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Re: Do people actually want Automatic Accessibility within Web Technologies?

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From: Paul J. Adam
Date: Apr 20, 2012 1:19PM

Other OS X software applications are VoiceOver accessible so it is possible for Adobe & Microsoft to do the same. Adobe blogged in 2010 that they planed to "utilize the OSX accessibility API support, resulting in the ability to access to Flash content using VoiceOver" (http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2010/03/flash_player_and_flex_support.html) but they said at CSUN that Flash will never be accessible on the Mac so I'd say you can safely avoid it.

If other companies like Google can make apps like Chrome accessible on the Mac then I doubt it's Apple's fault that Reader, Flash, or Office are not accessible.

ePub is mostly XHTML underneath so easy to make accessible.

No one thinks that HTML automatically comes accessible with no work. My point is that if you follow W3C standards-based, semantic coding practices then the accessibility is included and universal design is automatic. You can follow the accessibility standards for creating PDF, Flash, & Office docs but they still will never be universally accessible on all devices that support accessibility.

Accessibility does not come for free and is not automatic but no matter how much work you put into non-HTML based technologies they'll never be accessible on all the platforms which support accessibility.

The other pro with using HTML is that you don't need to purchase expensive software to make it accessible and there's plenty of free training on the web to teach you how to do it.

Paul J. Adam
Accessibility Evangelist
Deque Systems
<EMAIL REMOVED>
www.PaulJAdam.com
@pauljadam on Twitter

On Apr 20, 2012, at 12:19 PM, John Foliot wrote:

> Paul J. Adam wrote:
>> Everyone want's automatic accessibility, end users and developers.
>
> ...and as blues great Albert Collins wrote, "...everybody wants to go to
> heaven, nobody wants to die."
>
>
>> HTML
>> & HTML5 with JavaScript & CSS are the only web technologies that provide
>> universal design and have the ability to automatically be accessible as
>> long as they are coded with W3C standards.
>
> You see, this is exactly the type of problem I am talking about. I can take
> HTML/HTML5 + JavaScript + CSS and create a fully conformant yet totally
> inaccessible piece of garbage with little effort, and we've been able to do
> so for years now. This is one of the reasons why WCAG dropped the
> requirement for code validation, because we now know that validation alone
> does not equal accessible.
>
>
>> Of course they are often not
>> coded correctly so the accessibility is not quite automatic but HTML,
>> JS, & CSS fit the definition of universal design since they work on all
>> devices from feature phones to ebook readers to smart phones and beyond.
>
> It's not the devices, but rather the user-agent combinations
> (browsers/software) and the content created for those combinations of
> hardware and software tools that is key. Every piece of the chain is
> critical, and to somehow suggest that using some magical tokens (HTML5,
> JavaScript and CSS) will "automatically" give you Universal or Automatic
> Access is simply false, and serves to further illustrate my overarching
> concern.
>
> When used correctly, Daisy and ePub (both non W3C technologies) can produce
> accessible content for many if not most users, including sighted and
> mobility impaired users. Content creators need to *THINK* about what they
> are trying to achieve, rather than look at every problem as a nail, because
> they have HTML/JS/CSS hammers...
>
>
>> It's web technologies that do not work accessibly on all platforms and
>> devices which support accessibility that are preventing automatic
>> accessibility. E.g. Flash, PDF, MS Office Docs being the biggest
>> barriers to automatic accessibility.
>
> Yes, yes, big bad Adobe and Microsoft (who can't seem to get accessibility
> right on the Mac platform - ever consider maybe it's not *their* fault?).
>
> I want to remind everyone that any tool, when misused, can cause pain or
> harm. Flash itself is not inaccessible, it is inaccessible content created
> by under-educated developers that introduces inaccessibility. Yet, when it
> comes to the "most accessible" option for providing videos on the web today,
> it's not HTML5 that comes to the rescue, but rather Flash-based video
> players, which can and do support closed captions, descriptive audio and
> other accessibility accommodations. The current crop of HTML5 browsers that
> are supporting the HTML5 <video> tag cannot even provide native support for
> captions today, and descriptive audio is far down the line to come. (And
> before anyone wants to chime in about lack of Flash support on iOS, go
> complain to Apple, not to me, as it was Apple who chose not to support a
> specific type of technology, thus impacting all of their users negatively.
> So much for "Universality" huh?)
>
> PDF itself isn't inaccessible, once again it is poorly created content that
> is the root of problems. A well constructed PDF form (for example) can be
> quite accessible to both sighted and non-sighted users, and due to some
> formatting constructs that you can employ within PDF there may be instances
> when using a PDF form is in fact the best choice for the task at hand.
>
> What's the expression? "Guns don't kill people, People kill people..."
>
>
>>
>> I'm sure people will disagree with my suggestions to avoid non-HTML web
>> technologies but until they work on all accessible desktop platforms
>> like Windows, OS X, and Linux and also work on the accessible smartphone
>> platforms like iOS and (with many limitations) Android I will continue
>> to suggest avoiding them if you want to achieve universal design &
>> accessibility.
>
> I disagree with your simplistic assertions that using a specific set of
> technologies will "automatically" get you to accessible - it simply won't.
>
> JF
>
>
> > >