RE: Accessible content management system

I fully agree with Karl J

 

Best regards,

Emmanuelle

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo

Directora de la Fundación Sidar

Coordinadora del Seminario SIDAR

www.sidar.org

email: coordina@sidar.org / emmanuelle@sidar.org

 

 

 

De: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] En nombre
de Karl Groves
Enviado el: sábado, 06 de agosto de 2011 15:01
Para: John Foliot
CC: joshue.oconnor@ncbi.ie; isforums@manx.net; Terry Dean; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Asunto: Re: Accessible content management system

 

This has been an extremely interesting thread to read.  So many people I
like and respect writing on a topic that interests me greatly.  So far
there've been discussions about validators, automated tools, conformance to
guidelines, usability, and the fact that accessibility is about people, not
conformance to guidelines.

[Responding to John's message for no other reason than his is the last
message in the thread which touches on the conformance theme]

I don't think anyone who's posted on this thread so far would argue for
validity for validity's sake. I do, however, take issue with two arguments
made (and agreed to) in this thread:

First, the idea that passing an automated accessibility tool is not enough
to guarantee that a site is accessible.  I have worked for two companies
which create & sell automated checkers. I've also created two such tools
myself, so I have an intimate knowledge of what they can and cannot do.
While it is true that automated tools have significant limitations in their
abilities to find accessibility problems, they are an important tool for
developers and QA people to catch things which don't need humans to review.
I've done testing and consulting work for Fortune 100 companies for 8 years
now.  Automated testing (of all kinds, not just accessibility) is hugely
important in large development teams, especially where there is often little
or no accessibility knowledge.  

The other thing about automated testing tools is that there's an
interesting, though rather obvious IMO, correlation between automated test
results and manual results.  What I mean is that a site which fails
automated testing will also fail manual testing.  A site which passes
automated testing may still have significant accessibility issues, so
they're definitely not a good way to determine actual accessibility, but it
can be a good way to know you've avoided a lot of high-impact issues.  The
quality of the tool is hugely important, however.

The second thing I'd like to comment on is the notion that compliance with
guidelines does not mean a site is accessible. To be frank, I'd like to see
data that backs this up.  In my opinion, if you've tested a system against a
series of guidelines for your chosen standard and still find the system to
be inaccessible to real users, then your test methodology is flawed.  In my
experience, most people's testing methodologies are seriously flawed. Their
tests are often incomplete, inefficient, and made up as they go. Futhermore,
to be even more frank, most people (even so called accessibility people)
don't understand what conformance actually means. They don't understand the
WCAG success criteria so they don't know what they're trying to conform to.
Given that, its no wonder that conformance to guidelines does not lead to an
accessible sites.


Karl



On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:58 AM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote:

I'll add my +1 here. I have come to the point long ago where end-users
*MUST* trump conformance: for example using ARIA in HTML 4 or XHTML1 is
"non-conformant" and will fail a validator test. So what? Remove ARIA to
get a conformance badge? Or include ARIA for improved accessibility and
fail the validator?

The choice is transparently clear to this camper. A validator is a useful
tool to ensure you've not made a total mess of your source code, but it is
no guarantee what-so-ever of an accessible site - at best validation hints
that the developer cares enough, and so likely there will be few access
issues.

Ian, you are far from alone here.

JF




> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On

> Behalf Of Joshue O Connor
> Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 4:51 AM
> To: isforums@manx.net
> Cc: 'Terry Dean'; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org

> Subject: Re: Accessible content management system
>

> Hi Ian,
>
> > 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..
>
> You are not alone in this view, I also share it.
>
> Cheers
>
> Josh
>
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