Re: stab at betaw3

Hi Shawn and all,

What are WAI E & O's goals in changing the definition of accessibility?

Many of us in education (my day job) rely on WAI E&O's definition of
accessibly to educate students, developers, and designers.

I urge you to contemplate the repercussions of changing the definition
if it is to re-brand in an effort to remove or down play the word
disability. Most able bodied people don't think of it now and if you
remove it or sweep it under the rug, it will be lost. If the
definition is changed too drastically a good chance exists that
developer/designer/spec writers will start ignoring the disabled even
more than they currently are in favor of the masses. It is a basic
awareness and education issue.

Disability is often the last thing on a developer/designer/spec writer's mind.

If...

* He or she is in pretty decent health, with good eyesight and good hearing;
* He or she  doesn't have any cognitive or learning issues, has the
full range of motor skills; and fluent in the local tongue;
* He or she is reasonably well educated and is pretty good at using
the computer;
* Most of the people he or she meets every day are more or less like
himself, and nothing much gets in his way;

Then...

It can be easy to forget that there are a lot of people who aren't
like this - and some of these people are disabled and may have trouble
using the web.

There are a number of arguments for accessibility:

* Civil rights, equality, social inclusion argument.
* The "designing for diversity is good design practice" argument,
which emphasizes the importance of considering users' access
capabilities as a part of user-focused design.
* The moral argument. "It is the right thing to do".
* The good business argument. SEO, "ignoring your potential customers", etc.
* The "future technologies" argument, which points out that computer
use and Internet access is increasingly moving away from the 'desktop'
scenario towards mobile, in-car, ubiquitous and immersive scenarios in
which access is limited in many ways by situation and technology.
* The legal or public policy argument, "you are going to get hammered
if you don't comply".
* Many more arguments. [1]

My own position is that the issues of equality, social inclusion and
human rights are by far the most important and shouldn't be lost. If
you're trying to encourage adoption by people who have primarily
self-interested motives, though then selfish reasons [2] for
accessible web authoring may be a useful advocacy tool.

Catherine wrote:

> HTML5's usual solution to
> accessibility  seems to be along the lines of anything that does not
> have a proven  obvious benefit to everyone (longdesc, headers,
> summary, etc.) should be  done away with without providing
> alternatives, or at least not now but  hopefully we might figure it
> out at some point or someone else will. I  see this as a problem. I
> see this as not recognising that some needs  (for lack of a better
> word, perhaps realities ?) have to be addressed  differently and that
> that is ok.

I agree. Particular accessibility features are sometimes required to
provide an equal experience to people with disabilities. However
universality is the way to design technologies. The thing is that it
needs to be thought out from the onset. Not an afterthought. Not just
lip service. When universality is thought of from the start and
incorporated into the design everyone wins. It is the best solution.

But we are not there yet. In fact I don't know how we will ever get
there. From what I have experienced awareness and education problems
exist. So do apathy problems.

In the HTML WG (I'm a volunteer member) some haven't truly thought of
universality. They think of the able bodied and forget the rest. Three
examples:

1. Bruce Lawson asked the HTML 5 editor in an interview "How does the
spec deal with the requirements of people with disabilities?" The
reply was, "Universal access-the requirement that anyone be able to
use information on the Web-is a fundamental cornerstone of HTML's
design, just like security, privacy, and so on. In general, we try to
design features so that they Just Work for everyone, regardless of how
you are accessing the Web." [3] Now that statement is false.
Case-in-point: universal access wasn't designed for canvas. At best it
is going to be a patch job solution. [4]

2. An example from just last week in the HTML WG was the "Recording
Teleconferences" thread. [5] In that instance a WG member offered to
make recordings of the HTML WG teleconferences and post them to the
public with no thought to how the deaf or hard of hearing would be
able to obtain the content of them. If the telcos are to be recorded
they need to have a transcript. It's not just that it's a W3C policy
and WCAG guideline that anyone associated with the W3C should be
embracing. It's also that too often that the lazy option is deployed.
Nothing difficult was proposed and yet people were concocting
objections when there weren't even problems.

3. An example from 2007... A HTML working group member's rationale for
not providing alt text for his photos: "I am currently following HTML5
(omitting alt) as it wasn't really clear to me what would be a better
solution given the single constrain I have: not finding it necessary
to provide replacement text for all those images. This would take too
much time for little benefit. Let alone the fact that I wouldn't even
know how to adequately provide replacement text for those pictures
that would still make the application enjoyable. Hopefully photo
recognization software improves soon."  [6]

There are more examples like these. In fact the original HTML 5 Design
Principles document used the words "when possible" in the statement
"Design features for universal access. This does not mean that
features should be omitted entirely if not all users can fully make
use of them, but alternate mechanisms should be provided when
possible." We succeeded in getting the "when possible" phrase removed,
but in practice many of the justifications for not making things in
HTML 5 accessible has boiled down to that "it is not possible".

I urge WAI E & O to give accessibility a strong definition that
educates the masses and helps ensures that people with disabilities do
not encounter barriers through things that they cannot readily change.

 Thank you for your consideration.

Best Regards,
Laura

[1] http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/accessibility.html#benefits
[2] http://www.icdri.org/Kynn/selfish_reasons_for_accessible_w.htm
[3]
http://www.webstandards.org/2009/05/13/interview-with-ian-hickson-editor-of-the-html-5-specification/
[4] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AddedElementCanvas#head-7417bcc86e63e6a528872dd1ab93576887e6208d
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/thread.html#msg652
[6]  http://annevankesteren.nl/2007/09/alt
-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 2009 13:53:56 UTC