Accessibility in Trouble
Mike Davies, esteemed colleague and one of the silent web workers that do a lot more than they talk about vented some steam on a series of blog posts where he analyzes what is amiss in the world of web accessibility called [link:http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/AccessibilityInTrouble,Accessibility in Trouble]. It is a great read and I congratulate Mike on his pragmatism and daring to “say it like it is” about the subject.
He is right, far too many publications on accessibility are stuck in the end-90ies and don’t consider technical advances. Web standards movements have come a longer way opening up to the enemycompanies like Microsoft, and the same interest and helpful attitude should become more common in the web accessibility world. There is just no sense in banging on about arbitary guidelines when [link:http://www.digital-web.com/articles/ten_reasons_clients_dont_care_about_accessibility/,people have their own problems to tackle]. Understanding their problems and helping them with real world guidance will make it better in the end for all of us.
Also note that Mike uses “vociferously” which makes it an instant win for me. We need more [link:http://www.43things.com/things/view/655495,usage of words starting with V] in general.
[tags]Accessibility,Commentary[/tags]
October 31st, 2006 at 2:41 pm
October 6th, 2006 at 2:24 am
Absolutely. Thanks for passing along the link. I can’t even count the number of time I’ve heard accessibility champions say “you can’t” to questions of “how do I do X in an accessible manner.” Why people are content with such a response is beyond me, especially since it’s untrue many times.
October 7th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Sounds like you’ve all given up on accessibility, when we web standards people should be encouraging it. Implementing web standards and good usability practices is half the battle for accessibility. A knowledgable coder (who also uses the DOM) should have no excuses. Matt, maybe your accessibility “champions” aren’t as experienced as others.
October 7th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
Dennis,
not at all. Matt, like me is just fed up with a lot of accessibility champions not embracing modern technologies and methodologies. The camp stating that any JavaScript is evil and Ajax apps shouldn’t be used at all. As it happens, Matt is going to give a presentation in his company on AJAX and ADA and I looked over it, being thoroughly impressed with it. I will give a tech talk next week in my company about it and end of the month talk about AJAX and accessibility at a summit in Germany. Nobody has given up on accessibility, we are giving up on the people stopping us to embrace it in modern technologies.