

We Haven’t Forgotten About Accessibility, Have We? - ebenezer
http://mondaybynoon.com/2010/10/18/forgotten-accessibility/

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sarenji
Here's another thing to keep in mind. I am hearing impaired. I've been seeing
more information given through screencasts and videos, often untranscribed or
uncaptioned. For example, I make websites, so I'd have liked a captioned or
transcribed version for the screencast in this article. There's also been
other sites where the sole tutorial was an uncaptioned video.

Is the problem lack of awareness? It takes much more effort to caption or
transcribe videos and make websites screenreader friendly than to use valid
HTML and CSS. But when I ask about making something accessible, people are
usually happy to oblige. I suspect it's because suddenly they realize part of
their target audience needs it.

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chc
In the same sense, we've also forgotten about flossing and eating lots of
vegetables. Accessibility is one of those things that everybody knows is nice
but they simply have other things that take precedence most of the time.
Similarly, lots of application developers used to ignore Mac users when the
platform had 2% marketshare (which is greater than the proportion of visitors
to your site who will be using a screenreader). Other things were more
important to them, like getting a product out that works for most people and
makes the company money. As a lifelong Mac user (even in the '90s), I know
it's annoying being left out, but at the same time, I've come to realize it
wouldn't be better if nothing got made because putting in heroic effort to
support every minority group makes development too time-consuming and
expensive.

His site is even a great illustration of the problem: For all the talk of
including everyone, his search box is literally inaccessible in my 575px-tall
browser window.

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jchristopher
Sorry about the search box being inaccessible. When designing it, I took into
consideration that 99% of my visitors arrive with >1024 pixel vertical
resolution. I'm curious though: as a lifelong Mac user, is your 575px-tall
browser window limited by your screen resolution?

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chc
Nope. It's limited by the fact that otherwise it covers up the rest of my
workspace. (Though my sister until recently had a computer with an 800x600
resolution, which would also not be able to show the search box with all the
toolbars on.)

And I didn't mean it as an attack or even a gripe: I mean that it's a lot of
work to make a product where everything works perfectly for everyone, and even
you fall short. You go further in many areas than most people, but that's just
a question of where to draw the line on accessibility, not whether to draw it.
IMO, if we want better accessibility, we need to make it easier for people to
get further before they feel like they have to draw a line.

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catshirt
At least for me- I have not forgotten- it is just a matter of priority.

On such a small team working on such a large product, accessibility takes the
back seat to other implementations. This is not my decision, and I do have
issues with it, but I understand it as well.

Something I have always wondered though was why visitors would be frustrated
on [insert your little site here] on a [insert your accessible device here],
when such an important majority of the internet doesn't even work? Based on
the link, I would think expectations are not very high.

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kogir
While it would be great if every website were designed to be accessible, it
isn't actually going to happen for various reasons.

What can be done and should happen is screen reader software can improve. If
google can index Ajax websites, screen readers can be improved to handle them
too. No other solution is realistic, or will do more to improve the usability
of the web for the visually impaired.

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codedivine
That "twitter with screenreader" video was certainly painful. As a person
completely new to accessibility, what resources would you recommend?

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zb
Mark Pilgrim's <http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org/> is a good starting
point, though it's out of date (2002) with respect to the AJAX-y stuff that
the post is talking about here.

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petervandijck
I think we pretty much have, with all the ajax and javascript these days.
Sorry.

