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Re: for Chrome devs: intro to accessibility course

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From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Sep 11, 2013 4:29AM

My concern is the focus on "visual impairment + screen reader". This runs the risk of severely limiting the much needed increase of awareness among web developers. Tailoring a web site only to visually impaired users using screen readers can actually decrease the accessibility for others.

From my point of view, at least one other mode of accessing content (beyond screen readers) **must** be explained (and forced upon people taking such a course).

It would already be helpful to work with another variation of visual impairment - low vision. A typical type of AT here are substantial magnification of content and text customisation (where the default layout of the web page is left behind). By using such AT different types of issues can be unearthed.

Regarding Chrome Vox: it has the huge advantage that it readily just works in a widely used browser on at least Mac and Windows. Yeah, its different from other screen readers. Yeah, strictly speaking it is not even a real screen reader, as once outside Chrome you are on your own again. But: once installed, a web developer can activate/inactivate any time with a keyboard short cut. It has visual highlighting, which takes it beyond NVDA. It is not as clumsy as VoiceOver on Mac OS X (which is a pain if you turn it on and off a couple of times). All ion all I would say Chrome Vox is just fine for use by web developers trying to find issues.

So - main complaint from my side: at least one other type of AT (than screen reader) should be included (there are various readily available options for that! - for example, I find that NoSquint for FireFox is of extreme educational value for me).


But let's not kill an initiative like this course - it's still better than nothing. Though it could probably be much more than what it seems to be today without too much additional effort...


Olaf


Am 11 Sep 2013 um 11:42 schrieb Alastair Campbell < <EMAIL REMOVED> >:

> Jennison Asuncion wrote:
>
>> This free, online course from Google's Accessibility team is targeted at
>> devs and others who work using Chrome. While the course is called
>> Introduction to Web Accessibility, the specific focus is on blind/visually
>> impaired users' accessibility. g.co/webaccessibility
>
>
> Is anyone else uncomfortable with how user-agent specific the course
> appears to be?
>
> It isn't just that it appears to reinforce the view that accessibility > visual impairment, but also that ChromeVox appears to be the primary tool
> for testing.
>
> It is especially troubling given Marco's excellent explanation of why
> ChromeVox can interpret things differently, as it doesn't use the browser's
> API:
> http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/09/07/why-accessibility-apis-matter/
>
> I'm almost inclined to tell developers and even accessibility testers *not*
> to use ChromeVox as it the least used, and it is likely to work differently
> from the ones that people do use.
>
> I'll hold criticism for the moment as the course materials are not up yet,
> but alarm bells are ringing...
>
> -Alastair
> > >