Accessibility and Web 2.0
The recent ruling in the California class action suit against Target Corp., in which individuals claimed the discount retailer's website was inaccessible to the blind, has me wondering what accessibility looks like in a 2.0 world. Does this imply that podcasts should come with a transcript? What about the potential unintended consequences of super-cool AJAX on accessibility? Do we not make pages as user friendly for wider population because it can cause problems for a few? Weren’t we moving towards the accessible web just a second ago? Did that train take a left turn I managed to miss?
In my quest for more information, I came across an article from the American Foundation for the Blind which deals with whether or not the big social networking sites are accessible to the visually impaired. The article finds that most of the sites do a fair job of presenting content and functionality in an accessible format—with the exception of CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart; in other words, the annoying letter sequences you have to retype to create accounts, post comments, buy tickets, etc.).
The article found that most of the big social networking sites, with the exception of Linked In, use these when having new accounts created. This, as the article points out, prevents those using screen readers from creating accounts without assistance.
Honestly, it never occurred to me how inaccessible CAPTCHAs are. I saw them as a great way to reduce fake accounts and prevent spam from getting posted to the web.
It makes me wonder what other accessibility roadblocks are right in front of us that we might not be seeing in web 2.0 sites and applications.
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Comments
Hi Peter
Mentioned your post to a friend who works in accessibility and she said that web sites need only be multi-sensory, offering audio options to CAPTCHA graphics.
She reminded me that unintended consequences abound when we fail to sense the world the way others do. Consider hybrid cars. Silent at stop lights, blind pedestrians have no sense that a car is stopped at the cross walk and accidents are increasing. What might seem to be a cool feature can prove to be fatal.
Thanks for your cautionary tale.
Ann
Posted by: Ann Oliveri | November 13, 2007 5:48 PM
Peter,
Thanks for bringing attention to the accessibility issues of Ajax and other new web technologies. After years of steady progress on web accessibility, these rich media applications have knocked us back a bit, without a doubt. There is good news however. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is leading an exciting collaborative effort to ensure the accessibility of these technologies. Called WAI-ARIA for accessible rich internet application, the effort has created tools and techniques to make it not just possible, but relatively easy to accomplish.
Now the challenge is to make web developers aware of the design techniques and accessible Javascript toolkits offered. Onward!
Posted by: Sharron Rush | November 19, 2007 10:43 AM