WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: thoughts from Jim Thatcher re the DoJ ANPRM

for

From: Nancy Johnson
Date: Jan 24, 2011 10:07AM

"It is unbelievable to me how poorly the web development community
understands accessibility. A few days ago I had a conversation with a
client who is developing web sites for the federal government. I had
just reviewed a new site that the company was building. “It has all
the same problems,” I said; “has no one learned anything?” “Too many
developers” he said."

I work as a Federal Government Contractor building websites... Our
team does not design nor do we add content. Our job is to automate the
site and build the structural html code (I often get basic code from
the design team). This time around, I made sure all the code that I
handed off to the java developers validated in the W3c validater,
often what came back did not, I was able to address some items others
I could not, and I made sure all the labeling passed the
accessibility validaters .

Too many folks involved each with a different job.. There is also a
lack of understanding that different folks experience websites in
different ways...just look at the open source jquerys and
javascripts...its often a challenge to find jquery's or js that are
screen reader/keyboard friendly.

I also have found code that technically is keyboard accessible but
without explanation, I wonder how usable it is to the non-sighted
individual

Nancy Johnson



On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Denis Boudreau < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> On 2011-01-21, at 4:34 PM, Jared Smith wrote:
>
>> But others can be very difficult and expensive, especially for
>> existing sites.
>
> That's very easy to solve. Have the requirements apply only to new websites, not existing ones. Every site is meant to either die or go into redesign at one point or another. Sooner or later, we'd catch them all. Conformance level AA is totally achievable. Video, if anything, might be the only place where there's a real challenge and even then, if there's a real problem, solutions will emerge. Either way, accessibility wins.
>
> /Denis
>
>