Re: the accessibility of the disability web

Kelly Pierce wrote:
quote
 The report does have shortcomings, which were thoroughly discussed when
 it was released earlier this year.  Unfortunately, the above comments
 don't address the fact that even our own organizations can't seem to get
 this web access issue right.  We can talk about the endless financial
 interest of the disability industrial complex and how some organizations
 may not have a full commitment to creating tools for accessibility and
 empowerment.  However, we fail to analyze fully why our own organizations
 are not accessible in cyberspace when many of them would like to be.
quote

aloha, kelly!

no, my comments upon the shortcomings of the site analysis of sites sponsored
by disability organizations does not redress the issue, as regards the
accessibility of such sites...  however, there are several simple steps that
any disability or accessibility oriented organization can, and should, take:

1. any article that claims to deal with accessibility should, itself, be
accessible, or state at the outset that -- due to restrictions placed upon the
latitude of an individual author to ensure the accessibility of the document
source used to encode the article, it may not be accessible, and may not
utilize the authoring practices and markup described in the article

2. any disability related organization should contractually bind any contractor
to construct sites that bear a relationship to the sponsoring organization to
attain at least Double-A compliance to WCAG; likewise, any internally produced
web pages should be designed so as to achieve at least Double-A compliance with
WCAG

3. i have personally contacted nearly 75 disability related organizations,
pointing out the problems posed by the markup and technologies used in/on their
sites, providing them examples of specific problems, as well as solutions to
redress the extant problems, and have been rebuffed by all but a handful

the problem isn't that it is difficult to design for Double-A compliance, it is
that it is not being done, nor is it being required by sponsoring
organizations, whose members (not to mention those in whose name they collect
money from the general public) rely on the practices outlined in WCAG in order
to access web-based content...

yes, we can certainly publicize WCAG and ER tools such as Bobby and A-Prompt
more vociferously and actively, but it is ultimately up to the sponsoring
organization to self-police its online presence...  this is something that
cannot be enforced from without, but is a change which needs to be effected
from within the sponsoring organization...

perhaps the most effective line of agit-prop in this instance would be to build
a rogues' gallery of inaccessible sites sponsored by disability-related
organizations...  something along the lines of:
        http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/blind.html#stupid
but much more comprehensive, less blind-centric, and far less sarcastic...

note: the sites that appear in the above-listed URI are sites which are (a)
egregiously inaccessible and (b) have explicitly rebuffed my attempts to assist
them in correcting the accessibility problems posed by their sites...  note, as
well, that this is far from a comprehensive list of such sites...

gregory.


Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn
                    -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
-----
Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
Camera Obscura: <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html>
VICUG NYC: <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
Read 'Em & Speak: <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/books/index.html>

Received on Monday, 20 December 1999 13:51:59 UTC