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Thread: "Overlay" accessibility products.
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Fix, Lawrence
Date: Tue, Mar 26 2019 8:58AM
Subject: "Overlay" accessibility products.
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I'm interested in opinions about accessibility products that "overlay" a web site providing an accessible view of the site, without changing the code of the site. Do they truly make your site compliant? I believe that automated testing tools will still detect errors when crawling the code. Is that OK as long as the user can use the site?
Thanks!
Larry Fix
AIG
Web Site Accessibility
L&R Experience Design
80 Pine St, New York, NY 10005
Tel +1 917 703 3916
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = | www.aig.com
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Tue, Mar 26 2019 9:12AM
Subject: Re: "Overlay" accessibility products.
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There is a website dedicated to this questions (the site is called
"Overlays don't work")
https://overlaysdontwork.com/
I'm a bit more pragmatic personally but I agree wit the basic premise of this.
Firstly, implementing an overlay is expensive, you have to have a
vendor do a full accessibility assessment and write the solution.
Secondly overlays are brittle, if you change anything in the
underlying code you must adjust the overlay. Most websites are living
things that get updated sometimes even daily, that could be a heck of
a lot of overlay updates, each of which is going to be costly.
Thirdly, overlays can present a security vulnerability (depending on
how the JavaScript is linked).
Forthly, an overlay that, e.g. reads the website out loud or enables
the user to adjust contrast does not make the site accessible. I think
these could be useful for certain groups of users in certain
circumstances, so you can offer them as extras but they do not make
the site accessible, only conformant and valid code does.
Finaly, I"ve seen some overlays that make the site worse. There are
some vendors out there who don't have a clue what they're doing (there
are overlays from trusted vendors as well), f iif you are to purchase
an overlay be careful who is offering I.
For a static site and as a short-term solution I can see an overlay as
a possibility. For any other type of site it tends to be a pricy and
ineffective.
Accessibility testing tools that validate the DoM (most tools do)
would detect overlay fixes (the fixes are processed by the browsers
and made available in the DOM).
On 3/26/19, Fix, Lawrence < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I'm interested in opinions about accessibility products that "overlay" a web
> site providing an accessible view of the site, without changing the code of
> the site. Do they truly make your site compliant? I believe that automated
> testing tools will still detect errors when crawling the code. Is that OK
> as long as the user can use the site?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Larry Fix
> AIG
> Web Site Accessibility
> L&R Experience Design
> 80 Pine St, New York, NY 10005
> Tel +1 917 703 3916
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = | www.aig.com
>
> > > > >
--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Tue, Mar 26 2019 9:12AM
Subject: Re: "Overlay" accessibility products.
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Hi Larry, products that require a user to enable accessibility after the fact generally have a difficult time addressing the spectrum of needs that users with disabilities have. Many users benefit from programmatic changes that benefit text-to-speech while also benefiting from visual changes and design changes. So it's best to design a site to be inclusive to all users from the start so the user can choose which combination of accessibility features that work best for them with their technology. Sites with alternative options tend to be seen as not always equivalent and require an extra step by the user. These widgets appear to solve issues with one click -- but in fact some of the widgets require extensive work by the companies that sell them to make the site more accessible. It's best to put money into designing the site to be inclusive rather than an after-the-fact solution that will need to be updated when the site is updated and may not be robust.
Best Regards,
Jonathan
Jonathan Avila, CPWA
Chief Accessibility Officer
Level Access
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703.637.8957 office
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From: Lucy Greco
Date: Tue, Mar 26 2019 11:11AM
Subject: Re: "Overlay" accessibility products.
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these products generally have limited use they tend to work on one
disability group and actually cause problems for other disability groups
for example ones that focus on people with reading disabilities may draw
focus to their own toolbar causing screen reader users to have a great deal
of difficulty navigating the page in general you may feel it is a good
solution in a short term but they actually do cause a lot more problems
than you can think of I wouldn't use these ever if you could had all help
it it tends to also give developers a sense of well this tools doing the
work for me so I don't have to and they get out of using best practices
overall
On Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 9:13 AM Jonathan Avila < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> Hi Larry, products that require a user to enable accessibility after the
> fact generally have a difficult time addressing the spectrum of needs that
> users with disabilities have. Many users benefit from programmatic
> changes that benefit text-to-speech while also benefiting from visual
> changes and design changes. So it's best to design a site to be inclusive
> to all users from the start so the user can choose which combination of
> accessibility features that work best for them with their technology.
> Sites with alternative options tend to be seen as not always equivalent and
> require an extra step by the user. These widgets appear to solve issues
> with one click -- but in fact some of the widgets require extensive work by
> the companies that sell them to make the site more accessible. It's best
> to put money into designing the site to be inclusive rather than an
> after-the-fact solution that will need to be updated when the site is
> updated and may not be robust.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila, CPWA
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> Level Access
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> 703.637.8957 office
> Visit us online:
> Website | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Blog
>
>
>
> The information contained in this transmission may be attorney privileged
> and/or confidential information intended for the use of the individual or
> entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended
> recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination,
> distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.
>
>
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Tue, Mar 26 2019 12:33PM
Subject: Re: "Overlay" accessibility products.
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On 26/03/2019 14:58, Fix, Lawrence wrote:
> I'm interested in opinions about accessibility products that "overlay" a web site providing an accessible view of the site, without changing the code of the site. Do they truly make your site compliant?
In a word: no.
If your site has accessibility issues (e.g. structural stuff like
headings not marked up as headings, incorrect reading/focus order, lack
of accessible name/role/value, etc) these overlays will do NOTHING to
compoensate for that.
They're cute, nice to have things...but mostly pointless. (Yes, they can
provide some additional features for users who don't have/know they need
specific assistive technologies, or are viewing a site on a public
machine like in an internet cafe or library or similar...but that's
really more a marginal concern if you have a fundamentally
broken/inaccessible site to begin with)
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
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