"Web accessibility" for the disabled vs. for everyone
In the comments to my recent post, "Deciding who's legitimate," Zara provides some interesting information of web accessibility and a difference of opinions on it that I think deserves some attention. On the topic of legitimacy itself, Zara says this:
Finally, although there are certainly situations where it may be hard to definitively pin down a particular disability for lack of a clear-cut "diagnosis" and that these people should certainly not be penalised for it, I do think that there does need to be some sort of "line" if only to protect the rights of disabled people and prevent our issues from being highjacked from persons without disabilities. In Web accessibility, there is a very organised and concerted effort to expand what falls into the idea of disability to include everything from search bots to mac users, etc. Personally, I find that this can be a threat to rights that have already been recognised legally or to efforts of having those rights recognised.Not knowing anything about this threat, I asked Zara to expand. She did that, and included great links on the debate, as well:
In the last year especially, several Web developers and designers, on blogs or mailing lists, have been questioning whether accessibility is a "persons with disabilities" issue or an "access for all" issue. For a summary of both positions, see this article from Accessites. I also suggest you have a look at isolani's series Accessibility in Trouble.Indeed, nondisabled people deciding for disabled folks what is best is an insidious problem. Just when you think the mechanisms are in place to work toward improvement of access, resistance seems to spring up and disabled people get crowded out of the conversation.
Basically, the reasoning seems to be that since some Web accessibility requirements can indeed present secondary benefits for persons without disabilities (for example, those using less performing material or mobile phone users or those with slow connections or non-native speakers of whatever language, etc.), then it is inadequate, perhaps even discriminatory, to present accessibility primarily as a persons with disabilities issue. And some feel that "selling" accessibility on the basis of benefits to disabled users is too difficult because most people are "uncomfortable" talking about persons with disabilities. So, most notably, search engine optimisation (SEO) is showcased heavily because, did you hear the news ?, Google is blind. In essence, many argue that accessibility is more about availability of resources for everyone. Not withstanding that there already is a concept for what they are referring to, i.e. universality, my major problems with this are :
Web accessibility is a complex field and many developers have a very limited understanding of what the real needs of persons with disabilities are. I do not believe that redefining accessibility to suit business or SEO concerns or suggesting that problems accessing a Web resource with a mobile phone are comparable to a disability will help them to better understand our needs.
Also, I feel that implementing accessibility conditionally to what is convenient for mobile phone users or search bots, etc., particularly in places where it is mandated by law, is not an indication of rights being recognised and upheld. While it is certainly nice that some accessibility requirements can be convenient for other users, I do not believe that you can consider these interests on the same level and I fear there is a real danger of ignoring requirements that are very necessary to certain types of disabilities but that are more demanding and/or present limited advantage in reaching broader audiences or achieving better SEO, etc. Moreover, I fear that with this new definition, there is real danger that rights to access for the disabled not be legally recognised in places where it has yet to be mandated by law because, after all, "accessibility is for everyone" so why would we need to legislate it for a particular population ?
Finally, and this is more a personal statement, I am troubled that this effort is coming from non-disabled people and that very few persons with disabilities are involved in these discussions, whatever their position may be. I feel like once again, things are being "decided" for us on something that is directly related to our rights by people who seem to have a limited understanding of the overall issues relating to disability.
As someone very interesting in making my blog as accessible as possible to all disabled people, it's troubling to find that the information I need to do this may only get more clouded in the future. I want simple, understandable instructions on how to let blind folks, for example, have full access to whatever I decide to discuss -- particularly because as a group they may be much more knowledgeable about some disability issues than I am. I don't want the idea of "web accessibility" to be confused by a flurry of information on conveniences for people who can already access whatever they want.
7 comments:
Many thanks Blue for writing a post about this issue and informing your readership.
I'm a student, but I have done quite a bit of web design and webmastering both informally and professionally, including some work for government sites that had to comply with Section 508 (generally the defacto standard for accessbility, and targeted specifically at the disabled). Most of my impairments are not relevant to computer usage, but I am colorblind, and I am hard of hearing. I also spent much of my summer living with a group of students and interns who were also doing web design work, and who had a wide variety of disabilities.
I have to disagree with you and Zara - accessibility for the disabled on the web is fundamentally an issue of access for all. Here's why: computers create impairments, of a sort. When I use a computer, and I am unable to access auditory information, does it matter whether I'm deaf/HOH or have a computer with crappy speakers, or using a public computer somewhere? If a user wants to change the font size on a website (which, on a well-written, accessible website, should not cause major layout issues), does it really matter if they're doing that because they're VI or because their screen resolution is unusually high (or low)? If the site can't be navigated by keyboard, does it matter whether I'm blind and using a screen reader, or dialing in to a remote terminal and using a text browser?
In some ways, yes, it does matter - there is an element of choice for the user whose impairments are a result of their technical equipment rather than their biological equipment. But the vast majority of changes to benefit the first group of users also benefit the second, and vice versa. Both sets of changes face the misplaced attitudes that the given population is "too small to care about", that the changes involved would "hinder our ability to provide a beautiful/useful site" or "make creating a site much more expensive".
Now, certainly the legal issues are separate; the disabled have a right to access infrastructure available on the web as well as in the physical world, and there is (and should be) no such mandate for backwards compatibility. But while the two vary from a philosophical perspective, from the perspective of the code and the computer, they are almost identical.
I'll admit I'm a bit divided on this subject, but part of my view is determined by some comments I've read elsewhere recently about how universal design and the basic standards it seeks to impose on architectural design does not serve the nonstandard body.
An example, universal design of a public building generally means that disabled access bathroom stalls include a toilet of a certain height. That height is, I believe, chosen to be about the same height of a wheelchair seat so that there is minimal height difference. But what this means for someone like me, who can't walk but strategically uses her legs and feet for leverage and balance is that the toilet is too tall for my safety. And other stalls are not wide enough to access. So, standards of accessibility do not really serve me.
Universal access is a beginning, but it is not really a solution for disabled people as a whole. It simply guards against some architectural discrimination that cannot easily be undone later.
Gordon,
Section 508 may be considered the de facto standard in the US but that is not the case elsewhere.
As for computers creating impairments, that is quite open for debate. I would rather say that bad design or inappropriate environments in which one chooses to use computers, etc., can create certain usability problems for persons without disabilities and beyond that, it really is a question of choice which is hardly comparable to a disability.
As any accessibility expert will tell you, accessibility is much more complex than simply coding to certain technical standards. Accessibility is not black and white or 0s and 1s. For a simple example, beyond the requirement of including alternative text for images, there is the whole question of what constitutes a good alt-text so that blind users are able to have access to the relevant information provided by an image. So reducing accessibility to a simple question of comparable coding is a great disservice.
As I often say, I am a big fan of saying what you mean. Many of the examples you have mentioned already have a term or concept to refer to them. Slow connection ? That is a connectivity issue. Using your mobile phone ? Using a text browser ? That is device independence. Or, as Sally mentioned, if it a question of being able to afford the equipment or connection, that is called affordability. I could go on but I imagine you get the point. And if you are talking about access for all, that is called universality. All of these concepts are already reasonably well-defined and I feel that it is dangerous to redefine things to suit concerns that have little to do with the needs they are supposed to address in the first place.
You can not separate the question of rights in this debate, which is unfortunately what is happening with this issue at the moment. Beyond the general convenience some (but not all) accessibility requirements can afford to everyone, does it matter whether you are accessing content from a remote terminal or a mobile phone or a screen reader ? From a perspective of rights, I have to say that it certainly does.
So then the question is 'who determines what is accessable?' And is the person(s) designing it or determining what is accessable ever going to actually have to use those facilities?
Actually I think these questions pertain to all types of accessability.
So if a modification that helps disabled people hurts those with dial-up, then you have to ask what that means for disabled people who can only afford dial-up connections, as well as other people who can only afford dial-up.
I couldn't agree more with this statement.
My head hurt reading this post--I think the line of accessability is so blurry and so frought with complications (like class and race etc), it's really difficult for me to figure out all the legal stuff. But Sally's thoughts make the most sense to me--and adding in race--people of color make up a significant population of poor as well, so how does accessibility affect the disabled person of color, who is probably dealing with underfunded/inaccessible library systems, unsafe neighborhoods/public transport, and other urban issues?
"So if a modification that helps disabled people hurts those with dial-up, then you have to ask what that means for disabled people who can only afford dial-up connections, as well as other people who can only afford dial-up."
I had intentionally decided to ignore that part of Sally's comment because it is so innacurate and baseless, I felt it was a waste of time to address it. The fact that of all that has been said so far, someone could zero in on that is an eloquent example of how people are not interested in talking about what this is really about and will continue to cloud the issue with false statements or un-related matters instead of really trying to understand it.
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