This article discussed some different requirements of all government web pages for easy accessibility for people with disabilities. It includes requirements to add additional assistive technology capabilities to each government sponsored web page. Each guideline is rated on a scale of 1 to 5 in importance, followed by a rating describing how much evidence they have to support the claim. I don't know why this information was included. By saying that one of the guidelines is rated 3 with an evidence rating of 1, it makes style sheets seem almost a trivial guideline. TheWc3 piece shows that style sheets can be very effective in helping certain groups of people access the web.
I found this document to be very inaccessible, especially given the topic. There is a common phrase in many of the elements, saying something to the effect of ensure that the assistive technology can read the information. This wouldn't be a problem if a list was provided stating which languages/programs were incapable of interfacing with currentassistive technologies. None of the chapter titles address this issue. This document is making it difficult for web designers to adhere to these guidelines.
These guidelines are, however, necessary. I didn't realize that nearly 40% of all people with disabilities lived in the South (see Disability Stats and Facts). I would have been interested to know if disabilities are region-based at all. Relevant duplicate information needs to be available for those individuals who cannot engage in the web in the usual manner. I wonder if regulations like these will become mandatory for corporations, or a website like YouTube, where you would have to provide subtitles for all the video, as well as descriptions of what is occurring in the clip. This would make a lot more jobs for YouTube to get coders for their new content. This is probably why there has not been a push for this yet.
4 comments:
Hmm, interesting topic overall for this week. Methinks final project might involve translating a website into a user friendly space for persons with a specific disability.
I know for my own part I had always jsut assumed that the WWW made life easier for folks with certain disabilities. I had a deaf neighbor in Germany that used the web frequently to interact with other deaf friends and stay socially connected since her husband was the only speaker of ASL physically present. The impression that this website gave me was that the WWW in general creates new accessiblity hurdles for person with disabilities more than it solves current struggles they already ahve with accessibility.
The only person for whom the natural layout of a webpage really worked was the bagger with down's syndrome. And that was just one site. Even in the best scenarios, it seems that persons with disabilities are limited by what websites work for them. They either have a limited pool of pages to use, need to tools to make any page useable, or both.
Given the statistics descirbing many people with diabilities as unemployed and living well below the poverty line, it is upsetting to me that there are still such limits in accessiblity of the web for these people. If websites could be designed with a more ADA friendly interface, it seeems to me that new oppurtunities could open up for people with disabilities, expanding their capacity to interact with and contribute to society. How many internet users already benefit from webpages and tools that allow them to work from home?
As for government regulation of web accesiblity, it seems to me that the ADA proves that the government does not have the time or interest to adequately complete the tasks it has already set for itself in regard to persons with disabilities. The private sector will probably end up providing most of the technology to bring disabled people onto the web. The concern is that the private sector is too often financially driven in its interests, which means that if persons with disabilities are lving in poverty, they would find fewer private companies creating solutions for them since their market share is limited. Government subsidies perhaps? I know I don't have the answer, just the ability to point out the problems. Which as we all know doesn't help.
John I completely agree with you on the fact that the rating scale seemed a bit pointless. I wondered for a good portion of them why I should even be reading them if they weren't as important and didn't have evidence to back it up.
I also thought this article said a lot of the same things that the other articles did, but with less information and less quality. Just because the page was set up nicely doesn't mean that it is a good article. Over all I thought it was kind of a waste of time. It rated a 2 on my importance scale.
This page seems to be a fairly useful guide to gauge the quality of a website. Point 3:5 seemed to be of more importance than others, to label non-text elements could be very useful if some kind of text reading software were in use, the content of the descriptions could include more relevant information than where dubya's hands are being placed. As far as the rating scale goes, I think it is a very subjective matter, we should be able to decide for ourselves what is more or less important. Once again the information seems somewhat important here... I see the guideline section to be especially important in each section.
Perhaps this isn't the correct forum in which to discuss more controversial aspects of these initiatives, but this is the most prevalent thought in my mind, so forgive me. I want to preface my comment by stating that I am not at all suggesting that if a task is daunting, the foundational problem should be ignored...
In reading this article, though, and all the articles in conjunction, I couldn't help but think that this shotgun approach to correcting usability and accessibility issues for ALL people with disabilities is rather...overly broad?... Indeed, the W3C admits that many of the groups it intends to aid with its initiatives do not even consider themselves to be disabled. So to try to tackle the WWW for everyone who is admitedly disabled and everyone who COULD BE at a disadvantage seems a terrifically large task. In fact I almost found it unreasonable that a few organizations would even attempt to tackle the concept of ALL disability within a few pages of text and two or three lists of guidelines. It almost seems unfair that a person with blindness would be lumped into the same group as a person with carpal-tunnel and say that the WAI and the W3C are out there burning the midnight oil to make up a bulleted list of ten or so things that would fix both these persons' needs. Okay, okay. So I know that's not really what these organizations are trying to put across in reality. But in theory...there are whole fields of medicine, science, therapy, psychology, etc., devoted just to the blind. And the deaf. And those with learning disabilities. Etc. Does anyone else see each disability as a unique and highly personal concern demanding and deserving much more individual attention than a single congressional bill or consortium intiative can provide?
I have to admit I was a little put off in almost every one of these articles by the fact that an all-encompassing term of disability suggested that some guidelines and a few pieces of special technology could change the whole web for the whole world. Someone (Dylan or Jessica, in another post) asked, would these technologies soon begin finding implementation in public access portals? I think it's oversimplifying matters to think that all disabilities can be compensated at a public cybercafe with a fancy keyboard and some far-seeing web-designers.
In another class, I recently found myself on the fringe of a discussion of racial discrimination. I agree entirely that racial discrimination is still abundantly present in our society and a horrific cancer of our world. But the interesting thing was that one woman in my class who had a different ethnic background than the rest of us became very offended, even defensive towards comments by people who were quite obviously unbigoted and trying to carry on an open conversation in an academic setting. But while she was feeling like she was the only one who had ever experienced prejudice or discrimination, I found myself thinking of all the times I had experienced discrimination based upon age, social status, money, religion, etc. The tricky thing about universality, about discrimination and "accessibility" whether it be to a job regardless of race or to the web regardless of "disability" is that we all face varying levels of it. Discrimination is everywhere. I can't use a computer as well as someone with more knowledge of technology. Does that mean I'm disabled or discriminated against, technologically-speaking? Furthermore, does that mean that the W3C, the WAI, and the government's section 508 Accessibility Code hope to make the world a better place for me as a techno-illiterate, and my friend as a blind person using the same guidelines and bulleted lists? I think it's naive to think so. Like I said, I'm not advocating dropping the matter because it is a complex issue. But I wonder how effective these efforts really are, and how much beauracratic babble is going on versus how much a blind person, or a person with carpal-tunnel, or me as a low-tech user is really being aided on our end of the computer terminal by this work.
Sorry for the length, but I felt strongly about this issue. And I'm a little crazy. Is there a bullet on the list for insanity? :)
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