Re: Accessible content management system

Hi Ian,

I'm afraid this where we disagree. I think web standards are very important 
and conformance to those standards should be an ideal that we as developers 
should all be striving towards. Tools are just a useful way for developers 
(who are vaguely interested) to see whether a site meets those minimum 
standards.

After ten years of web development, I am disappointed to see on the WAI site 
that there still is not a single authoring tool that fully supports the 
production of accessible Web sites. Reference: 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/software.html

The average internet user is most unlikely to ever use a validation tool so 
they have to trust that anyone claiming to adhere to accessibility standards 
are in fact implementing those standards. Why bother waving the 
"accessibility" flag, if you choose to ignore standards?

Anyway thank you for an interesting view point on accessibility.

regards,

Terry
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian Sharpe" <isforums@manx.net>
To: "'Terry Dean'" <Terry.Dean@chariot.net.au>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 8:05 PM
Subject: RE: Accessible content management system


> Hi Terry
>
> As mentioned previously, I personally do not view accessibility solely in
> terms of conformance. And at the risk of being branded a heretic, I
> personally would also like to see this view more widely accepted..
>
> I personally feel that now too much emphasis is being placed on 
> conformance
> alone and the use of automated tools to validate whether a site conforms 
> to
> relevant guidelines in order to meet any legal obligation rather than to
> necessarily improve the "accessibility" of a site,  online service or web
> application.
>
> I would like to see authors taking a step back to look at how they can
> ensure their site or application is as usable as possible for their target
> user group and use the various guidelines, techniques and strategies
> promoted by this community to meet this objective and ensure that it is
> accessible.
>
> Running validators against any site or service is all well and good and
> certainly will help authors to identify potential areas of concern. 
> However,
> automated tools will never be able to tell you whether the site is 
> actually
> usable for all the members of a site's target audience.
>
> I was directed to another W3C document on strategies for testing
> accessibility when I raised this point in a recent thread. This 
> recommended
> authors / developers engage users with a range of disabilities early on in
> the development of a site or online service and work with them to identify
> potential problems which goes a long way to address my particular 
> concerns.
>
> However, I personally don't feel enough emphasis is placed on this 
> approach
> and feel that it would be very helpful if organisations used the
> accessibility statement on their site to clearly explain what they have 
> done
> in order to address accessibility, particularly in terms of user testing,
> the combinations of UA, AT, platform and device used to test the site, the
> combination that resulted in the most effective results and how to address
> any known outstanding problems.
>
> I believe this would have many benefits, not only to potential users by
> managing their expectations and providing useful information on how to
> actually use the site with AT, the best browser to use etc, but also to 
> the
> organisations who I feel would gain credibility for the efforts they have
> made and feel it would also go a long way to addressing a very commonly 
> held
> perception that organisations just don't care and are only really playing
> lip service to accessibility
>
> I know not all users will have access to the various combinations of
> technology that a site may have used to test their site but if we
> recommended a minimum requirement of using open source AT and most popular
> platforms, most users would be able to decide whether they spent the time
> installing any additional products in order to use the site if their 
> normal
> configuration didn't work. I think just being told how to address any 
> issues
> in order to use the site, or what kind of experience a user should expect 
> in
> itself would help to reduce the frustration a lot of users feel, myself
> included.
>
> If this formed part of the recommendations for compliance with A, AA, or 
> AAA
> conformance I feel this would make a significant step in improving web
> accessibility.
>
> Cheers
> Ian

Received on Friday, 5 August 2011 13:13:39 UTC