> On Jul 6, 2015, at 7:48 AM, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote: > > Gregg, thank you so very much for the WCAG history and perspective. It > is great to have that background information. Very valuable indeed and > much appreciated. Your statement regarding accessible but unusable > reminds me of Jared Smith's article from a couple of years ago, > "Accessibility Lipstick on a Usability Pig" [8]. In it he states, > "Applying accessibility techniques to an unusable site is like putting > lipstick on a pig. No matter how much you apply, it will always be a > pig." Yes that was a memorable quote. one comment > Your statement regarding accessible but unusable I didn’t mean to imply that anything was accessible if it wasn’t also usable. (I fight that every day) What I meant was - it could pass “Minimum Accessibility Requirements (such as WCAG or 508)” and still not be usable. (mostly because we can only level playing fields — not ensure that they are not under water entirely) It is important to remember that things that pass WCAG or 508 or any other guidelines - have just passed some set of “minimum accessibility requirements” — but they still will not be accessible to some people - no matter what the guidelines are. So things should never be referred to as accessible as a statement of status - just because the passed some minimum accessibility standard like WCAG of 508. (Though of course we commonly refer to things as accessible if they meet ADAAG or 508 or WCAG. Perhaps we need to change our language and say “ADA compliant” or WCAG conformant etc rather than ever calling anything “accessible” as a flat statement Gregg
Received on Monday, 6 July 2015 17:57:22 UTC