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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 pd: 55/41/37 cd: 55/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask] smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0 a new voice website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn