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

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From: Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]
Date: May 9, 2012 1:37PM

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.
> > >