AJAX and accessibility
Hi,
I'm a newbie to the community and am wondering how AJAX applications fit into the picture regarding accessibility. Are they frowned upon? Encouraged?
What sorts of acessibility issues arise from AJAX apps? BTW I work for a company that creates a huge amount of tables and we are currently using AJAX to display 'dynamic' html tables but I have concerns about accessibility. Looking forward to the responses!
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For me - true accesibility includes making the information available to any client - including those with javascript disabled (or even unavailable).
Personally I start from the thought that any site I will produce may be viewed by someone without js or css. The first priority shoudl be to get the information onto the page (with just the use of the ur! - either in dynamic serverside script generated content or just plain old flat html files).
That done (and in in the process) check the accessibility of your output with Cynthia or webexact or which ever tool you prefer. Once you are confident that it ticks the required boxes THEN stick in the nice bits that can improve the experience. Make sure output generated by ajax is identical to what would be there if js is off and you shoudl find there is nothing to worry about...
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Yes, thanks for that. At the moment we output 2 versions of the data - one in plain old vanilla html and the other using AJAX to make the experience more dynamic and it would be an interesting experiment to see at what point the AJAX apps start to become inaccessible. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
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something that would maybe be useful is a user option to switch the AJAX bits off and just use the vanilla version - I've heard tell more than once of assistive technologies supporting only some javascript, or of firewalls letting some bits of javascript through but not others, so there is always the risk that the user will have javascript enabled but for some reason be unable to benefit - and for these people it would be of benefit to be able to switch the AJAX stuff off and use the plain version..._________________
Jack Pickard The Pickards Information Services| Blog | Twit
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I'd recommend reading Jeremy Keith's book, Bulletproof Ajax. It spells out what is IMHO the best approach when using Ajax, which he's dubbed Hijax.
In brief - plan for Ajax from the beginning, build your site so it works using traditional HTTP GET and POST, then add Ajax functionality following the principles of progressive enhancement. Finally, as Jack says, offer your users the opportunity to turn off Ajax.
HTH.
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Dan Champion, Champion IS, Mooch Marketing, Revish
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| danchamp wrote: |
| Finally, as Jack says, offer your users the opportunity to turn off Ajax. |
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Johan De Silva / Portfolio | Place of Work @Flipside | Read my movie reviews punk!
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| Johan007 wrote: | ||
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Good question. I think the answer is "it depends".
For example on Revish Ajax is only used for a few functions that are available to registered, signed-in users, so on registration I offer this explanation:
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| Some areas of this site use a technique (commonly known as ajax) which may cause difficulties for some visitors, since it updates only part of a page instead of the whole page. If you would prefer to use the site without ajax, please check this box: |
Followed by a checkbox labelled "Turn off ajax on Revish". The setting can be changed at any time by editing your profile.
This works for the site because of the clear split between users of the site who will be exposed to Ajax and those who will not. It's not always that clean, but one way to manage it would be to offer a similar explanation to new visitors to a site, based on the existence of a cookie.
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Dan Champion, Champion IS, Mooch Marketing, Revish
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Ajax is scary to most access minded designers. And for good (understandable at the very least) reasons.
Like Flash, it makes web content more dynamic. Its more likely that content and available functionality will change with time, and without user imput. This poses fundomantal access issues, especially for those who can't see such changes. My current take is that self voiceing is the only clear route. Developers want to use Ajax because of these abilities. They don't want to have to avoid using these very features, so much lorded by the Web 2.0 bregade (I'm quite a fan myself).
So... Guess what I'll suggest folks...? Yes you guessed it, try Talklets. We're just getting started on our developer section:
http://www.talklets.com/...
Yes someone could turn off javascript, but suprise suprise, those people are never going to be able to benefit from the new abilities Javascript, and new techniques developed for/with javascript, bring.
Self voiceing is the only solution I see. Talklets is just one way to make that technique easier and more flexible for the developer... (as always, interest declared)
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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Self-voicing is far from being the "only" solution:
- As already mentioned in this thread, graceful degradation can be applied to these applications, the fallback version being akin to traditional web applications like forums and web-based e-mail.
- There is already rudimentary support for AJAX in JAWS when it the Javascript forces an update to the JAWS virtual buffer.
- The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) are working on a live regions concept. This will greatly improve the accessibility of AJAX and similiar web applications running in an XML environment. Hopefully W3C's HTML5 will be compatible with it or they find a way to make it work in text/html. Otherwise it won't be used on mainstream websites.
It might be some sort of text/html compatible version of ARIA which becomes so widely implemented in browsers that AJAX developers commit to following it. It might be some de-facto method of doing graceful degradation which becomes so common assistive devices commit to supporting it. We might end up with both...or even something entirely different.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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| Code: |
| As already mentioned in this thread, graceful degradation can be applied to these applications, the fallback version being akin to traditional web applications like forums and web-based e-mail. |
This means a LOT of work if you are going to use AJAX to its fullest in a large appication. Often at least doubling your work load.
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| There is already rudimentary support for AJAX in JAWS when it the Javascript forces an update to the JAWS virtual buffer. |
It doesn't solve the issue of 'dynamic confussion'. Sometimes the beauty of AJAX is that you can update multiple content items simultaneously, without user interaction or notification. Some of these sinariors are like an action movie. While you can add accessibility as an after thought, its simply going to loose the main purpose of the media in question.
| Quote: |
| The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) are working on a live regions concept. This will greatly improve the accessibility of AJAX and similiar web applications running in an XML environment. Hopefully W3C's HTML5 will be compatible with it or they find a way to make it work in text/html. Otherwise it won't be used on mainstream websites. |
I'll look forward to these developments, but for now....
Self voiceing IS the only complete, and practical solution.
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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Thought I'd explain the 'dynamic confusion' a bit further...
By many orders of magnitude, working eyes can process much more information than ears. Dispite having visual processing issues myself, I can still percieve many many times as much information through sight, than through hearing.
Many sites wish to exploit this. They want to give us a 'visual feast'. Dynamic and responsive, emersive experiences, etc... AJAX aids these desires, in affording methods capable of 'useing' more of the dynamic visual capacity of the visitor.
Many nuances of visual perception can not be translated in to static audio (i.e. audio you request/seekout, not audio you are dynamically given). The very dynamism of the content is often the 'meaning' being convayed. Self-voicing affords, safe (i.e. unlikely to confuse) DYNAMIC audio interfaceing. And while it may never be quite possible to fully describe all thats going on, you can avoid loosing the big gain from AJAX. Emerssion.
Gmail's HTML version is great, and much needed as their AJAX verion is not accessible. But its not Gmail. Its lost all the feel. All the benifits. Haveing a web based client that suggests contacts as you type, offers on-page spellchecking, etc... is great. However they could have designed it accessibly. And they would have needed self-voiceing to do it well. To keep that dynamism. There's simply no other way.
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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Sorry I just spotted this too:
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| The mainstream solution will most likely come from many different technologies agreeing on a standard and implementing it interoperably. Same as any other technology. |
erm... Not a chance. When have you seen this happen before? While M$ are flexing in one direction: http://www.computerworld.com/...
Yahoo! want their own APIs to shape the way of things, as do Google. Although they may back away from this stance, retracting many of their search APIs. Even Mozillar are stepping up.
Either way Google will inevitably shape the way AJAX evolves for many, as most wish to imitate success. And Google don't even declare their doctypes! So hoping they'll play ball with M$ in forming an AJAX standard, and then sticking to it... Not a hope. And then theres the guys (and gals) who actually have good ideas. I've not checked them out but ARIA may well be one of those groups. And the soup thickens...
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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HTTP, HTML and XML are big, widely deployed and mostly interoperable W3C standards. XMLHttpRequest may well become another. There's plenty of RFCs which are mostly interoperable, too.
WCAG is widely recognised and referred to. ARIA may become like that (but hopefully be better).
I wouldn't write off a standards-based solution eventually becoming the norm. Self-voicing might fill the gap for some users before then but it's not the best solution.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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yes it is. 
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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Ok I was going to leave at that, but hey, I can't, as you're just wrong.
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| HTTP, HTML and XML are big, widely deployed and mostly interoperable W3C standards. |
Yet every browser treats tham differently. Even different versions of the same browser.
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| WCAG is widely recognised and referred to. |
Yet they offer no solution on this. Just, basically, make a version that doesn't use AJAX. Thats simply not a solution. Is it?
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| I wouldn't write off a standards-based solution eventually becoming the norm. |
In what way can it become a solution? Standards help build a structure, to which methods can be applied. I've described above (or attempted to, let me know if I've not described it well enough) how there is a fundermental design issue, that can not be dealt with via a static aproach, as dynamism is what is being sought. With out dynamic self voiceing, you can not make 'safe' dynamic content. Tell me how, and I'll happily conceed. Meanwhile self voiceing is the only solution and therefore the best solution to makeing accessible, dynamic AJAX applications.
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creator of Talklets
Talklets ,
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