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Re: Estimates of Accessible Sites

for

From: Holly Marie
Date: Dec 7, 2002 5:38AM

From: "Kynn Bartlett"

| I recently got email which asked me:
|
| > Just wondering if you folks had any estimates of what percentage of
| > websites are now accessible. I know Kynn Bartlett has this info.
| > Thank you for any information

| Here are my estimates:
|
| 95%+ of Web sites have minor accessibility errors which will make them
| annoying to use for at least one identifiable user group.
|
| 75% of Web sites have moderate accessibility errors which
| will make them difficult to use for at least one identifiable
| user group.
|
| 50% of Web sites have serious accessibility errors which will make
them
| almost impossible to use for at least one identifiable user
group.
|
| 25% of Web sites have catastrophic accessibility errors which make
them
| unusable by at least one identifiable user group.
|
| Where did I get those figures from? I made them up, based on my
| knowledge of Web design and accessibility techniques. I would say
this
| is an improvement over 4 years ago, when the numbers would have been:
|
| 99%+ Minor accessibility errors;
| 90% Moderate accessibility errors;
| 75% Serious accessibility errors;
| 50% Catastrophic accessibility errors.
|
| What do you all think? What categories would you use and what
| percentages| would you set?

==
Guesses ahead.

90% of web sites or higher *might* be significantly unusable to some
groups.
[motor and cognitive?]

Elimination of Flash or media formats, by some, may make other web
sites inaccessible to special groups.
[literacy, learning disabled, visual learners, etc...]
People may wish to know that there are several avenues of input that
help any user learn, recall, or understand content or concepts -
including average users.

Cognitive issues are barely addressed in any accessibility
recommendations or often overlooked.

Conventions or ideas for some accessibility techniques make pages less
accessible.
Following recommendations could pose problems for other users.

[1] invisible skip links are Not accessible to motor challenged
individuals. And invisible skip navigation links are Especially annoying
to any user that is not using mouse devices.
[2] old guidelines or recommendations need to come out or they need to
be rewritten. Especially with more people looking at these guidelines
and trying to follow all that is recommended.
One Example: Place holder text in form boxes could cause accessibility
problems for those with motor and or other disabilities.
Having the user remove text in order to place text in a form box is an
added hurdle. Forms remain difficult and annoying to most people or most
users, and I have no idea what the answers are for this subject.
[3] even when longdesc[linking URI for detailed descriptions] is
supported and used, I feel that there will need to be a visible [D] link
or more informative link to longer discription. [for a wide range of
users]
[4] Uniform symbols for uniform events or interactions seem to be a good
idea that would cross language and cognitive barriers for visual users,
so movement to text mostly may be counterproductive for a wider range of
users. [disabled or not]

---

On a side note. I was reading a forum the other day, and there was talk
about proper alt for spacer gif images. It seems that those wishing to
market their pages for better search engine ratings are wanting to store
mis -spelled words or keywords into these alts. So here is an example of
how alts may now be exploited by those that do not really understand how
that renders a text only or browser read page without images.

One wonders if there will be a way that a search engine or directory
could exclude pages that have alt descriptions on images of extremely
small dimensions [1x1pixel spacer gifs], yet in the process may be
eliminating some alts of images that are small and necessary[math
symbols? OR other items not yet supported by all browsers?]

Your questions and estimates are a challenge Kynn, a good one, but I
would have no way of estimating these, because there are so many
different groups of users out there. I visit pages they may not be
visiting, so my guesses are off by a long shot.

With the WWW or Internet being included in more and more educational
classrooms, I think that cognitive issues may need more focus. I also
believe that a simple testing of pages without a mouse may be in order,
too.




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