Re: stab at betaw3

Responses interspersed.

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Laura Carlson
<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>wrote:

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


Actually the original goal was to try to overload or usurp the ordinary
meaning of "accessibility". This has had an impact within our little group,
but little effect in "the world". "Accessible" only relates to disability in
our deliberations and those of a quite small slice of the general public.
Try to imagine whether, if you stopped everybody at a NASCAR event what W3C
or accessible means and if you get more than 1% awareness, you can put me up
for auction.

To continue to pretend that it is understood widely to relate to people with
a wide range of functional diversities is pretty clearly vain. The main goal
of defanging accessibility is to emphasize "universality", i.e. Web4All. We
have always known that everyone is in some sense "disabled", but we have
chosen to claim some special entitlement to its use and it mostly evokes
pity, no matter how we would wish otherwise.

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.


This is where we diverge. "Most" able-bodied (whatever that means), after
all our evangelizing still equate "disabled" with "inferior" and I despair
of changing that after about fifty years of trying. Whenever we tell people
that we are working to, e.g. build assistive devices for blind folks, they
get all mushy and congratulate us for our charity, etc.

It is way past time to treat these not as "fixes" for physical/mental
shortcomings but as *derechos humanos* (human rights) - not *civil* rights.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind (except perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court)
that we are discriminated against systematically/regularly/historically,
including institutionalization, sterilization, and even death. Accepting the
conflation of "disabled" with "defective" continues to hurt us a lot: most
people, even in this "enlightened" era still subscribe to "better dead than
disabled."

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:


Of course we will still make all these arguments. That's not the point. The
problem is that we decry "playing the pity card" when Jerry Lewis does it,
but calling ourselves "disabled" in fact plays that card and that cannot be
changed.

* 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.


It is clear that one main reason we are "not there yet" is that we subscribe
to the idea that, e.g. blindness is a disease condition in need of "cure" so
that "they" can be molded into some homogeneous sameness. We need to
celebrate diversity because it's important for the species' evolution to
avoid extinction because of not being adaptable. The root of the bigotry is
not our particular "disabilities" but our difference. We are included in the
diversity model because so many other labeled groups (broads/niggers/queers,
etc.) suffer exactly the same indignities we do.


> 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".


And you haven't scratched the surface of that group's pervasive ableism. One
editor wrote "I'm not OK with blindness..." We are beginning to make headway
in Web Accessibility through admittedly tough measures like lawsuits, but we
may have to take to the streets.


> 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
>
>
>


-- 
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