Web accessibility no longer an afterthought
Yahoo's Victor Tsaran, blind since the age of five, is responsible for making sure Yahoo developers design Web pages with accessibility in mind.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)Yahoo's Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an application. So when he started Yahoo's accessibility push two years ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features.
Fortunately for Tsaran, Yahoo's accessibility manager, he's running into that problem less and less. Web designers are starting to take accessibility as seriously as button placement or heading layout when they develop their products, improving the Web experience not only for people like Tsaran--who lost his sight at the age of five--but for Web users in general.
"We're seeing a lot more awareness and involvement in Web accessibility than we did a few years ago, particularly among big companies," said Judy Brewer, director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium. "It's becoming a solid business expectation that Web sites need to meet the needs of all users."
At the two biggest Internet companies in the world, accessibility is seen as an increasingly important part of what they do. Yahoo requires every new hire to receive accessibility training from Tsaran and Alan Brightman, senior policy director of special communities. And it books engineering teams for tours of their Accessibility Lab.
Google recently rolled out a service that will let YouTube users add captions to their videos, and believes that as the Web moves more from an era of presentation to an era of two-way "data-driven" communication, accessibility becomes even more important, said Jonas Klink, accessibility program manager.
Web accessibility has come a long way in the decade since many of these proposals were first floated. It's still a challenge, however, for the Web community to remember that as it pushes forward with exciting new technologies like HTML5 that could reinvent the Internet experience, it must keep in mind the needs of those who can't type 60 words per minute, operate a mouse like a scalpel, or see the unobtrusive pop-up windows that point to the next destination on the page.
"As the Web gets more and more dynamic, the accessibility requirements get more and more interesting, and sometimes challenging, to implement," Brewer said.
The challenges
There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can't use a computer to get on the Internet in the normal fashion, said Yahoo's Brightman. For those people, a mix of screen reader software, keyboards with special buttons, and even motion-sensing Web cameras must take the place of the mouse and QWERTY keyboard.
Sites that don't play nicely with special input methods cause accessibility problems that can easily be avoided.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)That can cause problems for Web designers who rely too heavily on mouse navigation, or who design pages with special multimedia whiz-bang effects that look cool only to the people that can see them. "There can be an assumption of homogeneity on the Web," said Naomi Bilodeau, technical program manager for Google.
Users of screen readers--software that essentially reads out loud a description of text, links, and buttons on a page--are confounded the most by Captchas and Flash Web pages, according to a recent survey of screen-reader users conducted by WebAIM.
But simple things like photos or images can also create problems if the Web publisher doesn't add alt text to those photos, or relies primarily on images as a way of explaining what is happening on the page. And as Web designers push forward with Javascript and AJAX-based technologies that overlay Web content over the primary Web page, there's great potential to confuse screen readers.
The good news is that most of these problems aren't as much technology issues as design issues; content created with things like Flash can be made accessible if designers start off with that principle in mind.
"There are a bunch of things (in Web design) that are not features," said Nicholas Zakas, principal front-end engineer for Yahoo's home page, meaning that while you can jazz up a page all you like with additional features, there are certain things that should be standard fare. "Performance is not a feature, internationalization is not a feature, and accessibility is not a feature."
However, features can make the Web more accessible. As mentioned, Google recently rolled out automatic captioning software for YouTube videos, making it much easier for deaf people to enjoy the world's largest collection of cute cat videos.
In all seriousness, the automatic captioning technology is being rolled out first on YouTube's Educational channel, allowing deaf or hearing-impaired people to take advantage of distance learning programs or other educational systems. It's most definitely a work in progress, (check out this YouTube video of a lecture by a University of California at Berkeley professor by clicking on the "cc" tab, the left arrow, and then "Transcribe Audio") but with refinement could really add to the amount of knowledge that can be consumed by disabled people.
"I wanted this so badly (that) it's good enough, I don't care if there are some bad captions," said Google's Ken Harrenstien, a deaf software engineer who played an instrumental role in bringing the project to life.
The reasons
There are no explicit laws that companies design Web sites to be accessible to the disabled, but many disability experts and Web companies believe that portions of the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 do apply to the Internet, despite having been written several years before the Web emerged as a mainstream phenomenon.
And in order to do business with the U.S. government, companies must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which insists that electronic and information technology products sold to government agencies be designed with disabled employees in mind, and that government services produced by contractors consider disabled citizens in equal measure.
But these are businesses, after all: Yahoo's Brightman estimated that there's about $220 billion in discretionary spending available to disabled people. Making a Web site accessible to as many people as possible isn't just the right thing to do, it also makes business sense, he said.
Also, with a rapidly aging population in many parts of the world--notably the U.S.--accessibility requirements will become useful for today's crop of baby boomers as they grow older. People over 65 are increasing their use of the Internet, according to Nielsen, and features designed for accessibility could aid those who aren't technically disabled but wouldn't mind a little extra help.
The Web is becoming more accessible for people with disabilities, but it's far from complete: 46.3 percent of screen reader users think the Web is getting more accessible.
(Credit: WebAIM) The future
The immediate challenge for those working on Web accessibility is to ensure that accessibility standards are not trampled in the rush to finalize the HTML5 collection of standards that Google and other Web browser companies are currently debating. Brewer said it's "extremely important to be sure that HTML5 can support accessibility fully," and her group is working closely with the other parts of the W3C to realize that goal.
But beyond that goal, Web accessibility advocates have reason to feel optimistic about their cause. Long-awaited technologies like sophisticated speech recognition are finally coming to fruition after decades of joking about how such capabilities were just two years away. And 46 percent of respondents to the WebAIM survey reported that Web content has become more accessible in recent years.
"Anybody should be able to use anything on this page," said Yahoo's Zakas, keeper of the all-important Yahoo.com page. "If anybody can't use it, it shouldn't be there."
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
(That caption doesn't really summarize what's in the chart. Perhaps an alt or even a longdesc would be in order. It could describe how 46% of those surveyed feel the web is more accessible than a year ago.)
If you have any doubt about the need for proper accessibility designs, 'read' a few common web pages using a screenreader and realize that even the best pages can be a challenge for visually impaired visitors.
However, I think this gets taken too far because if your system, or portions of it have no applicability to the visually impaired, it can be a poor investment of resources to add the capability.
The key is to do the obvious elements, and target the key areas within your systems that will produce the biggest return for the visually impaired.
More and more services are only available online or the service is much better on line. As the web becomes the primary source of communication and information I think its important to include everyone.
Some of the older members of my family either don't have the internet or have poor computer skills and I can already see the road blocks and inconvenience it cause them. This situation will only get worse for them and such is the case for the visually impaired if an effort isn't placed on making the web accessible to them.
Yes vision helps to use the web to its full extent but even less accessible web is better than none.
Right. Blind people should be excluded from the web, even though the web can be made fully accessible if web developers design with accessibility in mind. Why would a blind person want to buy something online from the convenience of his/her own home, for crying out loud? I mean, really. Blind people don't need to buy things, right?
And while we're at it, all buildings should be off limits to people in wheelchairs. After all, if you can't climb steps, what why would you even want to be in a building in the first place? I mean, it's ridiculous that a person in a wheelchair would even feel the need to enter a building, right?
Oh, and books? They should be reserved only for those who pass a certain minimum IQ level. In fact, all the books should be in Latin to preserve their purity and keep those unworthy common folk from getting delusions of grandeur, as if they were somehow good enough to read books.
In fact, the world should just be designed around *my* needs. No one else really matters anyway.
I am not sure how to take your statement - is it a lack of understanding or do you really believe what you said? am blind and have been using the internet since I was 9 years old. What if I said I didn?t think marginally intelligent people should be using the internet. That using the Web to it?s full potential requires a certain amount of common sense. Likewise, replace that with any other minority group and you will begin to realize how ridiculous it sounds. How about: Black people shouldn?t use the internet. Using the internet to it?s fullest is only for white people.
Do you know any visually impaired people? I have a full-time job, In Information Systems no less, own my home, volunteer with local organizations that I believe in, I hope someday to fall in love and have a family. I use the internet to communicate with friends and family, I have and use Twitter and Facebook, I buy many things online (hint hint those of you who build your shopping websites inaccessibly.) I pay my bills online, manage my cell phone account, etc etc. The internet plays an increasing role in most of our daily lives and to say that someone should be denied access to the rich resources available online based on their lack of sight is akin to saying that they should be institutionalized.
I will now point out that designing websites and indeed web applications to be accessible need not mean you sacrifice aesthetics, and designing universally usable websites brings some other advantages. For instance, accessibly designed websites tend to work very well across multiple platforms including browsers, PDAs, Netbooks, and smartphones of all shapes and sizes. Furthermore Universal Design principles lend themselves to a clean, easy to understand interface for all.
MadLyb,
I would be interested in hearing what things you see that wouldn?t have application to blind people. I would like to gently remind you that we are peple just like everyone else- we like to joke, play, watch movies and videos just like you.
Like Pete, I've been on the Internet for a very long time--since 1991, in fact. Yep, since before there was a Worldwide Web, when we used tools like gopher, veronica, jughead, and archie (yes, really), when a 56K lease line was great and you were just the bee's knees if you had a T1. I made my first online purchase in 1994 on CDConnection, over telnet. Since then, I've found online shopping in particular to be very liberating--now I can window shop, and I don't have to have some barely literate stock person who would rather be doing something else tell me "We ain't got that" when I ask about something I would like to buy. And, let's not forget that the Internet has given all of us, including blind people, access to more information than we've ever had, artificial barriers to access notwithstanding. To tell me, and all other blind people who need, who hunger for access to this stuff, that we just can't have it because it's too inconvenient, because, well, why should we bother, since you people can't use it anyway, just angers me. So, what, do you think that someone else is typing this for me? Do you think that I really can't use my iPhone? Or maybe I'm just lying? Or, anyway, maybe I'm just special, but really, I'm an exception, Pete's an exception, and our needs aren't important, our money's somehow not as green, our potential contributions to society perhaps less important than yours. Yes, offensive and disgusting in the extreme.
I'm happy to see that Web designers are starting to take our needs into account. I'm glad to see some of the artificial access barriers being lowered (CAPTCHA, anyone?) I'm really happy to see that many welcome our participation in this new electronic world and are glad to see that we can take advantage of technological advances just like everyone else. But I'm sad, unbelievably sad, that attitudes such as those expressed earlier in this thread still exist. Those of you who want us to stay home, or, wait, better yet, stay in our institutions, join the rest of us in the 21st century. I am not content to be locked up in anyone's little back room. I fully expect to participate fully in the world around me, and that includes the Internet.
Until last June I think you would have found most if not all blind people agreeing that Apple's iPhone was not usable at all for them, and that it probably never would be, but Apple on their first attempt showed how touch screens for the most part could be just as intuitive to screen reader users as any sighted mouse master. In fact, the innovative developers at http://www.codefactory.es have tried to add iPhone-like functionality to their screen reader, Mobile Speak, for Windows Mobile devices; I remember a quote from somewhere, something about the best comp lament is to copy. There are still some blind people who completely doubt that the iPhone is usable, some of them will eventually be enlightened, and some will eventually be left behind. Now if only Google and their Android platform could be made accessible, along with chrome and wave. I have seen accessibility improve by light years in the last 25 years, but I am also hopefully awaiting for it to improve at an even faster rate in the future.
If you really think avoid it, cat videos are not necessarily the best scope of videos to reference when discussing captioning need. I?ve always assumed that cats don?t talk {:-)} and captions are typically irrelevant in their videos. It does bring up an often ignored but important fact that you might want to think about: captioned videos are not the only types of videos for deafies. Perhaps the best (and only) place I?ve seen this idea implemented is a search tool I frequently use called 22frames.com. In fact, rather than paste a bunch of text, have a read at the second paragraph that starts with ?Captioned videos are not the only kinds of videos that are easy to watch without audio.? (see here: http://www.22frames.com/aboutus.aspx ). If anyone has seen this type of idea elsewhere, please post so I can use!
Also, regarding my previous comment on HR 3101: if you are not on Facebook, you can follow the Caption Action 2 blog here: http://captionaction2.blogspot.com/
Cheers.
*M*
Thanks for highlighting the importance of accessibility on your blog the other day. Interestingly, a Google Alert referencing our site in a comment on your blog article led us to the article the next day. Pretty fast timing on Google I must say.
Anyhow, we think the commenter (mannygites) was trying to make a good point about a video accessibility issue in which our site (22frames.com) is trying to address. So many videos are coming out each day, and only a small fraction of them are captioned or subtitled. There is, however, a perhaps larger fraction of videos that are not captioned/subtitled but are still easily viewable by the deaf and hard of hearing. You might recall this example that went viral: http://www.22frames.com/video.aspx?id=102854. We find that there is little to no amount of discussion of indexing (or at least making it easier to find) this class of videos before we started developing our algorithms. However, you?ll easily find from browsing our site that quite a bit of quality videos are of this form. Anyhow, our beta testers have given an amazing amount of positive feedback about our ability to index such videos on top of our caption/subtitle index. Hopefully the idea gets applied outside of 22frames.com.
- by Shawn_slh December 17, 2009 1:48 PM PST
- For those who are unaware of web accessibility and how people with disabilities use the web, here is a brief introduction with links to more information: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(24 Comments)For a real-life example, see this video of Bruce M, who is blind and hearing-impaired, using the web: http://bit.ly/WebBraille
and links to more videos: http://bit.ly/JAvideos
People with disabilities can use the web quite effectively when it is designed well.