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Re: Guidelines are only half of the story: accessibility problems encountered by blind users on the web

for

From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: May 9, 2012 2:53PM

Hello:

Karen, I'm not sure quite what you mean when you talk about WCAG
techniques for other formats. I believe there are already techniques
related to other formats such as Silverlight, Flash, and PDF. To see
them, start here:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/

They're listed in the Table of Contents which is at an h2.

I agree it'd be nice if other formats were included; in some cases,
perhaps this issue is related more to authoring tools.

Getting back to the article, which was originally under discussion,
here's a thread that some might find of interest:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?852325-Research-shows-adhering-to-WCAG-doesn-t-solve-blind-users-problems



Jennifer

At 01:26 PM 5/9/2012, you wrote:
>One thing I see is that the WCA Guidelines are being used as "standards" for
>all types of file formats when we are developing standards specific to those
>file formats.
>
>I haven't read the study but in our language we seem to talk about
>guidelines and standards as if they were the same thing.
>
>Hopefully as we develop standards for specific document formats and types of
>content they can be incorporated and referred to in the WCA Guidelines as
>specific standards for specific types of content.
>
>Cheers, Karen
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R.
>Gunnarsson
>Sent: May-09-12 3:54 PM
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Guidelines are only half of the story: accessibility
>problems encountered by blind users on the web
>
>This is a very interesting study, and I need to sit down with it and a bunch
>of coffee for an hour or so, to fully appreciate it.
>However, Iahave a few initial reservations.
>Like Gary said, this report seems too blind-centric.
>For another, I have seen a similar article to this, making bold claims about
>user issues that WCAG does not address. In that case the gentlman in
>question clearly did not know or understand WCAG at all, and made a lot of
>eroneous claims regarding its shortcomings. There is no connection, as far
>as I know, between that and the report this group has produced, so I am in
>no way questioning the depth of their knowledge of this issue, only that I
>need to study the details of their tests to see if their evaluation agrees
>with my understanding of WCAG.
>The third concern I have is whether the users know how to use their
>assistive technology. You can implement the most accessible site in the
>world, according to standards, but if the user does not know how to utilize
>these to explore a website these are useless. As someone who works closely
>with A.T. instructors I see this time and time again, the A.T. training is
>often simply not up to bar, so that part of it needs to be pooked at
>specifically to see if, or how much, of a part this plays in the problem.
>Related to this is the Assistive Technology itself, if that does not support
>whatis being implemented on the site, the benefit of sticking with standards
>does not end up with the users.
>It just seems people are very quick to blame deficiencies in the WCAg
>standard for all perceived web browsing issues, putting all the
>responsibility of the user experience on the web site developer and the
>accessibility standards, and none on the users themselves or the technology
>they use (GW Micro, for instance, does not support ARIA landmarks and won't
>till version 8, this even if the landmarks have been around for years and
>are supported elsewhere).
>I have some issues with the Success Criteria specifically, and I think the
>standard could be simplified a lot, and it is a fact it has not been as
>effective as many of us would have hoped, whatever the reason.
>But I think our assessments of the standard, which is a necessary and useful
>thing to do, must take these other issues into account and understand the
>part they play in the usability problems.
>Cheers
>-B
>
>On 5/9/12, Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E] < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > Speaking ONLY for myself, and I don't mean to be insulting or
> > insensitive, but "accessibility" is not defined solely on whether only
> > blind users and not other persons with disabilities can use the web or any
>other technology.
> > I know that, for example, on Google's Accessibility listserv I was
> > told bluntly that that is the definition of accessible and that any
> > other group had to specify the term (i.e., accessible to Deaf persons,
> > accessible to persons with dexterity impairments, etc.), as if by some
> > majical decision the definition was restricted to only group of persons
>over another.
> >
> > I write this because it concerns me that we're almost having to play
> > against each other - i.e., my oppression, my disability, my lack of
> > access is worse than yours - rather than what do we have to do
> > collaboratively to ensure that technical is meaningfully accessible to
>each of us and to all of us.
> >
> > Done for now with my two shekels worth of your time on my soapbox,
> >
> > Gary
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bryan Garaventa [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 1:03 PM
> > To: WebAIM Discussion List
> > Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Guidelines are only half of the story:
> > accessibility problems encountered by blind users on the web
> >
> > Sorry about that, forgot to add the description.
> >
> > This paper describes an empirical study of the problems encountered by
> > 32 blind users on the Web. Task-based user evaluations were undertaken
> > on 16 websites, yielding 1383 instances of user problems. The results
> > showed that only 50.4% of the problems encountered by users were
> > covered by Success Criteria in the Web Content Accessibility
> > Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). For user problems that were covered by WCAG
> > 2.0, 16.7% of websites implemented techniques recommended in WCAG 2.0
> > but the techniques did not solve the problems. These results show that
> > few developers are implementing the current version of WCAG, and even
> > when the guidelines are implemented on websites there is little
> > indication that people with disabilities will encounter fewer
> > problems. The paper closes by discussing the implications of this
> > study for future research and practice. In particular, it discusses
> > the need to move away from a problem-based approach towards a design
>principle approach for web accessibility.
> >
> >
> > Full text PDF:
> > http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id"07736&ftid16890&dwn=1&CFID
> > 545442&CFTOKEN`990192
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Bryan Garaventa" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> > To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 9:08 AM
> > Subject: [WebAIM] Guidelines are only half of the story:
> > accessibilityproblems encountered by blind users on the web
> >
> >
> >> This is an interesting article from the University of York
> >> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id"07736
> >>
> >> I'm glad I'm not the only one saying this any longer.
> >> > >> > >> list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >
> >
> > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >
>>>messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
>>>