IT Accessibility: What Web Developers Have to Say

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.

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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.