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The Use of Web Accessibility Icons (was: Alt Tags length ...)

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From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Aug 6, 2003 3:46PM



On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 11:34 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
>> I don't think the W3C's "Level Triple-A conformance
>> icon, W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" alt text is
>> obscure or
>> mysterious
>
> It's not cryptic to you or me, but it's surely cryptic to more than 99%
> of world population. Besides, I primarily referred to the icon itself,
> which is pure abbrev stuff. And the alt text, though more readable, is
> hardly much more understandable.

Agreed. It doesn't make much sense. To even get to the point where you
can understand what it means, you need to know an awful lot about the
WCAG
document and Web accessibility. Let's put it this way -- I believe that
I _most_ understand what a Triple-A button means, but even I couldn't
tell
you right off the bat what the implications are, in real world terms. I
would have to resort to reference to a document which "real world"
people
have likely never read. And I am no beginner here -- I have been
teaching
Web accessibility classes based on WCAG 1.0 for five years.

If you say "oh, that means fully accessible" then you're wrong, for
example. If you say "oh, that means it met all the checkpoints," then
you
STILL might be wrong, as well as stating something which has no real
world,
plain language equivalent.

At best, I view WCAG 1.0 Triple-AAA buttons as saying, "I care about
accessibility, but I don't really know enough about what Triple-A means
to realize that my site is probably NOT technically at AAA levels."

Yes, I'm serious -- that's what I think if I go look at _your_ (generic)
page and I see that. I think you're a well-meaning person but you are
most likely incorrect in your assertion. (I'd love to be proven wrong.
Send me your Triple-A site URLs to kynn@maccessibility, but BE WARNED,
I *will* make a Web post out of them, and if you don't measure up, it
*will* be pointed out!)

>> I believe the visual icon (image) is sufficiently well known by the
>> Web Content Accessibility community at large
>
> Maybe, but the icon is used, following W3C suggestions, on all kinds of
> pages that are directed to people outside this community, which forms a
> very small part of Web users.

Agreed. Such buttons are generally not worth it. In fact, they
distract
from the main purpose of the page in 99.44% of the circumstances, which
means they are actually a DETRIMENT to accessibility. (Distraction is
an accessibility problem. Images are more distracting than text, and
animated images are more distracting than static images.)

>> -- or the prompting link will titillate curiosity
>
> Which means total waste of time to most users. Unless the user happens
> to
> belong to the relatively small minority that authors Web pages, the
> information is useless (in addition to being hard to understand).

Agreed again. There's no point in having these. Most of the users are
NOT going to be able to understand what they mean; at best they will
get a
vague notion that "this is accessible to everyone!" when it may really
not
be.

>> -- and is a useful propaganda tool for engendering
>> Accessibility awareness.
>
> No, I don't think that features that _reduce_ the actual accessibility
> of
> a page (by including obscure content that is useless to most users) is
> good propaganda for accessibility.

Indeed. Consider, for example, the fact that because the graphics are
noticeable (and distracting), it will be more likely to stick in
someone's
head when they visit a site -- there are no corresponding graphics for
_lack_ of accessibility. The use of such logos could easily lead a
typical Web user to conclude that the Web, in general, is far more
accessible than it really is -- "after all, I've seen all the buttons,"
someone might say, "which say the sites are accessible" [sic; a WCAG
button says nothing of the sort] and therefore conclude that there are
no accessibility problems on the Web.

This doesn't even get into the MISUSE of such graphics on pages which
do not actually comply with the stated WCAG compliance level (such as,
I assert, nearly all pages which claim Triple-A compliance).

WCAG compliance icons (and Bobby stickers, Cynthia Says buttons, etc.)
are not a great boon to accessibility. The only reason they're around
at all is because Web developers -- thinking from a developer-centric
point of view and not a user-centric one -- "like them." They're "a
reward," a "badge of honor." Those are poor reasons which lead to
poor UI design.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog http://blog.kynn.com/iae
Shock & Awe Blog http://blog.kynn.com/shock


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