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June 11, 2001
Arts Online: Making Federal Web Sites Friendly to Disabled Users
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
Not that anyone thought this was possible, but the Web sites of the federal
government are about to become less interesting. And from at least one
perspective, that may be good.
The catalyst for this change is a new set of standards intended to make the
government's Internet sites more accessible to people with disabilities. The
16 guidelines take effect on June 21 and cover everything from making sure
that a Web page's colorful hyperlinks can be read by colorblind users to
supplying captions to accompany audio and video clips for hearing-impaired
people.
The goal of improved accessibility is beyond dispute. Yet as federal
Webmasters re-examine what they put online to meet the requirements, they
are likely to suppress their appetite for the attention-grabbing visuals
known as eye candy and multimedia treats like animated graphics.
"In the short run, there'll be a degree of conservatism," said Walt Houser,
Webmaster for the Department of Veterans Affairs, meaning that the
government's 30 million pages may start to recall the Web sites of 1994,
when text and graphics were nearly all that could be found online.
Web design is still a young form of graphic art. Its practitioners are
struggling to create an Internet that is more than a huge volume of booklike
pages on the computer screen.
Making the Internet accessible to people who cannot see, hear or touch it
adds a new dimension to the challenge. Web pages with text and a few
properly labeled images are relatively easy to make accessible. Software for
the blind that converts text into synthesized speech, for instance,
generally can read these pages without a hitch.
But the Internet's interactive and multimedia elements are not as readily
adaptable for people with disabilities. Adding captions to video clips, for
example, can take a lot of time, effort and money.
So, to avoid legal disputes and limit costs, federal Webmasters will scale
back the amount of multimedia materials they use. Will anyone notice?
Probably not, especially because most government sites are designed to
deliver information, not entertainment. Installing razzle-dazzle animation
on the Internal Revenue Service site would be akin to sticking tail fins on
a truck.
Does this just-the-facts approach to accessibility doom a site to drabness?
Judy Brewer, director of the accessibility initiative for the World Wide Web
Consortium, an industry group, said, "There are so many myths in the area of
Web accessibility, and one of them is that an accessible Web page has to be
dull and boring."
Webmasters who spoke last week said the guidelines would not affect the
aesthetic impact of their sites or limit their creative freedom. That may be
because, with their emphasis on substance over style, the sites are already
pretty much indistinguishable from one another. If you've seen one vertical
menu bar with big buttons, you've seen them all. The Webmasters should seize
upon the guidelines as a chance to add a dash of style to their sites.
No one expects federal agencies to produce sites with truly cutting-edge
designs. But there is a reason for them to push the envelope a bit. In
adopting the accessibility standards, the government has become involved in
a test case that has far-reaching implications for multimedia design.
The guidelines, put in place by recent amendments to Section 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act, primarily address federal sites. Another
antidiscrimination law, the Americans With Disabilities Act, may apply more
broadly to the Internet.
If the government can adjust to the standards, the thinking goes, it may
pave the way for extending them to other areas of cyberspace. And the
prospect of appealing to a mammoth customer like the federal government may
prompt software developers to work harder to include accessibility features
in their Web-building tools and perhaps develop creative ways to do it.
This is an important factor. While the Internet continues to evolve, Web
designers are trying to create more compelling sites that convey information
in effective and exciting ways. Making sites useful to people with
disabilities has been an elusive goal, largely because the software tools do
not make it easy.
Look, for example, at the Web site of the National Museum of American
History, at americanhistory.si.edu. As part of the Smithsonian Institution,
the museum is committed to making its site accessible, although it is not
required to adhere to the federal-agency standards.
For the site "Within These Walls," which chronicles the lives of five
families that lived in a single house over 200 years, the museum built on
its Web site a virtual exhibition with sliding windows and other animated
devices that encourage online visitors to peer into nooks and touch every
artifact.
"What we were really after was a sense of exploration, so the whole idea of
interactivity was very important," said Donna Tramontozzi, a founder of New
Tilt, the Somerset, Mass., company that created the site.
But the designers could not find software that would allow them to provide
an accessible version of the same experience. They fell back on building an
alternative site that is generic in appearance and offers fewer interactive
opportunities. It is indeed drab. (Advocates for people with disabilities
are not fond of alternative sites; they prefer including accessible features
in the primary project.)
Can the experience of online interactivity be conveyed fully to people with
certain disabilities? "No one's been able to do it," Ms. Tramontozzi said.
"People can deal with graphics. Motion's really the thing. And it's not so
much motion as meaningful motion."
Mike Paciello, author of "Web Accessibility for People With Disabilities"
(CMP Books, 2000), is optimistic that a future version of the Internet might
allow, say, a blind person to experience a site through touch or smell.
"Art, in its purest form, appeals to all the senses," Mr. Paciello said.
"Even though Beethoven could not hear, he could still write music because he
experienced it in a different way. The Web may very well be pushing the
envelope of the visual paradigm, but that doesn't mean it can't be designed
to a fuller, perhaps more complete expression of art."
Until then, some federal Webmasters are taking a more philosophical approach
to making their sites accessible.
David Low, Webmaster for the National Endowment for the Arts, is planning to
revamp his site in the coming months. Like an artist told he can paint only
with blue and green, he welcomes the creative challenge presented by the
accessibility standards.
"I don't find myself extremely brokenhearted by whatever restraints may be
placed on us because I do think less is more," Mr. Low said. "In kind of a
Zen way, some of these parameters force us to do something elegant that's
relatively simple. And that's what we'd want."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

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