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Re: Web accessibility and usability

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From: michael.brockington
Date: Oct 11, 2004 8:10AM


> From: jongund [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>
> I do not think you can make a general statement that
> accessibility means poorer usability.
>

Hold on a minute - that is nothing like what I said! Almost the reverse, in
fact. What I said was that 'occasionaly' there was a conflict.
In other words, I don't think that you can say that accessibility means
_better_ usability.
Sometimes we have to drop the bells and whistles off a site to remain
accessible. Given enough time, most things can be worked around, but none of
us ever have enough time, so some things remain un-implemented. An obvious
parallel is the WCAG advice regarding ALT/TITLE atributes - having them alone
is not enough - they must be meaningful. I have seen many sites recently
sporting various accessibility logos, where it is impossible to find your way
around: if the Author had spent less time running pages through Bobby et al
the site might have had useful navigation.
On a technical note, the levels of interactivity that DHTML brought us is
anathema to accessibility. For example my understanding is that date-pickers
are a no-no for accessibility, so we have to take a step backward in
useability, since they might confuse some users.

Mike


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