Re: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand" for Academic Articles

Wayne,

You've put your finger on the other reason to replace inaccessible 
content with a form to request their remediation as opposed to just 
removing the content.  The content owners may be surprised at how often 
remediation is requested, thus gaining an understanding of the size of 
the disability community they would never know had they just removed the 
content.

Btw, I'm new enough to accessibility not to have come across the quote, 
"We don't need elevators, I've never seen a wheelchair on the second 
floor." but would like to use it.  Any idea to whom I can ascribe the quote?

Cheers,
Peter


Wayne Dick wrote on 9/21/2019 11:49 AM:
> A professional user with disability perspective.
>
> There was an old joke in accessibility. "We don't need elevators, I've 
> never seen a wheelchair on the second floor."
>
> Professional articles are in that category. If you make articles 
> accessible, in a few years you will see more users.
>
> On demand accommodations are a legal option. Moreover a well planned 
> system that integrates improved accessibility with individual 
> accommodation requests is practical. If done adequately will pass most 
> serious audits. However, you must plan to eventually serve the print 
> disabled community in its full numbers.
>
> Best, Wayne
>
> On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 1:49 PM Peter Shikli <pshikli@bizware.com 
> <mailto:pshikli@bizware.com>> wrote:
>
>     Steve,
>
>     A bit too early for statistics, but you are voicing a major client
>     agency concern.  Our response is the database.  It includes not
>     just our performance data for prompt remediations but also the
>     requester's.  When our agency rep accepts a proposed remediation
>     task, they get to see if the requester  is going around clicking
>     the remediate button on everything. They can decide to say "No". 
>     They can also decide to take down the PDFs involved, which would
>     be no worse than what they were prepared to do before the forms.
>
>     And of course they can be surprised by old PDFs still being used
>     or to have some important role, and then to get those remediated.
>
>     Finally, the answer to your question would depend greatly on where
>     the remediation line was placed.  If the agency's budget allowed
>     only 2% of their documents to be remediated, they can expect lots
>     more request forms than if they had remediated 20%.  Ideally, the
>     2% folks would remediate the next 2% shortly, perhaps informed by
>     the form requests, and keep going until at some point they got
>     close to 100%.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Peter
>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *From*: Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk
>     <mailto:steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>>
>     *Sent*: 9/20/19 9:42 AM
>     *To*: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>"
>     <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
>     *Subject*: RE: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand"
>     for Academic Articles
>
>     Peter, do you have any sort of metrics around the number of
>     requests you received compared with the number of PDFs there are?
>     We have been recommending that our clients adopt a similar
>     approach, but they are always worried that they might be inundated
>     with more requests than they can handle. I rather suspect it would
>     be the opposite, but it would be great to see some figures.
>
>     Steve Green
>
>     Managing Director
>
>     Test Partners Ltd
>
>     *From:* Peter Shikli <pshikli@bizware.com
>     <mailto:pshikli@bizware.com>>
>     *Sent:* 20 September 2019 17:06
>     *To:* w3c-wai-ig@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
>     *Subject:* Re: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand"
>     for Academic Articles
>
>     We wrestled with the idea when working with government agencies
>     faced with huge volumes of archival PDFs.  We remediated what we
>     could with the budget available, but what to do with the rest. 
>     One option was to comply to the law by simply removing them.  The
>     optics of this didn't appeal to us; to deprive sighted users on
>     behalf of the disabled.  Not a good move as we try to build public
>     support for the disabled.
>
>     Because we already do our work using a cloud-based task management
>     system, our solution was to integrate into that.  We wrote code
>     that replaced all gazillion unremediated PDFs with a form that
>     gave users two options, one was to link to the unremediated old
>     version and another was to request remediation.  That request
>     seamlessly entered our task management system where we proposed a
>     remediation task and the agency accepted, unless of course it was
>     some bogus request from Mickey Mouse, or it was a thousand-page
>     monster from 20 years ago, in which case the agency chose to
>     remove that PDF instead with a link to its closest successor. In
>     most cases, the remediated PDF replaced the request form for the
>     requester and all future visitors.
>
>     Does this conform to WCAG 2.0 or 2.1, comply to Title II and III
>     of the ADA, and protect against lawsuits and such?  Obviously this
>     requires judgement calls.  WCAG allows for accessible versions
>     such as a table view of the contents of a map, but the assumption
>     is that the alternate content is immediately or at least quickly
>     available.  Our task-based solution tries to respond to this with
>     2 key requirements:
>
>     1) Rapid Response - We streamlined all the steps involved to be
>     the fastest possible.
>
>     2) Accountability - The task management system produces reports as
>     to how well we are doing requirement #1 above.  This is important
>     because we must face human nature.  Your email requests for ALT
>     attributes lands in someone's in-basket, a busy person with other
>     priorities and perhaps no clear requirement to respond.  We've all
>     sent email to info@ only to get the robot to tell us how important
>     we are.
>
>     The 3 liabilities of this approach are:
>
>     a) Without the above 2 requirements, one may conclude that the
>     problem is solved with the request forms and begin shifting from
>     remediating to just using request forms.  An Accessibility Plan
>     should include request forms as a stepping stone to full
>     accessibility where all such forms are eventually replaced by
>     remediated content or removed as part of normal housekeeping.
>
>     b) WCAG allows for a statement of partial compliance, and this
>     should be presented as such.
>
>     c) This has no bearing going forward.  Using accessibility request
>     forms for new content is like constructing a building without
>     wheelchair ramps until someone asks for them.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Peter Shikli
>     Access2online
>     www.access2online.com <http://www.access2online.com>
>     Prison inmates helping the internet become accessible
>
>     Lorenzo Milani wrote on 9/17/2019 9:39 AM:
>
>         Hello everybody,
>
>         I am a Product Associate for the User Experience Team at SAGE
>         Publishing, reaching out for ideas and feedback on an
>         accessibility initiative for academic and scholarly articles
>         found on online journals.
>
>         As thousands of journal articles are commissioned and
>         published every year from a variety different sources, it is
>         often very hard to ensure that the authors provide alt-text
>         for any images, tables and graphs they choose to include.
>
>         If remediating every image on every article on our platform is
>         not viable or generally useful we still want to provide a
>         solution for delivering fast alternative text. This would be
>         an “alt-text on demand” solution where readers would request
>         alt-text for an article or specific image. We would then add
>         the relevant alt-text and inform the reader when it would be
>         available. The long-term aim is to automate this workflow//to
>         deliver the alt-text as quickly as possible/, /but the text
>         itself would still be created by a human//to ensure quality
>         and consistency.
>
>         The alt-text request could potentially take different forms:
>
>          1. A mail-to hidden link at the top of an article page,
>             probably next to the skip link
>          2. A link to an accessibility page with a simple form to fill out
>          3. A simple form on the article page itself
>          4. For every image missing meaningful alt text, including
>             alt-text that reads, “to request alt text e-mail
>             exampleaddress@example.com
>             <mailto:exampleaddress@example.com> “
>
>         These are just initial ideas and if you have any feedback,
>         insights or comments these would be much appreciated.
>
>         Thanks in advance for your help,
>
>         *Lorenzo Milani*
>         /Product Associate, User Experience Team/
>          SAGE Publishing
>         1 & 2, Broadgate
>          London, EC2M 2QS
>          UK
>