Web Site Accessibility Blog

In possibly one of the politest and damning rants I’ve ever read, To Hell with the WCAG 2, posted at A List Apart, even. I am sure that Joe is holding back in his criticism of the WCAG 2.0 committee, the working guidelines, the process, the guidelines themselves, and even the vocabulary of the document.

In a thorough criticism of the committee and the resulting work, Joe presents an amazing case that the WCAG has accomplished exactly the opposite of the mission. By attempting got create a set of guidelines to make the web more accessible, they have made the process more difficult, hard to define, and even inaccessible for those who need it the most.

I have attempted many times to read the working document, but I have found it amazingly difficult to read and it does not hold my attention. By using phrases and definitions such as:

1.3.4 Information that is conveyed by variations in presentation of text is also conveyed in text, or the variations in presentation of text can be programmatically determined.

Definitions:
programmatically determined
determined by software from data provided in a user-agent-supported manner such that the user agents can extract and present this information to users in different modalities

authored component
an authored unit intended to be used as a part of another authored unit

authored unit
set of material created as a single body by an author
Example 1: a collection consisting of markup, a style sheet, and an image or audio clip.
Example 2: a set of Web pages intended to be viewed only as a unit or in sequence.

The WCAG has authored a very difficult document. I can’t imagine anyone who does not have a working grasp of the English language understanding all of the qualifier words used in this document.
Ironically, I have been reading an old book from my college years, On Writing Well, which speaks to this very trend. The book extols the virtue of plain writing to communicate effectively to readers. Too much flowery language distracts the reader from the writing and from the author’s intent.

The “art of verbal camouflage” as William Zinsser calls it has taken over and creates confusion rather than clarity. He explains far better than I ever could:

“Clutter is the disease of . . . writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. . . . Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what – these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of the sentence. And they usually occur, ironically, in proportion to education and rank.”

Thanks, Joe, for providing unity to my reading. It’s amazing when you see harmony in all of your personal media.

According to Blind Access Journal, Bay has been implementing visual verification and seems to be unwilling to provide alternatives. Blind users have reported that eBay has suggested that they find a sighted relative who can read the verification for them.

In the light of Google, Yahoo and other major web players offering accessible alternatives, this seems to be a backwards decision on eBay’s part. Where is the innovation and forward-thinking that has helped eBay become a leaders and one of the biggest brands in the world?

I’m waiting on a delayed flight to Chicago, heading to the DMA Catalog Conference this week. It will be interesting as my first session is the first session of the week, bright and early Monday morning at 8:15. Somehow, I’ll need to register and get my badge and find the room at the not-so-small McCormick Place.

I’ll be speaking on Search Engine Optimization, with a little heavy duty stuff thrown in like accessibility and keyword long tail concepts. I am using the NFB v. Target lawsuit to show how a simple accessibility program implemented in the site can also help search engine rankings. I’ve heard that the attendees are all over the board in their understanding of SEO, so we’ll see what happens. For the rest of the conference, I’ll be doing site clinics for merchant sites and offering advice on improvement.

If you are in the Chicago area this week, drop me a line, as I always like to meet friends while I am in their local town. I also like to meet those that I have only known through the blog or articles. Just drop me a line and I’ll try to let you know where I will be some evening.
Fortunately, I am in an airport that offers free wi-fi. Enough can’t be said about free wi-fi in airports . . . it makes waiting much more bearable.

It’s not that I enjoy criticizing Microsoft, it’s that they make it so easy to do. Reading through the buzz of the Microsoft Live Shopping, it was pretty obvious that the tech and blogger community was pretty upset about not being able to use their FireFox Browser to check out the new service. The standards community is equally upset about a brand new site developed ingoring any standards.

This is painfully obvious of the misunderstanding of accessibility. At its core, accessibility means that your site should be viewable and understandable to anyone, regardless of device, disability, PDA, WAP, or browser. Simply excluding an entire browser technology is shameful.

Yes, even Opera and Safari users got the FireFox error message as well. Not even a different error message for those users. I guess you have to have a 9% market share or more to be exluded by name from a Microsoft site.