The web is about information accessibility
It's really a basic human freedom that we
are just really beginning to talk about in
the last decade. It's important
therefore that everybody have this freedom
any freedom that's only allocated to a few
is not really a freedom.
The web is about information and it's
important that people can access the
information that they need in order to
complete a workflow or get their job done
finish a task.
I think the web should be accessible to
everyone all the time. I grew up with it
being easily accessible to me. It's how
I learnt information easily. I can't
imagine someone not being able to just
google something instantly, and getting
what they need.
I think websites should be accessible
because...the web is founded kinda on this
idea of sharing information and if you
can't share information or if some people
can't see it , then it's not truly being shared.
We all have different abilities and
disabilities, and if we're all going to be
able to get the same content and interpret
it in a somewhat similar fashion, it has
to be given to us in that way and
accessible so that we can actually reach it
Accessibility is important for a number of
reasons. For one, there are laws that
apply.Another is, it can relate to our
reputation. And a third is thatby
paying attention to it, we create a more
inclusive educational environment.
I think we are really good as developers
at being...focusing on the 80% case.
Focusing on how do we make every 4 out of
every 5 of our users happy. How do we
build things for those group of people,
because the last 20% is always hard.
But I say that the web is for 100%.
It's for everybody, which is what
Tim Burners-Lee said.
I'm definitely am very moved by this
notion of inclusiveness. I mean I think
that, for me it's a part of who I...
this is important to me. But there's
also just the sort of, the notion of
of having everybody's contributions to the
sort of...the knowledge.
Big challenge is, to escape your own
viewpoint. And to not make the assumption
that everyone sees the web the way you see
it, on the device you see, the way
you use it. And so when you're creating
web pages, that's the biggest challenge,
is getting outside of where you're sitting.
The biggest obstacle to accessibility,
I think is...is pure knowledge.
It's really about putting yourself in the
mind of a person with disabilities.
A person who has, who has no motor skills
has no hands, has a lack of vision, has a
lack of hearing. May have a
cognitive disability. To be able to put
yourselves in their shoes and understand
how are they working with the thing that
I'm building or designing right now,
can they use it?
The alternative is, you build something
someone says "oh no it's not accessible!"
and so you go back and try to fix it but
you probably have been doing the wrong
thing at many places you know you may
have hundreds of images with no alt text,
you may have navigation that's very confused
or you are relying on libraries that...
open internet explorer
it's just that the technologies aren't
going to figure out. And so that's
when someone says, it's too much, too
expensive, too much work. Well just do it
from the beginning and it'll...it'll probably
get a quality product with less work.
Accessibility is important to incorporate
earlier on because if you don't
incorporate it early on, you will
incorporate it later at greater expense,
with a certain amount of time you don't
have, with a certain amount of money you
don't have, to try to make it better.
Accessibility, unfortunately like
everything else in design and web design
has to be done from the very beginning.
So whether you're designing for different
devices, whether doing for different kinds
of human abilities, all those things have
to be thought of from the very beginning
and built into your concept of what your
your plan is. Of course nobody wants to
take time at the end. We're almost there,
we just want to get it out, and that's the
mistake many of us make. It's like
"I'll just get it out, then I'll go back and fix it."
No. Doesn't ever happen. There's always
a next project.
The first step in getting an accessible
site, is to work with the management, so
they understand the value of making it
accessible, and also helping them
understand that we can do pretty
much anything they want and be accesible.
If you just talk about accessibility, it
may not be immediately appreciated as
something important to do. But if you
start talking about quality and the
overlap of search engine optimisation and
accessibility and things of that nature
that...that will tend to get people's
attention more.
When I started, I was a designer and I
wanted to make things look pretty. And you
don't think about anything besides the
aesthetics. And what I soon realised was
that when you have something that works
it already looks good, right, so that's
where I started to move towards things
being functional then the beauty came
along after that.
I don't believe that making a site
accessible inhibits creativity. In fact
I would argue it ..it helps creativity, it
improves creativity.
Good accessible design often closely
relates to good usable design. And we
found a really close parallel between good
mobile design, mobile for mobile devices
and the simplicity and clarity of good
accessible design.
Safari
skip to primary content.
In page link. Current Student. Future Student.
Menu Item. Accessible Technology.
So they are all inter-related
and basically if you're making a really
complicated site with lots of stuff on it.
When you're doing, using different methods
all over the place. You're probably
not building that great a site anyway.
The way we create websites today, has
improved from 10 years ago. We're not
using in-line styles, we're not only
designing for 1 screen size. So the
developers and designers are forced to
design for every person and every device.
We can't go backwards, we can't become
limited again.
Primarily what you can do as a designer
to to check for accessibility is
making sure that you have good headings.
Good proper headings and headings
structure good labels on inputs
good labels on buttons and links
so making sure you're using the right tags
and the second best thing I would say,
at least that I do are checking
with the keyboard, just looking to see
keyboard navigation, making sure there's
you know there's good focus, indicators
and that you don't get the focus trapped
anywhere.
The heart of the challenge in sort of
the development world is that many
developers you know look around and find
open source libraries with really cool
stuff. So they find ways to make things
bounce across the screen, or make things
get big and small and so on. And it just
doesn't enter their mind to evaluate them
for accessibility.
When you're looking at a java script
library or a content management system,
piece of code that you would like to use,
you need to look both at, does it do what
you want for the web and does it also,
is it also accessible? In other words,
does it do it for you and for everybody.
So as soon as you build something, you go
back and you check it and check it over
and over again. On multiple browsers, on
multiple machines. You know I'll even call
people you know overseas,and say "hey can
you can you find it, can you check it, is
it working for you? Oh ok good you know.
And now they have tools out there where
you can check on every single browser out
there. In the past, that was really
important, it still is. We have a few
browsers out there, like a handful of
browsers that we use, but we need to check
it on on every possible system and platform.
The best thing that you can do ultimately
to check a design be it, checking for
usability or accessibility is actually
putting it in front of users and seeing if
they can use it.
You know, no matter how great your site is
you know you may think you're hitting all
the standards, then you watch someone go
through it and you say well, wow they had
...that didn't work out so well
When I think of what a university does at
it's core is to, not take everyone with
very similar ideas and turn out people
with the same ideas, but it's to benefit
from a broad range of abilities and skills
and different perspectives. And I see
accessibility and disability as being a
part of that spectrum.
I think accessibility needs to be talked
about more, it needs to be taught in
the institution, in schools, it needs to
be enforced in institutions and commercial
environments.
As new technology comes out, I think there
will be some that just neglect it
completely, and others that champion it.
And the ones that champion it will be more
user-friendly to everybody else, and they'll
win in the marketplace.
I think the future of the web is to
be making fewer and fewer assumptions
about how other people use it. We have
mobile devices, we have screen readers,
and we even have your web page or your
content might be used by another machine
so I think the fewer of the web is to
continue making fewer and fewer
assumptions and more universal content
that is not restrictive or exclusive.
I think it can be very challenging for a
certain applications to serve people with disabilities
but that's where the engineer needs to
think about "why did I become an engineer"
to make the impossible, possible, to solve
big problems. And this is a big problem,
so let's attack it, let's solve it.