Inaccessibility in California
A study shows that most city websites are unusable by a wide range of people, including blind, deaf, and mobility impaired individuals, as well as non-disabled users attempting to access government services with cutting edge technology such as Internet-enabled cell phones.
– An inability to use a website when images are not viewable. – An inability to easily adjust text to a larger size. – An inability to navigate a website without a mouse. – Poor performance when accessed via a slow internet connections. – Inconsistent or non-existent site navigation.
The ramblings and seeming cacophany of web terms such as CSS and XHTML mean little to the average web user. How a web developer designs his page has little impact on most users. Why is that? The vast majority of users access the internet using a mouse, keyboard, monitor and web browser. Of those, the majority use Internet Explorer as their browser.
Where reports like this show an impact are on the hundreds of thousands of users who have special needs:
a) an audible browser/screen reader (blind)
b) Larger easier to read fonts or require a lower resolution.
To add to that number, many people utilize cell phones and palm pilots to access information. And have you ever tried to print a page, just to have half of the information lost off the side of the page?
These are all accessibility issues. How accessible is your website? When someone who uses an older browser incapable of displaying complex nested tables views your site, will it be a jumbled mess?
What will happen if a blind person views your flash enabled site? Did you know that a Flash movies is seen as a single object and cannot be interpreted by plaintext browsers and screen readers?
You see accessiblity means nothing to anyone until it impacts them.
If only one percent of 6 billion internet users require special consideration, then that is 6 million users who I would rather not chase away due to inaccessiblity issues.
Something to think about.
Cheers,
Aaron
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Written by Aaron Brazell on May 31, 2004
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Aaron Brazell
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5 years ago, I began taking classes to be a web designer – and I wanted to do the neat stuff like Flash. However, I got a job as a government contractor and found myself working on Section 508 websites. I thought that it would stifle my creativitiy until I learned that much of accessibility is following best practices for HTML, CSS, etc. If you compare W3C and Section 508 guidelines, many are identical. And as we enter the age of handhelds, it’s becoming more important for people to design for all mediums. Even those with a lap top and no mouse can have issues navigating many websites.
I am still torn between creativity and Section 508, but I have found that following simple coding standards eliminates many accessibility issues.
5 years ago, I began taking classes to be a web designer – and I wanted to do the neat stuff like Flash. However, I got a job as a government contractor and found myself working on Section 508 websites. I thought that it would stifle my creativitiy until I learned that much of accessibility is following best practices for HTML, CSS, etc. If you compare W3C and Section 508 guidelines, many are identical. And as we enter the age of handhelds, it’s becoming more important for people to design for all mediums. Even those with a lap top and no mouse can have issues navigating many websites.
I am still torn between creativity and Section 508, but I have found that following simple coding standards eliminates many accessibility issues.