Web Site Accessibility Blog

The older I get, the more I see that Christmas is truly for children. The most fun I had was watching my kids open their presents and play with them for hours. It’s amazing to think I was once that young and excited about Christmas and all of the unabashed greed of getting more and more presents. The grandparents are visiting – more presents!!

However, I was struck with a painful thought – I hate plastic packaging!

This plastic packaging has to be one of the most inaccessible, user-unfriendly things I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. It’s irritating at most during the year, when you have to open the occasional product. But on Christmas day you are forced to open multiple packages of this industrial-strength, maximum-security, bomb-force, indestructible molded plastic.

My wife is afraid for my life as I have injured myself on more than one occasion using a boxcutter to attempt opening one of these hardened kryptonite containers, only to slice one of my fingers. On one occasion, I wasn’t injured by the choice of tool, but merely by the plastic itself as it easily sliced through my fingers. I have considered escalating this warfare with other options, such as a blowtorch, table saw, or some industrial-type cutting tool. Scissors are at best a potential option, however I have destroyed many a pair (injuring myself in the process) by attempting to liberate said product. I’ve been cut, punctured, sliced and gouged, all in the name of consumer packaging.

What do we as the modern consumer have to do to access a product we purchased yet are unable to use? Should we ask the store to disarm this dangerous packaging, similar to calling out the bomb squad? I can’t believe that in this day and age of environmentally-friendly issues and products, we have to have every electronic device, light bulb, toy car, MP3 player, baby doll, baby doll accessory, etc. encased in this hardened plastic tomb.

Open at your own risk! Where do you even start to complain about this?

A partnership between the BBC and AbilityNet, a computing and disability charity, created My Web, My Way. The site offers users many ways to make the web more accessible by using their current PC or Mac and multiple operating systems. By listing shortcuts, systems settings, browser settings and helpful information, users are able to increase their accessibility by simply using the features available in most operating systems.

Users start by selecting their Operating system, and then choices based on the OS are presented in a very understandable manner. Users choosing the Windows OS, are then presented with choices of;

• Help seeing websites
• Help hearing websites
• Help reading websites
• Help with keyboard and mouse
• Help with web forms

Each selection allows the user to get specific information on managing each aspect of increasing text size, enabling speech, changing colors and even creating customized style sheets. Each specific section links out to relevant supporting resources.

Any user who wants to increase their enjoyment and interaction with the web should take full advantage of this resource. The BBC and AbilityNet have done a superb job of developing this site, which is very easy to use and understand. The descriptions are clear and the icons are relevant and helpful, the content is written clearly and users should be able to easily update their computers to enable better access to web resources.

While browsing the latest press releases, this release caught my attention. “Nuance introduces the Nuance Accessibility Suite; provides unprecedented User Accessibility to Mobile Devices.”

Now, I’m usually skeptical of hype, especially when it is provided in the form of a press release, but this seemed very interesting, especially when most of my search engine referral traffic to the accessibility blog is made up of people looking for mobile accessibility solutions.

The Problem with Mobile Devices
The main issue with cell phone usage is that the screen displays are very small, so text and images are unreadable. In addition the number pad and interfaces are so small they are rendered useless by a blind or low-vision user. Looking over the Nuance press release, there are multiple assistive technology products used in making these mobile devices accessible. The first, TALKS, is a text to speech converter, to help users hear the content on the device. TALKS also allows for Braille input and output for blind users. The ZOOMS technology allows low-vision users to view magnified content on the cell phone up to 16x. These can be purchased together or separate. In the spirit of true accessibility, this software is available in over 20 languages and can be installed on any phone running the Symbian Series 60 operating system.

Looking at the site, it looks as though there is also speech recognition software available as well for mobile devices, increasing the accessibility another level.

Why can’t we . . .?
It is so amazing to see these advances in the assistive technology realm. What’s even more amazing is that the technology developed to make mobile devices accessible, can also make sense in so many other application and to a much wider audience. Maybe this should cause a re-thinking of the philosophy of consumer technology development. Instead of creating a device or technology that only a few fully-capable people can use, (read: high school kids who can text each other at a rate of 100 wpm) why not create a device or technology that anyone can use; a child, and elderly person, someone with limited mobility, and the rest of us that find these interfaces too small or too complicated. In doing so, the device would be able to be used by anyone, not just a few. I would think that the sales of such usable technology would justify the expense.

Yeah, that’ll happen.

Sweet Home Chicago
I‘ve been back from Search Engine Strategies in Chicago for a few days, and things are starting to finally get back to normal. It didn’t help that I made the drive from Chicago to Canton, Ohio in one of the worst snowstorms to hit the Midwest in a couple of years. What is normally about a 6 hour drive turned into an 11-hour drive. That made for a very long night.

Anyhow, SES Chicago ranked up there with the most fun I’ve had at a conference. It was mainly because I was in Chicago and had access to a few good sushi places for lunch. But also, I was able to visit Blues, Kingston Mines and Buddy Guy’s Legends in consecutive nights. Being a blues fan, I was in heaven, especially when Buddy Guy was able to get up and sing a song for us during the last night. Loved it.

SEO OverKill
I presented at a new session entitled “SEO Overkill”, which was focused on helping search engine optimizers pull back on their “optimization methods” such as keyword stuffing. The entire session was very good; as this was also the first time I was able to share the platform with Heather Lloyd-Martin. Having known her for years, this was an added benefit and we had a lot of fun. Heather has a book on copywriting for the web that I highly recommend.

I tackled the issue from a design standpoint that users scan web pages, and screen reader users are the same. I then played examples of what a screen reader user would hear upon loading a keyword-stuffed page. After that, I showed the same page displayed in a handheld device, such as a Blackberry or a Palm, and then a web-enabled phone. All with the same results; any text or keywords stuffing that is hidden on a browser is shown in other devices like the screen readers or handheld devices.

Being that it was the last session of the day, I think people enjoyed the topic. I had fun presenting it. It still amazes me that at four-day conferences on Search Engine Optimization, I think that I am still the only speaker that focuses on Accessibility as Optimization. I think that may be changing however, as I think I’ve been evangelizing a few others at the conference about accessibility.

Here is my PowerPoint presentation for SEO Overkill if you are interested in taking a look. Any comments or suggestions are always welcome.

Not a good month for Accessiblity in the UK. No sooner do I write an entry about Disney UK going to a new, inaccessible website, than I start going through my news archives and see this story:

Only 3% of public UK websites fully comply with the minimum standard of accessibility.

Apparently, in a study commissioned by the government, the government found out that it is the biggest culprit in not creating accessible web sites. Here are the results of the study:

Out of 436 public sector websites surveyed;

• 10% pass some but not all of the criteria under the standard,
• 17% “marginally fail” to meet the guidelines,
• 70% fail.

The largest oversight is the simple text equivelant for images, the infamous “Alt Attribute”. The second-most overlooked item was the lack of information explaining the relationship of frames and the website.

The EU has established a goal of 2010 to have cross-governmental accessibility in web sites. This study was the first step in identifying the problems and creating a solution to meet that goal. Sounds like you have a way to go, but congrats on facing the problem.

In the category of “WHY”, DisneyUK removes its standards-compliant website and replaces it with one that does not even meet the simplest accessibility functions.

Anyone familiar with this is appreciatively confused by this action. While most companies see the need for accessibility and eventually implement it in newer versions, this is an amazing step for a company this large to take a step backwards.

Really, there are just no explanations or any words that can capture this decision by Disney to leave people out of their website.