little knowledge sharing beyond that point. the same holds true for gawds. in that respect, i completely agree with mike d. |
that's true, and I suppose you could equally argue that you'd not join up to AF or GAWDS unless you were interested in the 'A' of accessibility in the first place, but the sites are popular sites, and if you bear in mind the proportions of never-joined up/lurkers and regular posters in communities at large it's only natural that most "regulars" will have a specific rather than a passing interest in whatever online community you'd care to name.
And nor do I think the "accessibility battle" has been a complete failure - while there are still some awful messes out there, the concepts of web accessibility and the importance of it are becoming more widely known. It would be futile to say the battle has been won - but accessibility is gaining ground from the poor position it previously held.
AF, GAWDS and other such "specialist" sites are never going to change the mainstream thoughts (even mainstream "coding" thoughts). That's why legislative change is important, why accessibility related items on ALA and SitePoint are important... the mainstream needs to be convinced by the mainstream media - all the "specialist" sites can do is ensure that anyone who already wants to go away and find out about it can do so - and that I think we are doing well at...
*phew*. That was a longer one than I thought.
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Jack Pickard The Pickards Information Services| Blog | Twit
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| JackP wrote: |
| I suppose you could equally argue that you'd not join up to AF or GAWDS unless you were interested in the 'A' of accessibility in the first place |
yes, but mike (and i) isn't arguing that. it's about the interest in accessibility being more encompassing than 99% html/css.
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Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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1) No you have not 'failed'! That much is missleading.
but
2) I'd agree with this -
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| "There needs to be a grassroots movement to share the experience of web accessibility in an atmosphere conducive to such endeavours. It needs to be open to all people interesting in moving accessibility forward - without any of the ingrained dogma of universality. Somewhere where content creators can work together on accessibility, regardless of the content technology (HTML, Flash, SVG, Canvas, multimedia). Where developers and browser vendors can exchange ideas and suggestions. Where assistive technology providers can participate in improving the accessibility experience for their customers." |
As someone who agrees with this point, and has had to battle against some strongly held beliefs, re 'universlity' in here, I love the fact that I can. The person I'm argueing with learns, I learn, those lurking learn.
Things rarely go nasty. Which is rare for such an open forum. And it is. How could it be more open. The only lock downs I've seen have been when things have indeed gone paershaped and noone involved is learning anything.
While I agree with the paragraph above, I don't agree that this means AF has failed.
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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| There needs to be a grassroots movement to share the experience of web accessibility in an atmosphere conducive to such endeavours. It needs to be open to all people interesting in moving accessibility forward |
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| Joe Clark's WCAG Samurai remains as a glimmer of hope |
From WCAG Samurai:
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| Membership rolls will not be published, and membership is by invitation only. Don’t call us; we’ll call you. |
Hmmm....
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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The author of the article looks to WaSP for a solution? Ha! As a tool vendor, we have received tons of support for making our software standards-compliant and more accessible from GAWDS and AccessifyForum, yet got nothing from WaSP._________________
Vlad Alexander
XStandard Development Team
http://xstandard.com
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that's because of apathy in certain parts of WaSP, and the difficulty in getting consensus on even smallish issues. oops, did i say that out loud?_________________
Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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Some parts of it make sense to me. For example:
| Mike 'Isofarro' Davies wrote: |
| An accessibility feature implemented in a browser is available for use on all websites, but implementing it on the website layer makes the feature only available on that one site. |
| Mike 'Isofarro' Davies wrote: |
| The web developers need to ensure that the markup and styles they deliver are such that the styles can be removed if they create a barrier. This, of course, is the fundamental principle of web standards development - the separation of content, styling and behaviour. |
Some things seem a bit pie-in-the-sky:
| Mike 'Isofarro' Davies wrote: |
| The browser vendors need to be able to trust web developers to generate sites that are of sufficiently good quality (accessible content with well structured markup, styled with cascading stylesheets, and behaviour added unobtrusively with DOM Scripting). |
The stuff at the end doesn't have any examples. We talk about (and some of us use) accessible Flash and progressive enhancement with JavaScript. And it's open to everyone -- we don't even use a CAPTCHA.
So I'm not sure why he thinks this forum has failed.
There's plenty of free forum systems, so maybe he's going to start his own forum which won't fail? Personally, I've found this forum extremely useful. Before I came here, I didn't even know that screen readers existed, let alone know about how explicitly associating <label> with <input> and using heading elements can aid the people who use them.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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i think a lot of passionate people are getting their proverbial knickers in a twist because of the "fail" bit. it's not meant as "failed to be useful", but "failed to engage representatives from all areas (browser manufacturers, content developers, authoring tool developers and end users) in discussing the wider issues of accessibility".
as an example of sites that can't be easily made universally accessible, think of the old peepo.org site (I seem to remember if was taken offline quite a while ago when funding for the project ran out, but you should be able to find a google cache or mirror somewhere), which proposed an interface completely geared towards users with learning difficulties, and would have been practically impossible to make accessible to all, even with appropriate ALT text etc sitting underneath each graphic.
as i mentioned in my response when i posted the item on accesify http://accessify.com/... this resonates with the tangram model ( see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/... / http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/... / http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/... ). in particular areas such as e-learning, for instance, it is just not possible to present the same content, no matter how adapted (ALT text etc). think for instance of a 3D model of something like a chemical compound that can be manipulated in virtual space with a mouse...this can never be made accessible to a blind user in a satisfactory manner, and in those circumstances solutions may have to be sought that go even beyond electronic means (e.g. providing a physical 3D model for students to experience). or, in other similar situations, a resource could be made technically accessible to blind users, but the underlying experience still doesn't appropriately convey the right context/meaning/experience to a blind user because it may be fundamentally rooted in visual/spatial perception that just does not translate, no matter how technically accessible you make it. in those cases, it's far more appropriate to think about what the actual learning outcome is, and looking for alternative ways in which to deliver that, rather than trying to make or break a "one size fits all" approach.
anyway, i digress...
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Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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| Vlad Alexander wrote: |
| The author of the article looks to WaSP for a solution? Ha! As a tool vendor, we have received tons of support for making our software standards-compliant and more accessible from GAWDS and AccessifyForum, yet got nothing from WaSP. |
We haven't even really started to look at authoring tools and CMS issues - while they are on the radar, we haven't taken on those challenges (yet).
I will also ask this (and I do so geniunely and I'm not trying to start something): have you ever asked WaSP for help or feedback?
If so, I'm not aware of it (though I know you and I have had conversations before). Honestly - even if you asked right now for specific help in those areas, we might not be able to help out or provide you with much direction.
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Derek Featherstone
simplyaccessible.com | furtherAhead.com | BoxofChocolates.ca
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Hi Derek,
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| have you ever asked WaSP for help or feedback? |
Our initial requests for support go back to 2003. At that time we were the first vendor that tried to produce a standards-compliant authoring tool and we were desperate to get any kind of feedback to make sure that what we were doing was "the right way to do things". Given the following statement on WaSP's Web site, we were hopeful:
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| We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium. |
In 2004 we tried again. And this time our request was circulated on the WaSP internal mailing list. Nothing.
Okay, years go by, with feedback from our users, AccessifyForum and GAWDS members we made improvements to our software to make sure it adheres to Web standards.
In 2006 we see WaSP is lending marketing support to software vendors who make an effort to use Web standards. With newsworthy features just added to our software such as support for CSS 2.1 selectors, we contact WaSP and ask to be mentioned in the Buzz. Once again our request in circulated on the WaSP internal mailing list. Nothing.
In 2007, we tried something different. I had an opportunity to interview the two people who have the most influence over the future of Web standards and Web accessibility. It's a really good read even if I have to say so myself. So I asked WaSP to Buzz it. Nothing.
So, I would like to provide some free and unsolicited advice to the author of the article who places so much hope in WaSP. Only rely on WaSP members to promote their own books, Web sites and conferences, and occasionally participate in vendor relations if it leads to employment opportunities. Oops, did I say that out loud?
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Vlad Alexander
XStandard Development Team
http://xstandard.com
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