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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Fri, Nov 03 2006 11:00AM
Subject: Re: {WebAim] Is there a better solution for webaccessibilitystatements?
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Sherrie wrote on 3 November 2006 11:44:
> Accessibility statements have always bothered me, but it's only till
> now that I have gotten around to writing something about it.
>
> It's available on my blog -
> http://tinyurl.com/uuhr8
>
http://www.rosiesherry.com/blog/show/Showing+web+accessibility+statements+th
e+door
>
> Feedback welcomed and appreciated!

I must confess that I don't quite understand where the negative reaction
against accessibility statements is coming from. I have noticed that it has
been discussed in other forums, and so I realize that Sherrie is not alone
in feeling that they are not very useful. However, to extend arguments
about the lack of usefulness of such pages into an campaign against them
(perhaps intended to be tongue-in-cheek?) seems like an over-reaction to the
situation.

To convince me that a campaign against Accessibility Statements is a good
idea, one would have to demonstrate that they are producing a negative
effect, not just that the statements are useless. If accessibility
statements serve even a small fraction of people who face accessibility
issues browsing the web, then they serve a purpose. The absolute value of
that purpose may be disputed, but there is no negative effect from having a
page that serves only 1-2% of site visitors.

Your blog overlooks one valid reason behind having an accessibility
statement: these statements are public relations tools that form part of a
marketing/public relations strategy for an organization or website. Even if
no one with a disability or alternative user agent ever reads your
Accessibility Statement, having one on your site makes a public statement
about your organization.

An Accessibility Statement can also be seen as your participation in a kind
of public awareness campaign about web accessibility generally. The vast
majority of web surfers still do not know that there is such a thing as "web
accessibility". In that context, even a poorly crafted Accessibility
Statement serves to raise the profile of web accessibility generally, merely
by putting the words "web" and "accessibility" beside one another.

Who reads these things? Well, not all Accessibility Statements are written
for non-technical users. I for one often end up taking a look at a site's
Accessibility Statement because I'm interested in how they are portraying
themselves publicly with respect to web accessibility. To me, that is a
valid function for such statements and I learn as much about an organization
by reading an uninformative Accessibility Statement as I do by reading a
well-crafted one. I find that it is rare these days for a web
designer/developer of a standard company/government/NGO site to actually
explain how they have designed a site or why. As a fledgling designer, such
Accessibility Statements sometimes serve as the only glimpse into the site
designer's creative process that I get. Once in a blue moon, someone puts
some information into the source code or notes in the CSS file as well, but
that's about it, unless you are looking at a site designed for web designers
instead of a standard public/corporate site.

Quoting from Sherrie's blog:
> I do agree, for more complex and interactive sites, there may be a
> requirement to offer assistance, but why not have it in a help area
> which addresses multiple issues. You could call it 'help', 'using this
> site' or 'about', it would be a central area of help and still be easy
> to find and of use to everyone who is interested.

Certainly, such information could be placed on a page along with other "help
with this site" info, and identifying it as specifically related to
"accessibility" on that page serves the same function of raising awareness
amongst the general browsing population. The difference between this and an
Accessibility Statement seems to be simply length or prominence, not
function. I think you would find that based on the length of the content of
most current Accessibility Statements, the reasonable unit size for that
information is one x/html page.

I would discourage you or others from spending time and energy campaigning
against the use of Accessibility Statements. Instead, I would encourage you
to post up an explanation of how to create a useful one in those cases where
you think they are useful, and then include some extensive details about
where you think they are not useful and why. Then maybe future
Accessibility Statements might be improved.

Lastly, Accessibility Statements are not going away. The WCAG 2.0 includes
the concept of a "baseline" which is attached to a "conformance claim".
Such conformance claims are very similar to current Accessibility Statements
(or at least to the overly technical ones!). Gez's has written up a good
summary of how the baseline concept works over at Juicy Studio (though there
is no comment there about how such conformance claims would appear or how
they relate to current Accessibility Statements):
http://juicystudio.com/article/wcag-baseline-concept.php

Phil.