Making Web Accessible to All

There is a wall outside my window. I have an attractive first-floor office
in a newly constructed building on the campus of Dartmouth College. But my
view is obscured by a pillared free-standing wall that runs parallel to the
north face of the building. The wall has no structural purpose; its
function is purely aesthetic.

Contemplating this wall daily has brought me face to face with the
senseless barriers that are built in the name of design, particularly in my
own design specialty: the Web.

As a Web designer, I do not consciously build walls, but like the architect
of my office building, I do fall prey to vanity. I use design to draw
attention to myself and to my work. I want people to be delighted when they
look at my Web pages. I want them to notice my designs. But just as the
wall obstructs my view of the world outside my office window, my fancy
graphics and page designs are often simple barriers between people and the
information they seek.

Take something as basic as access to the daily news. People who cannot see
can nevertheless read the Web using text-to-speech software. And because
there are loads of news sources on the Web, blind people should
theoretically have access to much more information online than in the print
world, where they often must rely on the availability of alternative
versions, like audio recordings or Braille.

But with the Web's current hyperactive state, text-to-speech access to the
daily news is tedious at best, impossible at worst. Screen-reader software
works only when it has text to read. Graphics are not text. Flash
animations and navigation are not text. Video is not text. PDF files often
are not text. So unless the Web developer provides a "text equivalent" in
the page's underlying code, material in these formats is inaccessible to
people who rely on screen-reader software.

Consider the news site MSNBC.com. The site uses graphic text for its
navigation links, which cannot be read by screen-reader software. Nor can
the text be enlarged by people who can see only large type. Because the
site's developer did not provide alternative text in the code of the pages,
when the screen reader encounters the Sports link, it reads the link's
U.R.L., which sounds like "slash news slash s p t underline front dot asp
link." Huh?

Another potential barrier on the MSNBC site is the video, which is great
and interesting and useful, but only if you can hear and see (and are
running Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player). There are
no captions, text transcripts or descriptions to accompany the video and
audio material.

Peter Dorogoff, a spokesman for MSNBC.com, said the site's developers would
continue to assess its usefulness to the largest possible audience. "We've
addressed the broadest accessibility issues within the constraints of our
publishing tool and other necessary resources," Mr. Dorogoff said. "We
continue to monitor and evaluate accessibility across the site and have
made a concerted effort to achieve this goal on a consistent basis, sitewide."

There is no reason to single out MSNBC.com. The New York Times on the Web,
for example, presents its own barriers. Every page on the Web site has
graphics and advertising at the top and an extensive set of navigation
links along the left side. Sighted people, if they choose to, can skip the
advertisements, the last updated date, the search features and log-in
information and the more than 50 navigation links and jump straight to the
headlines.

But for people who rely on text-to-speech software, skipping over those
elements is not an option. Screen-reader software reads sequentially,
starting at the top of the page. This means that blind people must listen
to the advertisements and navigation before reaching the main content, and
they must do this on every page of the site.

Stephen P. Newman, the assistant general manager of NYTimes.com, says the
Times Web site is frequently redesigned. "For each redesign," he said, "we
gather feedback from our readers during comprehensive user testing and
focus groups. So our designs currently reflect the needs of the majority of
our users."

Accessible design does not mean doing away with navigation links, graphics
and banner advertisements. Accessible design means designing in features
that accommodate all users. For example, some sites, like CNN.com, have
added a special "skip navigation" link at the top of every page that is
invisible to sighted people but is detected by screen-reader software. When
activated, this link directs the screen reader's focus to the main content
of the page.

The "skip navigation" convention is a fairly recent one, and sites that
lack this feature were probably designed before people started talking
about accessibility. Indeed, most Web barriers result from errors of
omission and unintended consequences.

But some Web sites do seem designed with a deliberate lack of flexibility.
People wanting to play games at HarryPotter.com, for instance, had better
arrive with a current browser, the Flash plug-in, and good vision and
hearing. Otherwise, they won't make it past the intro page. Most of the
site is in the Flash format, which allows animations, sounds, fancy fonts
and other cool features that are not available using standard Web coding.
It also means the pages on this site cannot be enlarged or rendered to
speech, and they are not easily accessible from the keyboard.

The site is fun for those who are able to use it, and I doubt that its
developers are mean spirited. But they did make a choice to favor the cool
over the practical and most widely accessible. Macromedia recently released
a new version of Flash, Flash MX, which allows developers to include more
accessibility features in their Flash presentations.

Don Buckley, the senior vice president for interactive marketing at Warner
Brothers Pictures, said that the topic of access for people with
disabilities was "of great interest" and that the Web site's developers
"would certainly be looking at the technology." Maybe the developers at
Warner Brothers will revise the site to include some of these new features,
or, better yet, use plain old HTML to build a new, flexible Diagon Alley
that's accessible and fun for everyone. Now that would be cool.

It does not necessarily take more time or cost more money to design
accessible Web sites. The Web was designed to be flexible. Why not work
within the medium and build Web sites that are accessible to the largest
possible audience?

The Web is so much more than image. The Web is an access point, an
entryway, a window on the world. Let's not allow fancy walls to block the
view.

By Sarah Horton
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/technology/10NECO.html

janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit primarily perky, parky
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