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The Changing Culture of Web Accessibility
By David Sloan, published 1st June 2004.
On the 26th May, the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) was launched [1], as a centre of excellence for web developers and designers who genuinely support accessible design and actively work to promote accessibility - and for people looking for someone to create an accessible web site. DMAG supports GAWDS and wishes it every success, and in particular the efforts of Jim Byrne, who first mentioned the idea to us about a year ago over lunch in Dundee, and who has worked extremely hard to get things moving from an idea to a body of many influential names in web design.
The launch of GAWDS, and in particular the desire to ensure that design quality is not unduly sacrificed for accessibility, is a mark of how far web accessibility has come since DMAG carried out its first accessibility review in 1999. While initially, inclusive design was a campaign fought by academics and disability rights campaigners, a huge step has been taken by the embracing of accessibility by organisations such as the Web Standards Group [2]. The emergence of designers as key advocates of accessibility, reflected in the content and appearance of on-line projects and magazines like CSS Zen Garden [3], Digital Web [4] and A List Apart [5], has been crucial in helping to improving the number of web sites that reach a high level of accessibility - but actually look nice as well.
Admittedly, in comparison to accessibility, visual design is largely a subjective quality, open to individual opinion. But accessibility has always seemed hard to sell without examples of visual design quality. While some sites promoting disability rights and accessibility are sadly still deficient in the aesthetic area, diluting the message to those who learn by example - the message can only benefit from more examples where creativity and inclusive design are equally prominent. So we'll increasingly see examples of web sites that meet the mark from an accessibility and an aesthetic point of view. Isn't that the AA standard we should be trying to meet?
We in DMAG argue that it pointless separating accessibility from usability for disabled people; the more you can involve real people, the more chance you'll have of creating a truly inclusive design. Forrester Research agrees with us [6]. Recognising that there is a challenge in identifying users and carrying out evaluations, at least the evolution of support communities, marked by the popularity of the Accessify.com forum [7], means that we'll see more examples of best practice and innovation to help developers towards solving key accessibility-related problems.
Another argument for accessible design is that many accessible design principles are similar to principles of search engine optimisation . We were reminded of this by a recently received notification of a very good article on Web Accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation [8], taking each checkpoint of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and outlining how following that checkpoint can also result in a page and site structure that leads to improved search engine indexing.
The message that accessible design is search engine-friendly design has been promoted by many others [9] [10] and in Dive Into Accessibility [11], Mark Pilgrim used the Google robot as one of the personas benefiting from accessible design.
It's a stark fact that for some, the moral argument for a more inclusive World Wide Web may meet with little sympathy. In a business environment, a more compelling argument, will require a clear return on investment, and increasingly the argument for accessible design can be disguised as an argument for search engine optimisation.
Of course, not all search engine promotion techniques benefit accessibility, as we've seen, and as Gez Lemon points out in [10]. Stuffing alternative text for images with keywords, and using CSS to render invisible keywords that can be picked up by indexing robots are two examples where, for many people, accessibility and usability will drop through the floor as a result.
So we have signs that two key arguments for inclusive web design are now being adopted by sectors where there would likely have been significantly more resistance only a couple of years ago. There's a long way to go before overall standards of accessibility of web content reach an acceptable level, but at least there are encouraging signs of progress.
References
- Guild of Accessible Web Developers: http://www.gawds.org
- Web Standards Project: http://www.webstandards.org
- CSS Zen Garden: http://www.csszengarden.com
- Digital Web: http://www.digital-web.com
- A List Apart: http://www.alistapart.com
- Forrester Research (May 25 2004) Best Practices: Use Disability Experts to Test Accessibility http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,34541,00.html
- Accessify Forum: http://www.accessifyforum.com
- C. Marderos (2004): Web Accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation. http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/search_engine_information/optimisation_accessibility/
- B. Olejniczak (2004) Optimizing Your Chances with Accessibility. In Digital Web Magazine: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/optimizing_your_chances_with_accessibility
- G. Lemon (2004) Accessible Search Engine Optimisation Techniques: Juicy Studio http://www.juicystudio.com/accessible-seo
- Dive Into Accessibility: Tips by person: http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org/by_person.html