Making Web Accessible to All

June 10, 2002

Making Web Accessible to All
By SARAH HORTON

THERE is a wall outside my window. I have an attractive first-floor office
in a newly constructed building on the campus of Dartmouth College. But my
view
is obscured by a pillared free-standing wall that runs parallel to the north
face of the building. The wall has no structural purpose; its function is
purely aesthetic.

Contemplating this wall daily has brought me face to face with the senseless
barriers that are built in the name of design, particularly in my own design
specialty: the Web.

As a Web designer, I do not consciously build walls, but like the architect
of my office building, I do fall prey to vanity. I use design to draw
attention
to myself and to my work. I want people to be delighted when they look at my
Web pages. I want them to notice my designs. But just as the wall obstructs
my view of the world outside my office window, my fancy graphics and page
designs are often simple barriers between people and the information they
seek.

Take something as basic as access to the daily news. People who cannot see
can nevertheless read the Web using text-to-speech software. And because
there
are loads of news sources on the Web, blind people should theoretically have
access to much more information online than in the print world, where they
often must rely on the availability of alternative versions, like audio
recordings or Braille.

But with the Web's current hyperactive state, text-to-speech access to the
daily news is tedious at best, impossible at worst. Screen-reader software
works
only when it has text to read. Graphics are not text. Flash animations and
navigation are not text. Video is not text. PDF files often are not text. So
unless the Web developer provides a "text equivalent" in the page's
underlying code, material in these formats is inaccessible to people who
rely on screen-reader
software.

Consider the news site MSNBC.com. The site uses graphic text for its
navigation links, which cannot be read by screen-reader software. Nor can
the text
be enlarged by people who can see only large type. Because the site's
developer did not provide alternative text in the code of the pages, when
the screen
reader encounters the Sports link, it reads the link's U.R.L., which sounds
like "slash news slash s p t underline front dot asp link." Huh?

Another potential barrier on the MSNBC site is the video, which is great and
interesting and useful, but only if you can hear and see (and are running
Microsoft's
Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player). There are no captions, text
transcripts or descriptions to accompany the video and audio material.

Peter Dorogoff, a spokesman for MSNBC.com, said the site's developers would
continue to assess its usefulness to the largest possible audience. "We've
addressed
the broadest accessibility issues within the constraints of our publishing
tool and other necessary resources," Mr. Dorogoff said. "We continue to
monitor
and evaluate accessibility across the site and have made a concerted effort
to achieve this goal on a consistent basis, sitewide."

There is no reason to single out MSNBC.com. The New York Times on the Web,
for example, presents its own barriers. Every page on the Web site has
graphics
and advertising at the top and an extensive set of navigation links along
the left side. Sighted people, if they choose to, can skip the
advertisements,
the last updated date, the search features and log-in information and the
more than 50 navigation links and jump straight to the headlines.

But for people who rely on text-to-speech software, skipping over those
elements is not an option. Screen-reader software reads sequentially,
starting at
the top of the page. This means that blind people must listen to the
advertisements and navigation before reaching the main content, and they
must do this
on every page of the site.

Stephen P. Newman, the assistant general manager of NYTimes.com, says the
Times Web site is frequently redesigned. "For each redesign," he said, "we
gather
feedback from our readers during comprehensive user testing and focus
groups. So our designs currently reflect the needs of the majority of our
users."

Accessible design does not mean doing away with navigation links, graphics
and banner advertisements. Accessible design means designing in features
that
accommodate all users. For example, some sites, like CNN.com, have added a
special "skip navigation" link at the top of every page that is invisible to
sighted people but is detected by screen-reader software. When activated,
this link directs the screen reader's focus to the main content of the page.

The "skip navigation" convention is a fairly recent one, and sites that lack
this feature were probably designed before people started talking about
accessibility.
Indeed, most Web barriers result from errors of omission and unintended
consequences.

But some Web sites do seem designed with a deliberate lack of flexibility.
People wanting to play games at HarryPotter.com, for instance, had better
arrive
with a current browser, the Flash plug-in, and good vision and hearing.
Otherwise, they won't make it past the intro page. Most of the site is in
the Flash
format, which allows animations, sounds, fancy fonts and other cool features
that are not available using standard Web coding. It also means the pages
on this site cannot be enlarged or rendered to speech, and they are not
easily accessible from the keyboard.

The site is fun for those who are able to use it, and I doubt that its
developers are mean spirited. But they did make a choice to favor the cool
over the
practical and most widely accessible.
Macromedia
recently released a new version of Flash, Flash MX, which allows developers
to include more accessibility features in their Flash presentations.

Don Buckley, the senior vice president for interactive marketing at Warner
Brothers Pictures, said that the topic of access for people with
disabilities
was "of great interest" and that the Web site's developers "would certainly
be looking at the technology." Maybe the developers at Warner Brothers will
revise the site to include some of these new features, or, better yet, use
plain old HTML to build a new, flexible Diagon Alley that's accessible and
fun
for everyone. Now that would be cool.

It does not necessarily take more time or cost more money to design
accessible Web sites. The Web was designed to be flexible. Why not work
within the medium
and build Web sites that are accessible to the largest possible audience?

The Web is so much more than image. The Web is an access point, an entryway,
a window on the world. Let's not allow fancy walls to block the view.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |




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