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Re: Question about Accessibility plugins

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jun 7, 2019 1:12PM

Good discussion.

Just to clarify, for anyone who is a newbie to the whole thing.
There are two types of overlays:
1. Accessibility unicorn overlays - overlays that make your site
accessible automatically. These accessibility unicorn overlays do not
exist. Anyone that claims their overlay automatically fixes
accessibility is practically scamming you.
2. Custom accessibility overlays - overlays that someone will develop
specifically for your website. In order to do so you have to pay them
to assess your site, to write the overlay and to update the overlay
whenever you make any changes to the site. Though these work in
theory, they are costly and do not build the knowledge or culture
necessary for sustainable accessibility. Eventually you'll have to
cancel the overlay subscription and do all the work you should've done
in the first place.

There is a third category, server-based accessibility options
(server-based toolbars that let users customize the font, size, colors
or have the webpage read out loud).

There is nothing wrong with having those options as an enhancement
(seriously, does your grandma know how to use browser zoom?) but those
do not constitute making your site accessible. The site must first be
made accessible before you consider those tools as an enhancement.
Incidentally, most server based screen reader tools are pretty
useless, they may work on static pages with a lot of content, like
news articles, but fail utterly for any page with interactive content.

I find documents to be a little bit more vendor friendly.
We receive documents from various business units with important and
time sensitiv info that urgently need to be posted to a website.

These can be written by anyone of hundreds of employees, many of them
are non technical, using any of 10 different authoring applications.

In this scenario training and standardization is not going to take us
very far. There are too many potential authors for that.
The only way to ensure documents are accessible is to test and add
accessibility at the time of posting.

At that point you could train your content team and provide them with
ttools, like Adobe Acrobat Pro or you could work with a vendor to do
this for you.

I can't say which approach I chose for my organization, but will say
that there are reasons why a reliable vendor with a lot of expertise
in the document accessibility industry and with experience and tools
to det the job done quickly and efficiently would make sense in that
scenario.

It is not ideal, and if you have smaller teams you should always
emphasize knowledge, processes and tools over remediation, but In my
scenario I had to resort to the remediation option.



On 6/7/19, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> As a business person with an MBA, I don't know how managers can justify the
> band aid approach: it just throws good money at media (websites, documents,
> PDFs, ePUBs, A/V, whatever) that wasn't built correctly to begin with. An
> elementary break-even analysis (B/E) would show this clearly.
>
> A similar model used in our American medical culture. Don't cure the
> disease
> or prevent it: just medicate it into submission and keep milking the
> population for the long term.
>
> There's a time and place to take medicines, as well as to patch a website
> or
> document with this technology or that one. But the majority of stuff should
> be built correctly right from the start. Everything would run so much
> smoother.
>
> - - -
> Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | <EMAIL REMOVED>
> - - -
> PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
> consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
> Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
> - - -
> Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips at www.PubCom.com/blog
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Scott
> Tate
> Sent: Friday, June 7, 2019 2:15 PM
> To: Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >; WebAIM Discussion
> List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Question about Accessibility plugins
>
> I wouldn't necessarily say the fines are over stated. From our view
> (Blndspt.com) we see settlements between 20 and 50k regularly. Some folks
> tend to ratchet that up a bit depending on the target client.
>
> However, let me give you a quick example of overlays:
>
> We built a quote for a client to remediate an entire site for x dollars. 3
> years ago, they got quotes for the same thing. At the time, they decided
> the price was too high to fix their 100+ pages and decided to go the
> overlay
> route. As everyone out there does, 3 years later, they've been paying for
> the overlay annual fees, and guess how much they've spent in 3 years? You
> guessed it, MORE THAN X!
>
> As a result, they are no farther along, have literally learning nothing
> about accessibility, are in the same position they were in 3 years ago
> having spent that budget on a band aid instead of fixing the problem. From
> our view, the vast majority of folks that use overlays generally:
> 1) Spend the amount they would have spent to fix the problem within
> 24 months (or less)
> 2) Never learn what it means to build a culture of accessibility in
> your organization
> 3) Never end up fixing root issues
> 4) End up spending the same amount again anyway a few years down the
> road to finally fix the issues.
>
> Just our perspective. We work with Karl a lot, so we read all of the
> overlay articles, and we wholeheartedly agree that overlays are making the
> problem worse in the world.
>
> Cheers,
> Scott Tate
> Chief Information Officer
> http://www.blndspt.com/accessibility
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 1:04 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Question about Accessibility plugins
>
> Check out the Accessibility overlays don't work website:
> https://overlaysdontwork.com/
> karl Groves also has multiple articles on the topic and I agree with them.
> You can Google "karl groves accessibility overlays"
>
> Looking at this particular homepage I notice they exaggerate the fines
> levied under ADA lawsuits ($50000 for first, $100000 for subsequent, I've
> never heard those numbers anywhere, under the ADA you cannot award damages,
> only fees, you can under some state regulations, particularly California,
> but those are not mentioned on the site).
> Also the alt text for the accessibility statistics is inserted kind of
> inside an unrelated sentence, I would fail that under 1.3.2 WCAG content
> order, the site itself is not perfect.
> It also way overdoses on ARIA landmark regions, though I would flag it as a
> usability concern, not a fail.
>
> The big question, if this is an overlay that you purchse. Is the vendor
> willing to assume full responsibility and indemnify your website team from
> any litigation claims?
> That is real accessibility guarantee.
> Another approach would be to install the plugin then run a full automated
> and manual accessibility testing of the content with the plugin installed.
> That will ultimately give you a state of accessibility of the particular
> site using the particular plugin.
> Again, if you are paying for it, that might be part of the contract, any
> issues discovered through the process would have to be remedied by the
> plugin provider at no cost to you.
>
>
>
> On 6/6/19, Mike Barlow < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> I'm working with a company who is developing a site (using Wordpress)
>> and their developers installed the "Userway Web Accessibility Widgit
>> <https://userway.org/>" and wanted my opinion of it.
>> Now I have my own opinions of "magic bullets" that you can just "drop
>> this in and your site is accessible", and I've seen a couple of them
>> over the years and have yet to find one that I would include in any
>> site I was developing.
>> I also did some searching for feedback on the Userway widgit - one
>> from "A Bright Clear Web
>>
> <https://www.abrightclearweb.com/the-userway-web-accessibility-widget-does-i
> t-boost-accessibility/>"
>> had both good and bad comments about it, and there was even a question
>> on Quora
>> <https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-accessibility-widget-like-
>> userway-org-Do-they-help-small-sites-to-be-adhere-with-accessibility-l
>> aws>
>> about it.
>>
>> But I want to get some real expert opinions from this group before I
>> tell the customer what I think.
>>
>> So, anyone out there with any experience (both good and bad) about the
>> Userway widgit???
>>
>> TIA.
>> *Mike Barlow*
>> Development Manager
>> Web Accessibility/Section 508 SME
>>
>> Lancaster, Pa 17601
>> Office: 732.835-7557
>> Cell: 732.682.8226
>> e-mail: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
>
>
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> Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
>
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >
> > > > >


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