One thing that always surprises me is how many people take offense to the suggestion to make their software/websites more accessible, as if it's trampling on their artistic freedom. Even here on enlightened HN, the top-most comment seems to worry about some "Orwellian" future where non-accessible websites are verboten.
I prefer to look at making things accessible in two more positive ways:
1. It's a challenge; any designer can slap together a slick looking website. It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone.
2. Sure, you might scoff at the market possibilities today (seven percent? who cares!). But as life expectancy goes up, so do the numbers with disability, and the longer someone is alive, the more money they are likely to have. Reap those baby boomers! (cynical, yes; but this is business after all).
And money. Lots and lots of money. Sometimes, especially with single-page sites, it can take more than 100% of the base budget to implement the progressive enhancement necessary for screen readers and the like.
Customers don't want to pay for it, and I'm not going to do it for free.
Your point in 2 needs to be backed up by some numbers. You can't appeal to someone's internal economist without some statistics.
If your HTML is valid, and you're not doing crazy stuff with your headers, chances are the screen reader is going to do just fine.
I worked for the government, and every single site we put out had to be 508 compliant (in other words, accessible). It never doubled our budget, ever, and we had some pretty complex interfaces.
As for point two, go check out how many Baby Boomers are alive today. Then, remember this:
Baby boomers control over 80% of personal financial assets and more than half of all consumer spending.
They're also going to start needing sites that deal with their aging eyes, poor vision, and joint issues.
> It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone
By and large all you have to do is do things the easy, straightforward, normal, recommended way. People put a lot of thought, creativity and money into making things unusable.
"One of the newer groups under the accessibility umbrella, this group has become more vocal in the past few years. Those with dyslexia and ADD or ADHD have begun to press for a less busy Internet, one where ads don’t distract them to the point of being unable to use a site, or where proper contrast is used, rather than the more artistic combinations of light text against an only slightly lighter background."
IMO, browser makers failed us 15+ years ago by not making the ability to style/theme our sites more prominent as part of the UI. (and cookie management, but that's a different rant) The idea of using your own custom style sheets was always, at best, an extreme fringe feature. Yes, markup has to be 'right' for this to work, and browser makers catered to poor markup way too much in the early days. I'm not sure we can easily get out of it, but perhaps now... with a somewhat renewed focus on semantic markup and better CSS in browsers, we could encourage browsers to treat "user-specified" styling as a first class function of what it means to be a 'browser'?
Using Safari 5 right now, there's no option I can find to set a minimum font size. A 'default' font and size, yes, but that seems to be ignored or overwritten by every site I go to. It's 2012 and I still have to 'increase font size' on a number of sites I go to (and I know about keystrokes to do so - other people I know tend to just suffer with small fonts).
Firefox makes the binary choice straightforward: accept the site's styling, or use no styling: "View/Page Style/No Style". I find myself going to no style much more frequently these days, as cool UIs become fashionable but are still hard to get right, especially cross browser.
So what does someone do in between? Immerse themselves in hidden browser settings? Use greasemonkey?
Firefox has the option to let you set the font and a minimum font size, and will force all sites to stick to it. (Tools -> Options -> Content -> Advanced)
I view the entire internet in Times New Roman 20 pt. I have to turn it off for more complicated sites like amazon, where having giant font in their tiny boxes breaks functionality, but it works beautifully on simple sites like hacker news, where I spend most of my time. (And by "beautifully" I mean, it's butt-ugly, but I can sit back from the computer at a comfortably ergonomic distance and read without straining my eyes.)
> I'm not sure we can easily get out of it, but perhaps now... with a somewhat renewed focus on semantic markup and better CSS in browsers, we could encourage browsers to treat "user-specified" styling as a first class function of what it means to be a 'browser'?
Opera does this. I have a drop-down on the bottom of my window which will load in local .css files on top of sites. You can write your own, and Opera has a good selection out-of-the-box. I'm not disabled, but I will sometimes switch into the "Accessibility" layout when a site's style/layout starts annoying me. It's very readable, and very easy on the eyes. You're right that most sites need to play good with their own HTML to support this, but my experience is that it works when I want it to work.
Unrelated, but this feature is also useful for debugging. Several of the styles serve to make the HTML structure more visible on the page.
Having worked as a relay operator for the deaf and hard of hearing, I can not tell you how bad forms are in virtually all software.
When calling a deaf person, you may need to call a relay or translation service, meaning two phone numbers. Virtually no company, even those with a "notes" area have an established protocol for this. And many just don't have even that.
And no notes is a huge pain. You know how it's a pain in the ass to get the cable/Internet guy to come at a convenient time? They often insist on calling first to ensure their trip isn't wasted. Now imagine you're deaf, and the guy calls every time, and he doesn't use a relay/translator, and never actually communicating... He never comes.
God it has to be annoying sometimes. It was for me and I was getting paid for those calls.
Food for thought when you're thinking about niches to target: at my last company (http://www.surveygizmo.com), the co-founder & lead designer was a big supporter of web standards and accessibility. Not because he was a disabled activist, but just because he likes to write good code.
As it turned out, accessible surveys became a huge selling point to nonprofits that serve the disabled as well as governments, which often are mandated to be accessible. This gave the company an early boost as it was pretty much the only game in town for those markets.
Perhaps some lost startup will pivot to providing single number relay service using twilio or similar. Each phone number would be unique to a relay/deaf customer pair.
Seems the solution hear is Google Voice or some client software that receives the phone call on behalf of the user, and sets up the relay. Relay should be a "hook-in" feature of my phone, not a concern of the caller.
"Those with dyslexia and ADD or ADHD have begun to press for a less busy Internet, one where ads don’t distract them to the point of being unable to use a site, or where proper contrast is used, rather than the more artistic combinations of light text against an only slightly lighter background."
Aah, your gray font used to write this is hard to read and I haven't been characterized for any of these.
Also, HN seems to make it hard for people with these impairments to read downvoted comments :P, though they do that to everyone. There should be an option to re-darken a downvoted comment temporarily.
"Also, HN seems to make it hard for people with these impairments to read downvoted comments :P, though they do that to everyone. There should be an option to re-darken a downvoted comment temporarily."
As I mentioned in another response here, Firefox View/PageStyle/NoStyle is increasingly my response to the increasing number of cool but unreadable sites. That will solve your problem of not being able to read downvoted comments.
A quicker and more focused solution is just to drag across the downvoted comment, which shows up in high contrast reverse colors for me.
So.. I'm working on a website that is primarily for reading. Just looking at the statistics, there is 7.9 million people out of 300 million in the US that will have either be blind or effectively blind. That's 2.6% of the population that won't be able to access my site. That's below my threshold for dropping browser support.
I'm pretty sure my time would be better spend making it visually better than learning about accessibility.
Even if your site is just for reading, have you considered all the above groups?
* Can someone who can't use a mouse navigate your site? How about if they can't use a keyboard?
* Can your default styles be over-ridden? Does it grow gracefully, or is content suddenly hidden?
* Have you checked your color contrasts for the color blind?
* Are ads constantly looping animations?
* What fonts are you using?
* Does it have a consistant navigation?
* What about the content? Is there any attempt to make it as readable as possible? Or are the authors long-winded?
* Is text broken up into reasonably sized paragraphs? Are sections effectively used?
* Is there abuse of all-caps or italics?
Those are just off the top of my head. If you think that the blind and visually impaired are all you have to worry about, you'd be wrong.
Can someone who can't use a mouse navigate your site? How about if they can't use a keyboard?
I test on my ipad and iphone for usability. I plan on having mobi export so you can use a kindle if you want.
Can your default styles be over-ridden? Does it grow gracefully, or is content suddenly hidden?
The base font is 14pt with additional spacing between lines. The navigation won't degrade well but the body content should be fine though it might wrap oddly.
Have you checked your color contrasts for the color blind?
I do actually. I regularly use OSX's accessiblity tools to use grayscale or high contrast mode. I also have a badly-balanced lcd screen for testing if the text is still readable without proper color balance. The site is primarily black on light gray so I don't have many problems with that.
Are ads constantly looping animations?
No ads, currently. I doubt I will ever add them but if I do they will be static and only on index pages.
Edit links tend to be in the same place everywhere on the site. Still working on that. Delete buttons are always bright red on the bottom left of the edit screen. I hid them a bit on purpose since I would prefer people to archive stuff instead of deleting it.
What about the content? Is there any attempt to make it as readable as possible? Or are the authors long-winded? Is text broken up into reasonably sized paragraphs? Are sections effectively used? Is there abuse of all-caps or italics?
I have very little control over writing quality. It's a place for people to share their writing. I do a lot to mitigate the damage normal people like to inflict on readability but I can't force them to use paragraphs, capital lettters, or typography properly. I can only insure that all the text is in the same font and size for everyone's submissions. (I don't allow authors to increase or decrease font size. All html is prestyled with minimal room for adjustment.)
And then out of that 2.6%, what % of those would be interested in your site even if it is accessible? Diminishing returns, you're right. These other guys are kidding themselves.
You'd be better off worrying about all the Chinese and Indians who can't read your site in English.
When software I use adds usability features, it makes me proud to be user of that software. I am much more inclined to think of the developer as "good", and much more likely to recommend the software.
So it's more than just 2.6%. There are other bonuses to be had.
It absolutely should be. This happens more than I'd care to admit, when someone else does final editing on your article :\ I'll contact the site owner.
Well, "Deaf" isn't an attempt to be PC. There is a discrete Deaf culture which makes sense given their relative social isolation, common challenges and distinct language(s).
How the heck is "impaired" offensive but "hard of" not offensive.
Let's see what the national association of the deaf says. "The term focuses on what people can’t do. It establishes the standard as “hearing” and anything different as “impaired,” or substandard, hindered, or damaged."
By what interpretation of words does "hard of" not do the exact same thing. Did I miss an important evolution of English again?
Edit: Looked some more. NCDS is fine with "hearing impaired" but says that some people object. Then I found this page http://www.deaflinx.com/DeafCommunity/identity.html Its objection to "hearing impaired" is the mere fact that it ignores people's culture/identity choices wrt the Deaf community. This reasoning reminds me of the insular sub-community of the deaf that tries to push 'Deaf Culture' so strongly that they can be against fixing people's ability to hear; people that will make 'Deaf' their very identity. To be honest I don't care what those people find offensive.
But if you have a better reasoning than those people I am ready and willing to learn and accept it.
I wasn't aware that "hearing impaired" was offensive. I try to be aware of these kinds of things (such as Deaf community), even though I have no exposure to it (personally nor via people I know) - thanks for the correction.
The biggest disability on the internet is communications. As such a interface that transcends the needs to have any written language is one that is doing more than most.
That is why the up vote and down vote buttons are what is known as intuitive is use.
But if you design something with KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) then you can at least have a good interface to tap into.
I would love a site that allowed you to go into edit mode and drag and drop and move and select the elements of the site you wanted and had that as a default style sheet for that site. You can then have voted user style sheets/templates for the site that enable somebody who is say colour-blind to select the one best for them. Though for colour blindness I'm surprised none of these smart TV's have the ability for the user to custom remap aspects of the colour palate to accommodating them. Though I'm not colour blind, but it is a common enough issue and a fine solvable example with regards towards a accommodative user interface.
Just like we have laws against discrimination based on disability and measures like handicap parking spots, does anyone envision a future where there's some sort of federal mandate that websites cater to the disabled?
At least in the US, this already falls under Section 508 guidelines [1]. Most government web sites are already expected to follow this.
I wouldn't call it "catering" though, because often it doesn't involve anything more than semantic markup and avoiding exclusively mouse-driven navigation.
It's already a de facto requirement for anyone selling software to the government. When I was a PM at Microsoft working on Visio, I was surprised and amazed at how much time and energy went into accessibility of all the Office product. It's not easy to make a visual design program like Visio work well for the blind or visually impaired!
I'm trying to think how a blind user could effectively use a visual design program or its output. Do you output text representation of diagrams? Does a blind user put the product to some use and purpose that's different from the average sighted user?
If the visual representation can be described with data, you give them the option to view that data. Images have a longdesc attribute for this http://webaim.org/techniques/images/longdesc
Not all visual applications can be made accessible.
Changes to the law seem unlikely given the dysfunction in Congress now and in the foreseeable future. Hence, we may end up with a regulatory patchwork quilt made up of rulings like this one.
In my experience, HR departments for some companies do have this kind of material. However, the hiring processes for many places are inaccessible to people with certain kinds of disabilities, so they are not likely to even make it to interview stages of hiring.
In general, yes. There's a few exceptions, but in general you should have an accessible version for the visually impaired (or, really, any of the groups I list in the article. Are your training videos captioned for the Deaf? Can someone with motion issues navigate your HR site using Tab or adaptive devices? Is the language overly contrived or the font and color choices bad?)
Just "deaf" here. "deaf" people who aren't part of "Deaf cultre" are just as unable to hear as "Deaf people". In fact, the average "Deaf" person may be more likely to be able to hear, since "Deaf" is cultural (can be opted-into) and "deaf" is biological.
I prefer to look at making things accessible in two more positive ways:
1. It's a challenge; any designer can slap together a slick looking website. It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone.
2. Sure, you might scoff at the market possibilities today (seven percent? who cares!). But as life expectancy goes up, so do the numbers with disability, and the longer someone is alive, the more money they are likely to have. Reap those baby boomers! (cynical, yes; but this is business after all).