- From: <deborah.kaplan@suberic.net>
- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 09:57:54 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@whatsock.com>
- cc: Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com>, Alastair Campbell <alastc@gmail.com>, WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013, Bryan Garaventa wrote: > Yes, my point however stands, the more options that are available for > developers to make web technologies more accessible, the easier it will be to > accomplish. > > If the argument here is that this is a bad idea, please explain why. This is a bad idea because web developers end up getting hung up on one definition of what "more accessible" means, in ways that actively make things worse for people with other accessibility needs, even leaving aside the other comments people have made about superimposing a user experience on people just because they are using voiceover. Remember all those years when web developers assumed that "accessibility needs" meant "using JAWS," and then designed pages that specifically required JAWS functionality for any of the accessibility to work? This is the exact same thing, except changing the screen reader in question. For years, there was a trend on sites to hide accessibility resources from anyone not using a screenreader (off-page positioning, usually), making that information about access keys or the like be completely hidden from people using keyboard, voice, or magnification. But if you talk to the developers of those sites, they tell you that they have made the site accessible, because in their mind, they have customized accessibility around the only use case they think of. As others have said, the page design you described is equally bad for people who aren't using voice over, so why should you encourage developers to fix it for only one subset of the people who have accessibility problems with it? -Deborah Kaplan Accessibility Team Co-Lead Dreamwidth Studios, LLC
Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2013 13:58:27 UTC