But in a conversation with him about a new text accessibility tool, he said that if he can't "pass on the cost to his customers", he is unlikely to offer it to his customers.
This shows a complete misunderstanding of what accessibility is. If his company could make more money by including a new feature, then integrating it wouldn't be "accessibility" – it would be "usability" or "good design".
Accessibility is (almost), by definition, the stuff you do to make your product usable even though the time you are spending does not pass a typical cost-benefit test.
And the point of ADA lawsuits is to make sure that the cost-benefit does line up, if legal fees and judgments are included.
Personally I very much care. But I don't get to call the shots.
Not doing basic accessibility on the web is just mental laziness, plain and simple. I have to strongly disagree the the implied point in your post that it requires investment of any significant time.
You can get 90% of the way to "good" just by picking appropriate font sizes and colors, doing halfway sane IA, and probably most important just using semantic markup. Adding text info to images, aria tags, etc are very minimal efforts if you simply have it in mind as you work.
None of those things require any extra time except that people need to care enough to read some documentation and watch a couple youtube videos which is a one-time up front investment of 1hr or so (not saying you are an expert after 1hr but you can definitely do "ok" with 1hr of research and learn as you go from there). a11y gets more complicated when you start doing heavy js with custom realtime interactions but even then you can get 70% of the way there with very little effort and it is a bit of a red herring because how many people are really working on fancy modern SPAs in their day jobs?
Totally agree. Basics like alt tags on images, wcag contrast friendly colors and semantic tags to let screen readers know this is a repeated menu, this is content, etc... take very little additional time and help so many people. Even in SPAs these items are basic.
Code that a screen reader can't decipher is pretty hard for test frameworks to figure out, too.
Its little things that take up a bunch of time. In theory we're already 80% of the way there, but the last bit is what makes the big difference.
Oh, and ARIA rule one: don't use ARIA, use the native HTML equivalent. Rule two: Only use ARIA if you can't express your intent in native HTML and make sure you know what your code is doing, don't just copy paste some ARIA example from another project or random site, lots of ARIA in the wild is wrong.
I'm a blind developer and accessibility consultant. Accessibility consulting is a good business to have these days, but I hope my work will be obsolete one day :).
Sure, there's some things that work better as an SPA, but those are extremely rare.
Example: https://www.debian.org/ is a simple website, designed for broad accessibility, but it doesn't look 'slick'. If you were looking to choose an OS, this website wouldn't make you go 'wow'.
To me, a website is a tool to get something done. I don't want a website that "wows" me. If you really want to wow me, then you are likely trying to sell me something that I probably don't want.
Accessibility is about letting people get shit done, not marketing to them.
People say they don't want shitty news either, but the news that is most popular is pretty low quality, sensationalist tripe.
Webpages to me are tools, not marketing material. If you want to use them for marketing, then great! Just don't waste my time trying to turn a tool into marketing material.
Webpages that are meant to be useful (like Debian makes, etc) should be accessible, not promotional. The webpages I use are tools to get a job done, not to browse for advertisements.
You're completely missing my point. Web pages are the way they are because they pull eyeballs. You are a single data point. You don't like slick webpages? Fine, you're an outlier. There are people out there that don't go online at all. They're also an outlier. You each find niches to cater to you, but you're not the majority case, and if you're interested in eyeballs for whatever reason, then dealing with the majority case is in your interests.
It's not just marketing either. Compare Arch's wiki (simple Mediawiki) to Debian's. Mediawiki is more complex than Debian's simple pages, yet it is far more readable. Even as 'just a tool, not marketing'[1], this heavier webpage is a better webpage.
[1] marketing isn't just selling stuff. for example, plenty of free software projects provide giveaways to conferences to raise their profile
Once the niche is conquered, this can be used to go after the less nichy segments.
See "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Christensen
That's why the ADA and various government laws came into existence - nobody was catering to the niche since it wasn't lucrative enough.
I'm also happy to get any accessibility problems in dlang.org and digitalmars.com fixed, if anyone wants to notify me of any problems.
For example: restaurants. Take a world where restaurants have to comply with ADA regulations versus a world where it's expected that someone coming up with a business plan for a restaurant that caters to the disabled. It's the difference between a world where the disabled can go to restaurants or where they can got to a restaurant.
The ADA also means that a lot of hole in the wall establishments you see in Europe simply can't exist in the states. Society is poorer for it.
You'll find that the disabled have plenty of options, it's definitely not the case that if you don't say enforce wheelchair accessibility for seating areas that there are no restaurants around to accommodate the disabled.
But you do get a lot of hole in the wall places of a type I simply haven't seen in the US, e.g. what would be a very small take-away restaurant in the US, but with a ceiling high enough to have an upstairs floor accessible through some very steep set of stairs to get to a seating area.
That's what I mean by society being poorer for it. It's not a choice between waiving a magic wand to make everything wonderful for the disabled or not. Complying with what amounts to onerous building codes can cost a lot, and often that cost is so high that the establishment isn't viable anymore.
I'd much rather live in a society where I pay a small premium (even if that premium is the loss of a few restaurants) so that if my legs give out, I can continue to participate in society; not just a small portion of it.
Accommodating disabilities today is accommodating yourself in the future.
You don't, small businesses do. Plus, there are plenty places in Europe that cater to people in wheelchairs, it's just not mandated for all.
Well, that's not the ADA.
And you're right, I can fly to Japan or Europe. People with disabilities are quite clear on the difference:
http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1673691
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/traveling-wi...
Which is one reason why, as this article puts it, "The Americans With Disabilities Act Is a Model for the World — Literally"
http://fpif.org/the-americans-with-disabilities-act-is-a-mod...
> Dad was looking forward to seeing Pompeii for the
> first time, and let’s just say it was tough. This
> is a place not designed for the disabled.
> Yes, the top of the Eiffel Tower is inaccessible to
> disabled travelers.
What do you expect us to do? Bulldoze Pompeii to make it wheelchair accessible?
[0] https://reason.com/blog/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-f...
So, the problem is getting the faculty and staff at Berkeley (and nearly everywhere else) to take the requirement seriously. Many of the people working to make content accessible are not in a position of authority over the people creating the content. In some cases it's a battle to educate the people who are in authority regarding the legal requirements and the consequences of ignoring those requirements.
As much as I wish that content didn't have to be pulled because of accessibility issues, sometimes there is no other way forward.
It is worth noting that the Berkeley case was federal law. California law does make the requirement for state Universities to comply with the ADA more explicit, but the US DoJ isn't in the habit of investigating violations of state law. The DoJ's letter to the University cites the ADA and various portions of the US Code: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...
This was not something they where required to do?The implication here is if you add requirements to free content, institutions just won't bother - the material was only released due to the low bar to do so in the first place.
> sometimes there is no other way forward
There is if you change the law, which is what I think parent was implying
The University is not removing all of their content, and they plan to continue to add new public content. It would definitely be a significant undertaking to make 20,000 audio and video files accessible. I'm sure the people responsible for the content will consider prioritizing that undertaking and possibly seek funding to get some of that content back out there.
Something else that is missing in their discussion of requiring University credentials to access the content is the fact that the same requirements apply to content they distribute to students, faculty, and staff. The difference is primarily in the likelihood they would be sued, and the fact that they would have a much easier time finding the funding to make something accessible if a student needed it.
Yes, you could change the law, which would theoretically benefit the people who could access this content, but would completely set back the few gains we've seen in web accessibility (assuming we're not also talking about everything else the ADA does).
Or you could set priorities for the content and fund the effort to make it accessible if it's really worth making it available. Fund research into improving automatic captioning/transcription, put your students on the path to better jobs, and improve the content for everyone.
What bewilders me most is the number of engineers and designers who can't empathize with how their users might interact with the unspeakably bad UX they're putting together.
By default, links are underlined. For text content, many major browsers (Firefox and mobile Safari for sure) include a "reader mode" or similar where the user can adjust their own contrast - as long as you don't break your HTML and prevent the reader mode from working. Web pages are black and while by default, so anything with lots of bright colors is something you have to do intentionally. Animations are also something you have to add intentionally.
It really seems like just by not breaking the defaults (I.e., no work at all) your web page should do a decent (not perfect) job of being accessible. But we're so obsessed with making things shiny and swooshy that we've lost sight of that.
Even that one is overstated. Sure, taking some existing video, and treating it as the only representation of the content, and then trying to transcribe it -- that's expensive.
But virtually every such video (esp. lectures) intended for conveying information is going to correspond to some text equivalent, and they can just post that in a place that's easy to find. Not only is it cheap, many users who can hear will prefer that version.
I think it's just a widespread attitude problem (for lack of a more refined diagnosis). It's not just big institutions, but discussion forums where some users will stubbornly link a video as their only citation, and won't even take the time to summarize the key point they think it's substantiating.
You bring up lectures as example - I certainly don't have transcripts of lectures I've given, and neither do most professors/lecturers/whatever that I know; a few of them have most of their talk content in their slides but that's a horrible practice that distracts from effective lecture or presentation; in general all the non-audio material is intended to be a supplement to the talk and either are not meaningful without it (e.g. illustrations) or are not representative of the talk (e.g. a textbook chapter that's mostly about the same topic, but different). The recorded audio (if it'd be recorded) would literally be the only copy of the content of that lecture in existence.
The same applies for many other genres of video content. Most videos aren't scripted, and thus no script exists; heck, even videos that are clearly well prepared, staged and filmed with multiple takes (e.g. many of "youtube creators") generally don't have a script beforehand, the textual content is improvised on the spot and doesn't exist in written form unless it gets transcribed.
Interviews and podcasts are other good examples - as you say, many users who can hear would prefer to read it, I certainly would, but the obvious reality is that the textual version of those things does not exist unless it gets made, and making it takes much more time than recording the interview or podcast in the first place.
For my own teaching, no, I don't write up a "script" beforehand, I prepare content and plan for the topics and key points that I intend to cover in this lecture (and the next one, if we go quicker than expected), but the actual content heavily depends on how the students react, what they are (mis)understanding, what are the questions, etc. I don't consider well-scripted lectures a good thing, the lecturers that I know who are more into "reading off a script" give quite weak lectures IMHO.
Preparing in-depth textual material would seem a waste of effort as students would get the same content in the lecture. I wouldn't use it for other students since I'd anyway never give the same lecture twice - research is progressing fast, so my 2016 content is dated now and this year's content will definitely have to be rewritten (and the course restructured) next year. Admittedly, that's context-dependant - my situation is uncommon, there's a lot of teaching that involves lecturing the same introductory topic for many years off of a classic textbook to multiple larger audiences, and in that context your arguments would definitely apply.
But that's actually all offtopic.
The main issue is that none of this is equivalent to the transcript. Nothing of what you propose would make the video accessible to a deaf person. A textbook chapter or the lecture materials are alternatives to the video, it helps making do without the video, but doesn't make accessible the part of video where the lecturer is writing something interesting on the blackboard and explaining something that you can't hear.
>The main issue is that none of this is equivalent to the transcript. Nothing of what you propose would make the video accessible to a deaf person. A textbook chapter or the lecture materials are alternatives to the video, it helps making do without the video, but doesn't make accessible the part of video where the lecturer is writing something interesting on the blackboard and explaining something that you can't hear.
That's overstating it. The relevant metric is, if some deaf (or video-hating like me) person wants to learn the material, do they have a useful option? The fact that you can't make that specific video useful isn't relevant. Even pointing to some text that hits the same key points is major step up, and is trivial to do, and yet most refuse to do, just like most refuse to provide the one insight that they're making me watch a three minute video to hear.
When you really dig into it, though, most of the accessibility issues for the UI of a web application are still among the things you have to know to present accessible content on a website. In either case, the important point is to know when you're pushing the boundaries so you can make an informed decision about your testing requirements. It's just another metric to consider, like browser compatibility or mobile presentation.
If your design starts with accessibility in mind, the costs can be minimal. Keep in mind that the use of small and low contrast elements is a design decision. If the decision is made to use large and high contrast elements from the start, there should be no difference in the development costs. Making it possible to scale pages for pages where things are laid out spatially is far more difficult and incurs much more testing, yet costs can be reduced if the decision is made from the outset. Even the more difficult factors, such as captioning images and videos, can be eased if planning is done ahead.
The problem with arguing that it's 'mathematics' is that there are many variables involved in the equation. If the variables use values for poor planning and design decisions, the result is going to be a much higher cost. If the variables use values for solid planning and design decisions, the difference is going to be much lower. Of course it also depends upon the media being used, so it is very difficult to use that equation to make generalizations for all cases.
The most troubling wave of ADA litigation is just beginning to crest. The ADA’s next frontier—and next target of litigation—is the most innovative segment of the domestic economy: e-commerce. The latest trend in ADA litigation is suing commercial websites that aren’t sufficiently accessible to the disabled—because, for instance, they lack assistive technologies for the blind or hearing-impaired. Even though the ADA was enacted before websites became ubiquitous, many courts have interpreted the term “public accommodation” in Title III to encompass the Internet, and will entertain suits applying to it. In 2008, Target paid $6 million to settle a class-action suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind charging that the retailer’s website was allegedly insufficiently accessible to blind customers. Target also paid nearly $4 million in costs and attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs. Why would Target pay $10 million to settle a case when the law is unsettled and its culpability far from certain? Class-action lawsuits are particularly expensive to defend, and because the potential liability is aggregated to reflect the entire class (all blind consumers, in this example), the financial exposure for a firm if it loses in court presents an unacceptable risk to most corporate defendants. https://www.city-journal.org/html/ada-litigation-monster-151...
Netflix now does the right thing and captions everything.
If that is the case, are Netflix's customers better or worse off, individually and collectively? Is society better or worse off? (I don't have a clear answer, and I'm not sure there's an objectively clear answer, but I do think that there are tradeoffs in these discussions that are sometimes hidden/ignored.)
They only have to provide it, if it originally had captions. They didn't have to caption stuff that never had captions to begin with, but they went ahead and captioned everything, pretty much, and if you look at their new self-created shows, they are typically multi-lingual(multiple voiced languages) and multi-captioned (multiple written languages).
I would say, it forced them to deal with becoming a global provider and not US/English centric like they were, which I think we can say has been good to their business overall :)
When there's not a single audio source for the main speaker, that becomes a problem, but that's the fault of the people recording it for not getting a clean audio source. However, in practice, this is rarely going to be the case for something like a product video because the studio will have recorded it correctly in isolated sound rooms.
We're automatically reverting to "a human should do it" with adding aria tags, video subtitles, and screen readers. That is the problem because developers often have many other things to worry about -- database, security, scalability, maintenance, documentation. Accessibility gets put right beside those and it's no wonder developers don't prioritize it.
Technology is not the magic bullet to fix everything. We're no where near that place.
In the mean time, I still can't use your site. And neither can people with any number of other issues (medical, environmental, simple bandwidth, etc).
Don't pawn it off on tech, people need to take responsibility for this kind of stuff.
There aren't good tools for collaboratively captioning videos ala a Google Doc. ARIA is a massively complicated spec that is much harder than <font color="red"> tags.
There are simple and easy tools for making inaccessible content (Flash was a big one). It is much, much harder to make accessible content, and it shouldn't be that way.
Making no effort just because a perfect effort would be hard comes across as a cop out. Would we accept this so easily if we were discussing testing?
It should be impossible to make inaccessible content. We could have browsers and/or compilers that just break the whole page if it isn't accessible.
I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be done, but the idea that it's effortless is simply not true.
Its complicated and its not directly related to your core work/competency. One uses a lot of frameworks/tools to build on top of what if they are accessible and you can't build the thing completely on your own? Its quite to get started to be sure which one is just some regulatory checklist and which ones actually matter. I have trying to be knowledgeable on this but compared to normal web development informations are both sparse and harder to grok. And its also much harder to test/validate than just checking if my script/css is working/looking right. I have done very little screenreader tests but it somethings they are terribly good at working through and some things break too easily. It might make perfect sense for an accessibility expert but can be very non-intuitive for a regular developer.
TFA doesn't relate any tweets about screen readers, and identifies many easier tasks as being more important than screen reader compliance.
It would be nice if web authors had a tool for that compliance that wasn't expensive and obscure like the readers themselves. (If they weren't obscure, we'd just file some PRs and be done with this.)
Do you optimize the prose on your websites for people with IQs under 75? How exhaustive is exhaustive enough?
I've spent considerable effort on making things accessible in my life, and I'm sure it can cost you your entire product when you're just starting out.
Edit: I think the limitations apply to products which are marketed to the general public. If you know your existing users are struggling with an accessibility bug, then you know what you have to do.
How hard is it to really use reasonable font sizes and contrast ratios? How hard is it to add a few more tags to your site? How hard is it to caption videos as you're making them (most time you're working from a script anyways).
If you're not starting these good practices from the beginning, yes, it will be harder to do all at once later. But if you start doing it from the beginning, it is pretty easy to do. Just like testing. Just like coding standards. Just like design patterns.
(Your comment would have been much better had you left out the rude accusations.)
Videos released without captions are OK, because "they're free!" Websites without Aria tags are OK, because "screen readers just need to get better." Low contrast fonts are OK, because "my design won't work with different font colors."
Everyone who doesn't die in their prime of life will eventually be disabled in some fashion; but so few people really seem to realize this (or care).
EDIT: Good question - do I practice what I preach? Yes, I do. I'm in an SRE position, and a few of our developers are hard of hearing, so I caption the training videos I make, without asking if they need them. No blind folks, but I make sure to use reasonable styles and page layouts to support fading eyesight. I don't set up Aria tags myself, because I don't have any users who need them at the moment.
None of my external or OS contributions are to UI related projects, so nothing of note there.