Thanks to Dallas Dileo of the Carnegie Library for informing us about this
article from the May 5th issue of Salon magazine.
http://www.salonmagazine.com
The article links to several sites including www.yuri.org -
www.trace.wisc.edu and www.pantos.org/atw/
--- from Salon Magazine ---
Web-ability: Even people who aren't in the position to enjoy all the
Web's bells and whistles ought to be able to access its information.
BY MIKE BRITTEN
What happens if you browse
the Web, but first turn your monitor off? Poof! Hundreds of millions
of dollars in venture capital, R&D and relentless hype -- not to
mention human creativity and effort of monumental proportions --
disappear.
When you can't see what's going on, all of the Web's hippest,
state-of-the-art, supposedly life-enhancing technical innovations --
spinning widgets, dancing logos, animated come-ons, scrolling gossip,
streaming video clips and interactive shopping forms -- become
instantly meaningless.
As any student at Gallaudet University will be happy to tell you, with
today's growing emphasis on multimedia, the ability to hear can't hurt
when it comes to accessing information, either. Then consider what a
bitch it can be even for a sighted person who might have any one of
countless possible mobility problems to position a mouse cursor over
the word "here" in "click here."
Making Web pages accessible to the widest imaginable population was
always a part of the intentions of its original creators, who dreamed
of a universal Net-based information medium. But as the Web has grown
commercialized, accessibility has often taken a back seat to
proprietary schemes or been forced to play second fiddle to
extravagant designs.
I recently followed a link to an essay with a title that intrigued me:
Could Helen Keller Read Your Page? Terry Sullivan, co-author of that
article, is the Webmaster for All Things Web, a site that focuses on
design issues and usability engineering. When I contacted him via
e-mail, Sullivan did not mince words: "These days, most Web sites are
not only NOT designing for accessibility, they are designing for
INaccessibility, by focusing most of their efforts on presentation,
rather than content. Almost everyone will have some trouble with such
sites at some point in their lives."
That last sentence is a reference to the code word that millions of
members of the disabled community use when referring to the rest of
the world: "TABs," or "temporarily able-bodied" persons. And since
most TABs, as Sullivan points out, "will likely suffer some physical
impairment (particularly vision impairment) sometime in their lives,"
the issue of universal access to the Web touches every current and
future consumer of it. "It's unbearably tragic that so many designers
are so shortsighted," says Sullivan.
But what is "accessibility," anyway -- and who
defines it?
"Accessibility" is a righteous concept, politically correct to the
core. But is there a consensus yet about what it is and how to achieve
it on the Web? Not exactly, though standards are beginning to emerge.
Though the Americans With Disabilities Act includes language that
extends its principles to the online world, it has yet to have
substantial impact on the Web. In the meantime, "accessibility" means
different things to different people -- and this, I think, is
worthwhile, since the problem it addresses is so complex and
multifaceted.
From a technical point of view -- one not necessarily having anything
at all to do with the needs of the disabled -- accessibility is about
creating Web pages that display equally well in any competing browser.
There already exists a growing community of activists who champion
what's known as the Campaign for a Non-Browser-Specific WWW. Simply
put, if you cruise on over to my Web site using Browser X, but my site
uses proprietary extensions to HTML that only work when viewed with
Browser Y, then at least some of my site is inaccessible to you -- oh
poor hapless bastard user of inferior technology. And it's just too
damn bad.
Disabled Web users, on the other hand -- notably the blind and
visually impaired -- face specific obstacles and use specific
technology to get around them. Chief among these tools is screen
reader software capable of turning text into Braille or synthesized
voice. Fundamentally, however, screen readers can look at text only
from left to right and top to bottom. An accessible Web site is one
that makes this possible -- not by depriving sighted users of all the
nice images and eye candy that we love, but by including alternate
routes around them.
When screen readers hit an image, they can't make sense of it. Only
text computes. Fortunately, there is a simple method available to
designers and HTML coders that enables them to provide smooth detours.
This requires developers to take advantage of an optional feature in
HTML, a tag they can use to provide a textual description of images.
Unfortunately, precisely because it is optional and takes a little
extra time to implement -- sometimes, too, because of a lack of
awareness and sensitivity -- very few commercial sites bother. As if
this weren't already enough of a hassle, imagine how mind-blowing it
is for screen readers to deal with multicolumn, newspaper-style
presentations or even farther-out designs that rely on excessive use
of HTML's frames and tables.
The thing is, even sites that absolutely depend on fancy visual design
to attract the widest possible audience of sighted visitors could, if
they wanted to, also include the many millions of disabled Americans
(plus the hundreds of millions of potential customers worldwide) --
simply by providing a link at the top of a home page that leads to a
text-only version of the site in question. Text-only means, well, text
only -- including intelligently worded hyperlinks. It's also worth
noting that many sighted Web users regularly take advantage of their
browser's option to turn graphics off for the purpose of getting at
content as quickly as possible, especially over slow modem
connections.
The most significant work being done in the accessibility field today
is that of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the internationally
recognized group, headquartered at MIT, that's responsible for Web
standards. This aspect of their work is in the form of an
international project called the Web Accessibility Initiative. As I
followed the hypertext trail from one link to the next, I kept seeing
references to a mysteriously named organization -- the Yuri Rubinsky
Insight Foundation.
According to Executive Director Mike Paciello, the late Rubinsky was
an "icon of the Information Age." Among his considerable achievements,
which include being the co-founder of SoftQuad (maker of the Web
authoring tool HoTMetaL Pro), Rubinsky was the first technical
director of the International Committee for Accessible Document
Design. "Yuri was hugely responsible for the success of the first
formal document standard that was used to translate electronic
information into Braille, synthesized voice and large text," says
Paciello. Officially established in April 1996, the foundation was
created to carry on Rubinsky's work on behalf of the blind and
visually impaired. Paciello is proud to note that the Web
Accessibility Initiative, the original version of which he wrote and
designed, was the first "feather in our cap."
Paciello further explained that he "positioned the plan as a
collaboration between government, industry and disability groups from
the start -- I knew that this was the only chance it had of
succeeding." Among the usual industry suspects committed to the WAI
are IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Sun and Apple. Governmental participants
include the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation,
the White House and the European Commission. Involved members of the
disability community are too numerous to list -- so numerous, in fact,
that without advanced search engine skills, you'll need kick-ass
patience to find precisely what you're looking for. Which brings us to
WebABLE.
Originally Paciello's personally funded project, this road map to
disability information on the Web is now maintained by the foundation
Paciello heads. Over the past six months, the foundation has also
conducted about 15 major workshops that focus on the WAI Page
Authoring Guidelines, in a vigorous effort to educate webmasters and
Web designers about Web page accessibility. A new lingo has naturally
begun to crop up in the wake of these initiatives. "Electronic
curbcut" is a new way to describe navigational features that make it
possible for disabled users to more easily maneuver around a Web site.
Free HTML validation services, such as the Center for Applied Special
Technology's extremely friendly Bobby and the W3C's own more austere
HTML checker, are readily available to help anyone create more
accessible Web space.
There is simply no excuse for creating inaccessible Web sites anymore.
The amount of information available to help site builders work around
barriers is staggering in its variety and depth. The WebABLE Library
page is one of the best examples of this. So is the University of
Wisconsin's Designing a More Usable World. To ignore research of this
caliber and build a site that is not inclusive, that does not provide
crucial accessibility features like alternate textual descriptions for
graphic images, is akin to building a public library without
wheelchair ramps or special services for the blind. Terry Sullivan of
All Things Web puts it this way: "One of my personal pet peeves is
that creating accessible pages is just so easy to do, and yet so few
designers bother to take the extra minute or two to do so."
Sullivan says there is a strong incentive for creating accessi pages
that most people seem to ignore because they mistakenly equate
accessibility with "lowest common denominator." But he is quick to
point out that most of the techniques used to create
high-accessibility pages are identical to the techniques used to
create high-compatibility pages. "In other words, high-accessibility
pages not only render well for, say, speech browsers, they render well
in virtually all browsers. Every reader who's had a bratty page lock
up their browser can relate to the need for designing for
compatibility."
Now, let's just stipulate that personal home pages, the ones that only
a few relatives and friends ever visit, are exempt from the standards
put forth by advocacy groups like the Yuri Rubinsky Insight
Foundation. Uncle Jake's Virtual Worm Farm and Zen Rock Climbing
Quarterly don't concern me, either. And magazines like Salon, that are
more about the written word than graphics and style for their own
sake, could easily tweak behind-the-scenes code, at little expense, in
order to improve their compliance with the ideal of universal access.
These suggestions are easy to implement. It's only when one takes a
hard look at large, multimillion-dollar sites that the situation
appears dire. You know the culprits -- from entities like major
network news and information organizations to sprawling entertainment
and sports conglomerates, these server-hungry beasts make the work
that needs to be done seem almost insurmountable. Not because, as
Sullivan and many others point out, it's especially difficult to do;
it's just the sheer, unwieldy size of it all.
Paciello says that we're just beginning to touch the problems. He
counsels, however, against too much pessimism. At the same time,
having been in the trenches for over a decade, he says,
"Realistically, it will take a mammoth effort to make this happen. The
W3C, being an internationally recognized consortium of industry,
should help. They are certainly promoting it. Give things time; I
think the shift will happen. We'll need to make a very large
investment in education and tool development, though -- larger than
what's currently in place."
SALON | May 5, 1998
Mike Britten is a freelance journalist living in Berkeley, Calif.
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