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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