Accessibility - are you worried about your site?
I feel it is important to explore the issues around Accessibility. It is through the process of discussion that we can all play a small part in achieving the goal of a future internet that is available to all.
There is a lot of talk about making your website accessible. A lot of it is sensationalist scare-mongering with the threat of legal oblivion if you fail (even if you make a sensible effort within the limits of the technology available). The reality is that public information / services site are the primary candidates for accessibility and quite rightly so. These include educational institutes, local councils and health authorities. If your site is selling a product or service and you make no effort to make it accessible then long before the spectre of legal action you will simply loose customers and money. But maybe not enough to go out of business . . .
Forums are littered with the good and the great of the web design world challenging the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) on the wisdom of some of their rules. It is at best a confusing virtual world.
Most of JeliNet's websites are not optimised for accessibility. Why?
The reasons are simple. Most customers are not asking for accessibility - indeed many ask for products that can't be made accessible, such as full flash presentations. Hybrid sites can't either, unless text only options are created, which defeats the point which is to make the same product accessible to all. Many of the older site's JeliNet has inherited can't be made accessible either without a re-design, which no one is about to pay for.
I also admit that accessibility is an issue that I'm increasingly addressing. That's being honest. Some designers are ahead of me, and many are behind. I'm working hard to ensure that as many aspects as possible are incorporated into my work by default.
Don't shoot the web designer!
It's easy to blame the web designer for the lack of accessibility on the internet but there are two other major contributors to this.
Firstly there are the software suppliers who design the browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Whichever is your favourite, they all fail to fully interpret the rules for displaying code, or they interpret elements in their own way. The browser is often overlooked by the end user because it is transparent in the process of viewing a website, but it is an essential part of the process. Unless you regularly use more than one browser you may not appreciate the different ways websites can display. All developers hope that browsers will render standards correctly in the near future, but it has never happened before.
Secondly there are the software design tools manufacturers. Ah yes, the old adage 'a poor workman always blames his tools'. Well maybe that's fair, and maybe it's not. Some designers code everything by hand in Notepad. That way they can't blame the tools. Most of us use products such as Dreamweaver, but also have a deep enough understanding to be able to 'lift the lid' and edit the code underneath to keep control of the final pages. I've seen many sites coded by hand that are riddled with errors - it's not the best method unless the coder is gifted, and some are. If you find one keep them!
The fact is Macromedia (Adobe) Dreamweaver costs £400.00 and has millions of customers worldwide. It's the industry standard web design software, yet has only recently focused seriously on support for accessibility. The only reason there are billions of pages on the net is because millions of web designers have created the net using efficient tools, for better or for worse. On the one hand for the worse - it's estimated that 80% of sites are not accessible. On the other for the better - billions of pounds of trade, millions of useful products found, knowledge learned, employment acquired and advice gained, mostly from technically inaccessible sites. The growth of the World Wide Web has been by the able for the able and has thus far reflected the same historical pattern seen in the real world.
Who pays the bills calls the shots . . .
Some claim that accessible sites need not cost more, but this is often not the case. Accessibility is as much about attention to detail as design. For example, if your site has 100 images (including the less obvious ones) either you do add ALT tags or you don't. Adding them is simple enough but it takes more time than just ignoring them. Dreamweaver MX (7), by default, does not even add an empty tag (which meets the standards). This simple process, one of many, takes time and therefore costs money. It can be ignored and the site works fine for most people. So one has to ask - who pays for this?
Web design is highly competitive. Costs are always being hammered down by market forces. Perceived costs are lower than actual costs, which in part is a reaction to the awful reputation the industry had for over priced product up until a few years ago.
Web design software is sold with the tag line 'build sites more easily and more quickly than ever', even to us professional bods! It still allows web designers to build wonderfully inaccessible sites because Triple A is very much a hand-coding attention to detail process. Attempts have been made to automate the process however the software is very expensive which brings us back to the bottom line . . . cost.
Design is back in the hands of the users - templates and blogs
Hosting companies provide templates that enable anyone to build a site for a few pounds. Forget accessibility with those! The power to build the web is increasingly back in the hands of the users, as it was in the early days of simple html. Except that now the users have very professional highly-styled designs that are hosted as part of a sophisticated database driven application. Even personal web spaces, or blog sites can been highly styled, but they are not necessarily accessible.
Large sectors of the industry are aggressively marketing non-accessible websites. This is the industry now. This sector is growing, especially in e-commerce sites for small businesses. Every day a new site is added and many are out of the hands of the web designers who want to make the net better.
What about Mobiles and other devices?
For several years since mobile technology ventured into the world of the internet, designers have been converting sites over to this limited medium, for example using WAP. 2006 is predicted to see the biggest leap forward with the wide spread of broadband wireless access (W-iFi) for mobile devices. The net will arrive on mobiles with the speed that has been enjoyed on computers and it will look much the same. The best sites will probably still be those built with accessibility in mind - especially considering the limits of navigation using a small interface. What is not often mentioned in accessibility circles is that users will be able to access all of the net, not just a select few sites designed for mobiles. Browsers such as the S60 have been developed to read the technology that is out there on the net now.
This is another commercial reality. The investors in this technology have not waited until the net is made fully accessible. They have developed a browser to meet the market. Arguably this is another set back for accessibility because the need to address the subject has, again, been placed on the commercial back-burner.
Surely there will be a flurry of legal cases to make site owners accountable?
So far no - in the future, possibly. English Law is one of precedent so even though the law is in place it has yet to be tested extensively in the Courts. To date, a couple of potential cases have been settled out of Court by the design agencies promptly fixing their sites in return for anonymity. That was the right thing to do, however the test will come when a website owner decides to challenge the complaint through the Courts. It also has to be remembered that users have had since 1999 to make legal challenges.
What about the future?
Looking at today's solutions on the common personal computer I'd suggest we have a long way to go before the internet is fully accessible. In many ways most of us are applying band-aids to a technology that is flawed and needs a total re-think. But you can be sure that re-think is going on . . . somewhere.
Is there a Professional Body for the Web Design Industry?
Yes. The British Web Design & Marketing Association which JeliNet is an associate member of.