Just got back from Liverpool GeekUp and I must say the accessibility talk was darn good, particularly as everyone in the room got involved.
One revelation that came out of the discussion was that the current trend to start with a basic Web 1.0 HTML page and then progressively enhance it in to Web 2.0 using JS is not really going to help end-users viewing the site through assistive technologies such as Jaws.
For example, let's take a web form where you've added some client-side JavaScript validation (the server-side validation having been implemented previously). The client-side validation allows you to convey basic errors to the user before they send the form off to the server.
Advantages:
- Less duff forms submitted to the server
- Faster and more tactile error messages given to the end-user (no need to wait for page refresh, etc)
Disadvantages:
- Most screen readers now support JavaScript but use a virtual buffer which struggles to keep up with changes made by JavaScript
The real problem here is that most developers assume that assistive technologies disable JavaScript and therefore if JavaScript is enabled the end-user is not using assistive technologies... Wrong. Assistive technologies can be used even when JavaScript is enabled.
After much (and I mean much) discussion about all kinds of accessibility issues, the entire group came to a conclusion:
Assistive devices are pants from a developer perspective.
If you're using a specific browser, a developer can find out both server-side and client-side with a high degree of accuracy and tailor their content and interaction models to suit.
There are tried and tested techniques for working out if the user agent has JavaScript and other features enabled or disabled.
We can even work out, using a variety of methods, what language (German, French, etc) you're likely to prefer.
But with assistive technologies we don't even know if they are being used, yet alone their specific configuration!
While there are some methods for detecting the presence of assistive technologies, they are very unreliable and limited to very specific configurations (eg. we can use Flash player on Internet Explorer to occasionally detect the presence assistive technologies).
Even if we could detect the presence of assistive technologies reliably, we still have no idea as to the specifics of those technologies or the disability we should be catering for.
This is where the real problem lies - we literally have to make random guesses and assumptions about the end-user, and most of the time we are wrong.
Until assistive technologies start giving the web page or server some specific information, there's very little we can do to cater for your needs.
The assistive technologies need to deal with far more scenarios as well - in short they need to be modernised to deal with the sorts of sites and web apps that are available today, yet alone the stuff that's being worked on for tomorrow.
To make matters worse, even experienced developers still have very little knowledge about what is actually required to make a site accessible to people with various disabilities. We all know about WCAG and stuff like that, but that's only the most basic requirement.
For example, the vast majority of developers always think of blind people as "the worst case scenario" yet really only a small number of visitors are blind. There are lots of other disabilities such as reading/learning disorders, motor control (eg. difficultly moving the mouse), etc., that all have very different requirements to make the site more usable – but developers have a tendency to just cater for what they perceive to be the needs of blind people.
While automated tools can help detect some obvious issues with web sites and online apps, they don't even come close to having the sites tested by humans with disabilities. Unfortunately, most government and public sector bodies assume that if their site passes some automated test then "it must be accessible". Duh!
Anyway, a good night was had by all and it was certainly the biggest attendance for the Liverpool GeekUp to-date.
Added by
"After much (and I mean much) discussion about all kinds of accessibility issues, the entire group came to a conclusion:
Assistive devices are pants from a developer perspective."
I know how you feel and I'm sure you're just letting off steam BUT lots of things are pants. IE is pants. My car is pants. The global socio-economic status quo is pants. Let's just get on with the solutions. Not everything obeys our rules. Problems are opportunities and all that, you know...
-Phil Smears
I think you missed my point
Re-read the paragraphs under that statement - there are some very simple things that assistive devices could do which would make it significantly easier for web developers to accommodate the needs of the end-user much more accurately.
We could find no valid technical reason for the devices not to, for example, provide extra information to the user agent and server which would allow us to quickly and easily optimise our content for them. There are a relatively small number of assistive devices and yet there must be literally millions of web developers. Having millions of web developers constantly jump through hoops trying to guess what the requirements of the end user are does not seem to make sense when the fairly small number of assistive devices could simply provide the information we require.
I stand by my sentiment that assistive devices are pants from a developer perspective and based on the accessibility discussion that took place at Liverpool GeekUp's largest event to-date, 100% of the people who took part in the discussion came to the same conclusion.
Geeks inherently want to do everything they can to improve the user experience and we're all deeply annoyed that these devices make it nearly impossible for us to achieve the standards we set for ourselves.
If I had more time on my hands, I'd start a lobby to get the manufacturers/developers of assistive technology to come up with some standard way to specify the specific requirements of the end-user - something very easy for them to implement and would significantly improve accessibility of websites and apps IMHO.