Comments on: Future of web accessibility

By: Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design | Trying to Define Web Accessibility

Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design | Trying to Define Web Accessibility — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:22:34 +0000

[...] Numerous articles in the last few days have suggested serious problems in either defining web accessibility or in the way it’s handled. Trenton Moss considers the future of accessibility. Alastair Campbell follows up with his own opinions. Gez Lemon and Mike Cherim co-published an article outlining two supposedly opposing views of accessibility at Accessites. Roger Johansson chimed in with his reasoning for universality. And, to cap if off, Mike Davies wrote an excellent (if possibly inflammatory) four-part series declaring Accessibility in Trouble. [...]

By: Related articles | Web Site Accessibility Blog

Related articles | Web Site Accessibility Blog — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:12:32 +0000

[...] Interestingly, Alastair Campbell, on his blog, AlistairC, finds the post here on Accessibility blog and adds a significant amount of comments and opinion about it. As such, I feel as though I have to give his post notice, as it provides an interesting contrast to Trenton’s article. Alistair feels that there can be compatibility between rich media and accessbility, and provides many excellent examples of these applications. [...]

By: dotjay

dotjay — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:46:06 +0000

Obviously, IBM have long had interests in the area of accessibility. They’ve snapped up several of the “accessibility thinkers”… Aaron Leventhal (Mozilla Accessibility Lead), Mark Pilgrim and Peter Parente to name a few off the top of my head. And these people have a passion for Web accessibility, so it figures that they’re on various W3C groups. And, of course, they’ve donated code to Mozilla as well.

I think IBM have an invested interest in Web accessibility for various reasons. Figures have shown that there is considerable growth in the number of “senior” surfers, some of which have accessibility needs. I guess there’s a business benefit there, but the reasons for IBM involvement given in one of Aaron’s presentations are in the form of several ‘P’s:

* Pride & Principle
* Professional design
* P.R. & Prestige
* Self Preservation
* Personal Profit a11y skills in demand
* Corporate Profit & Desktop Presence The way to displace MS in Government!
* Protection against legal challenges
* Productivity through keyboard

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:37:31 +0000

Thanks. It looks like IBM is pushing this a lot, it seems there is someone from IBM on all the W3C groups to do with web-application accessibility.

Any ideas as to why, and what their motivation is? (I’m not suggesting it is sinister, just curious.)

By: dotjay

dotjay — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:20:00 +0000

“I’m not aware of what the other vendors are doing at the moment, however, when one supports a new technology the others tend to follow.”

There are movements by Mozilla to get Accessible DHTML fully implemented and working with Window-Eyes and also with JAWS to some extent.

“Therefore there should be an option built into the application to easily allow people to effectively turn off JavaScript (i.e. an option on the site, not telling people to turn off JavaScript in their browser!).”

I completely agree – either that or get browsers to implement a way to allow users to selectively disable behaviour on a site. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while after implementing a JavaScript-powered option for users to select their preference for external links opening in new windows or the same window.

“There are certainly some bumps in the accessibility road ahead, however, there are significant efforts being made both by vendors of access technologies, and standards bodies that I don’t think separate ‘accessible’ sites will be necessary.”

To echo what I posted to Accessify Forum – I agree.