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Re: accessibility without testing?

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From: Steve Green
Date: Mar 14, 2008 1:20PM

If you don't do user testing and you don't engage accessibility consultants
and you don't spend time with disabled people to learn about their
disabilities, then there is a very significant possibility you're going to
build something that is inaccessible.

The WCAG are a starting point but how close they get you to an accessible
site will vary greatly depending on the content, the functionality and the
technologies you choose to build it. In some cases designing to standards
may be good enough. In other cases it may be totally inadequate. How are you
going to know which it is?

A long list of checkpoints isn't the answer. A lot of the problems users
have are not technical, but cognitive; they can access the content but can't
understand it or can't understand what they need to do. Often this is a 100%
blocker, not 'the last 1%'. With our experience of user testing we can
assess whether users are likely to find a website accessible, but user
testing frequently reveals unexpected issues.

The legislative environment in which you work will influence your approach.
In the UK we have the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which applies to
websites. This does not specify that websites must meet any particular level
of technical accessibility (such as WCAG). Instead it is interested only in
actual outcomes i.e. whether people can actually use the website. This is in
direct contrast with Section 508, which was specifically drafted such that a
totally objective technical pass/fail assessment could be made. Although the
DDA is far more subjective, it meets users' needs better than Section 508.

Steve