- From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
- Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 15:19:17 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I have recently been carrying on a dialog with a representative of a private company that runs an instructional web site. It is a perfect example of how even well-meaning efforts to make the material accessible run in to snags that frustrate everybody from the provider of the material to its en tended audience. I am a UNIX user both in my job and at home and discovered that I could not use a certain web site at all because javascript is used to drive the navigation of the site. This means that any browser that accesses the site must use scripting to do even the simplest selection of links and downloading of pages. Lynx and all its text-oriented relatives do not use scripting because the scripting languages are closely tied to either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. If one was going to try to add scripting to lynx or another open-source browser, the question would be, "Whose scripting do we go with?" There are both technical issues and, even worse, proprietary issues which hold back what might seem like the obvious solution which would be to build a javascript engine and fix this problem. The company that runs the site had actually worked with a state agency for the blind in making their material accessible, but they essentially tuned their efforts to one and only one screen reader which happens to be the most expensive and technically complex screen reader there is. What this means is that persons who are blind who want to use the site must buy Microsoft Windows right down to specific versions, the screen reader that things were optimized to, again, down to the specific version, and use Internet Explorer at a specific revision number. Stray outside the box anywhere along this path and things will start to break. My impression from talking to the representative is that they absolutely and genuinely want to make it work. They even went to the trouble to create a text version of their instructional material, even going so far as to create keyboard alternatives to actions that were originally only done by mouse. What they failed to do was to do anything about the underlying use of javascript instead of absolute links in navigation. This company also uses bobby to validate their pages and I think bobby should blow a whistle when javascript is used because the script is just as much a show stopper as misuse of frames and certain other elements. They did so many things right and still got it wrong in the end. Why? Because nobody seems to have figured out a good way yet to describe what does make for an accessible site. We have lots of good suggestions for what not to do, but describing what gives the widest range of people access to at least the server engine so that it can retrieve requested information seems to be very elusive. We've got two major problems. We need to find some way to have a commodity browser that can work with the javascript navigation jungle that exists on so many sites today. That is going to be a big job from the bit of investigation I have done on this topic. I think it is also fair to state that javascript UN levels the playing field tremendously. It is like an inside joke that excludes all but those who know the meaning. One of the requirements for making sites as accessible as humanly possible should be a non-scripted version of the web pages period. It should technically be possible for modern servers to gracefully degrade or modify their output for any browser which has scripting turned off or no scripting capability such as lynx and several other browsers. It should be a piece of cake for modern servers to modify their output on the fly if they receive the right identification string from a no-script client. No-script should be just another form of client-server interaction, not somebody's arbitrary idea of obsolete technology. After all, wireless devices such as PDA's and web-enabled cell phones may not know javascript either. We should sell the idea that no-script is an easy and cheap alternative when complex and expensive don't work. Such validation programs as bobby should flag javascript pages as inaccessible to non scripting browsers. That would be honest and accurate while still telling the tester that his or her web site may be accessible to those using the Windows/screen reader/IE or Netscape method. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications Group
Received on Saturday, 7 July 2001 16:19:22 UTC