New web accessibility guidelines will be ignored, says critic

New guidelines on web accessibility are nearing completion after years of delay, according to the body behind them. But outspoken critic Joe Clark says the guidelines will be ignored when they are published. The first version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) were published first in 1999 by the World Wide …

[Thomas Schulze]

Wow!

Big words... unfortunately I can't agree with either position.

Yes, the W3C guidelines are cumbersome, inflated and pretty much useless unless you're an expert in the field. Nevertheless I think they are useful, even though a worldwide standard would be preferable.

No, unfortunately the cool kids don't know about accessibility. While XHTML and other web standards are becoming more widely used I doubt that anyone who doesn't have first hand experience with accessibility tools (myself totally included) would be able to produce a site that covers all eventualities.

Basically, what we need is a quick and dirty, easy to read guide/checklist for building accessible sites. The W3C is not the body to look at for this but their guidelines should be used as the basis for it... pity the poor bastard who takes on the task ;)

[Richard Fletcher]

Agree completely.

I spent a couple of days the other week going through WCAGv1 and WCAGv2 and was struck by the number of problems there are.

For one the standards choose not to use terms that are in common usage, they create their own terms, although not all are defined in the glossary. So you have to guess of course.

There is little reference to the tools that the disabled have available. For example, in practice how bad is it really to use a <table> tag for layout? Some would say very, but I've had some work reviewed by some blind people for a project for the UK Govt and I threw some tables in the design to see what they said. They said it was fine.

Similarly we are encouraged to use high-contrast colours, or provide an option, yet the browsers can do this, and they can resize the text.

Also, as far as I am aware no disabled people themselves have not had any input on the guidelines, which seems odd.

It seems to me that the web client should be responsible for making a website accessible and the website should only need to provide enough detail to make it possible for the client to achieve that. If this was so then alt tags would still be required, but tables would be fine, AJAX would be fine.

[Se&ntilde;or Beavis]

Cost vs return

I am fully in support of good standards to improve website accessibility. The problem is as it always was, namely that browser companies either interpret ambiguous parts of the standards differently, or choose not to bother implementing those parts at all.

In my opinion, trying to get a website compliant with XHTML, CSS and WAI Level 2 standards, while supporting Firefox 2, IE6 and IE7 and Safari is not impossible, but either places limitations on how it looks or makes it too cost-prohibitive to achieve and maintain thereafter. As a consequence, I would venture that most organisations choose to be "close enough" to the standards.

Even when organisations run the risk of fines for non-compliance, there remains the risk-cost analysis: is it cheaper to take the hit on the fine than to pay web developers to avoid the fine?

One way to resolve all this would be for W3C to take the following steps: remove ambiguity from the standards, and enforce compliance with the browser vendors through. Sure, it's clearly not that simple, but I would argue there is no compelling incentive for browser vendors to comply.

What do other people think?

[Senor Beavis]

&ntilde;

HTML entities? I'll get me coat

[Steve]

All the cool kids

""All the cool kids already know about web accessibility and they just automatically make reasonably or very accessible websites as a matter of course," said Clark."

I wonder whether Clark lives in the same world the rest of us inhabit.

Are these guidelines about 'kids' creating their own webpages, or is it about professional developers working for professional companies and producing web applications for internal and external purposes.

If it's the latter it's my experience that budget, resource and time constraints often mean that accessibility gets pushed to the bottom of the pile. If it works on the target browser (or maybe 2 target browsers if you're lucky) and if the majority of the target audience can access it (ie office workers, or a large portion of customers) then that's good enough.

[Mo]

Audience

The target audience of the WCAG isn't web developers—Joe Clark's right in that the “cool kids” know it all already. We do.

WCAG is a tool, though; it's a weapon to be used against buzzword-friendly project managers and clients who need to be able to say that sites are “accessible” but don't actually know what that means and would happily sacrifice their own grandmother to squeeze that extra bit of “wow” into a site. WCAG (and other standards) give you something concrete to fall back on in your arguments, saving you the trouble of producing the reams of necessary research yourself.

Oh, and to other commenters: there's nothing more accessible about XHTML over HTML; the key is the strict DTD, not whether it's XML-driven or SGML-driven. HTML 4.01 strict and XHTML 1.0 strict are entirely equivalent, just represented slightly differently.

[ryan]

everybody loves compliance.

especially large companies.

"our intranet pages detailing members of staff who are currently on maternity leave doesn't render properly in safari!"

"what browser do you guys use internally?"

"well, internet explorer 6.. but what if somebody tries to view it in safari?!"

"is *anybody* going to try to view it in safari?"

"ummm.. no. i think one of the guys in marketing has a powerbook at home though."

etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: All the cool kids

"If it's the latter it's my experience that budget, resource and time constraints often mean that accessibility gets pushed to the bottom of the pile. If it works on the target browser (or maybe 2 target browsers if you're lucky) and if the majority of the target audience can access it (ie office workers, or a large portion of customers) then that's good enough."

If you think that building a website accessibly takes extra time or money, then you aren't doing it right in the first place. It is quite possible to build a site properly from the beginning with no extra time. Joe is right about what he says - people DO know it all already, and build sites like that. At least, those in the web community / standards movement.

Personally, I like Joe's own 'Samurai' group errata to the guidelines:

http://wcagsamurai.org/

[Anonymous Coward]

Did that idiot actually say "cool kids"?

I wasn't aware that the World Wide Web was around in the '50's, because I'm damn sure that was the last time there were any "cool kids" around. Or maybe all these "cool kids" hang out at this new-fangled "Web 2.0" I keep hearing about, because in my experience websites have been becoming less accessible.

[Graham Marsden]

Hmm...

Whenever I see a site that says "Best viewed..." my mind automatically fills in the words "...by going around to the home of the bloke who wrote it and looking at it on his computer!"

[Mike]

Best Viewed

I wish Graham Marsden was kidding.

Having attempted to view sites with "file:" URLs for images, I have to agree with the first part of his comment, but perhaps I'd take along a clue-by-four.

[Joe Clark]

Idiot!

Yeah, this idiot did say “cool kids,” but it was really “kool kidz,”  i.e., ironic. Nonetheless, as you learned by listening to the interview, I said that *standardistas* already know what to do to make a Web site accessible. They do.

[Robert A. Rosenberg]

A simple accessability standard

I have a simple standard for if a site is accessible (to blind users in this case). It is accessible if I can turn off my monitor (and disconnect my mouse and just use the arrow keys on my keyboard) and use a "Screen Reader" like JAWS) or the built-in Universal Access feature of MacOS X) and be able to navigate and use the site just as if I were viewing the monitor and using the mouse. If this is possible than the site is accessible. If the site is useless without access to a monitor and mouse it fails my accessibility standard.

Note: I am not saying how the code on the site should be designed but only how once written it should function.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantasy land

I've been working with standards for years, and the majority of websites and web applications I see out there are still highly inaccessible and non-standards based.

It's also pretty arrogant to suggest that the "cool kids" - whoever they are - are such experts on accessibility issues that they just "know" how to do it. This is the same sort of arrogance that spawned the "WCAG Samurai" and other such "cool kids" clubs in the first place.