Feature: Attitudes to Web Accessibility

During the summer of 2003, we ran an online questionnaire, conducted interviews and carried out a literature review on Web accessibility. One hundred and seventeen respondents participated and they included designers, information officers and accessibility advocates. This initial set of results are intended to encourage debate on the subject.

1. Overcoming obstacles
The obstacles faced by developers are less often discussed than their responsibilities. The survey found that 86% of respondents agreed that 'Developers do not have adequate training' in Web accessibility. Indeed, a 'lack of expertise' was given as 'the main barrier to developing accessible Web sites'. On a more positive note, 48% disagreed that 'most development lifecycles are too short to incorporate accessibility'. That it 'takes too long' was the lowest ranking barrier to accessibility. The EC's Diffuse project (www.diffuse.org) presents a balanced perspective on the difficulties faced by accessibility advocates. It states that 'many of the problems and possible solutions (to accessibility) are technically difficult'. The recent debates about Cascading Style Sheets and Tables are testimony to the obstacles faced by developers; neither solution seeming to be optimal. Alan Herrell, on alistapart, describes the situation as 'browser hell' where 'there are three major visual browsers' none of which allows 'you to use the entire range of accessibility tags'. As Diffuse suggests, this means that a technique that avoids a problem in one browser may cause other, perhaps more serious problems, on other browsers.

2. Raising awareness
The survey suggests a lack of awareness of accessibility among managers. This includes unawareness of the importance of the issue and the barriers to improving accessibility. This might suggest that improving accessibility requires facilitating organisational capability as well as high profile campaigning. Thus 'lack of awareness' and 'lack of policies/management' shared second place as perceived barriers to Web accessibility. Indeed, 64% of respondents agreed that 'management is unaware of the importance of Web accessibility'. Of those who expressed a preference, a majority, 31%, felt that 'the legal case for accessibility has been well publicised.' 61% disagreed that 'the case for accessibility would be helped by legal action'. The vast majority of respondents (94%) thought that 'clients ask for their sites to be accessible'. Whether these clients represent the range of organisations with a Web presence is unclear. Cheryl D. Wise, of Wiserways in Houston observed that 'Some clients come to us because they know that they need to comply with Section 508 Accessibility requirements for government contracts. Others have never even thought about accessibility as a web site issue'.

3. Taking responsibility
The survey suggests that the burden of responsibility to provide solutions falls upon developers to provide solutions. However, 67% of respondents agreed that 'some WAI guidelines are difficult to implement' and indeed the difficulty of WAI guidelines was placed third in barriers to developing accessible web sites.

Some argue that other stakeholders including supply and support organisations could take on greater responsibility for improving Web accessibility. Indeed, evaluation tool providers have been criticised in this respect. An Accessibility Testing Officer posted an apocryphal tale... 'Previously, when we planned for the cost of accessibility testing software, we planned to purchase one copy of Bobby. Watchfire's new policy means that we would instead have to buy up to ten copies of Bobby, increasing the cost to us from $299 to $2,999 — hardly a trivial increase'. Cheryl D. Wise reports that: 'Tools are lacking or horribly expensive for AAA compliance'. As worrying is Diffuse's report of the phenomenon that many accessibility-promoting pages aren't themselves accessible. Even the notion of standards is criticised by some. 'What good are standards when browsers change so fast by adding new features every month? Or, the needs or demands of the users change with the latest killer app?'

4. Generating motivation
A major motivation for improving accessibility is the legal case and the 'lack of legal action' ranked as the fourth barrier to developing accessible web sites. Interestingly, 51% agreed that 'Web accessibility provides a return on investment' and 80% disagreed that 'accessibility inhibits innovation'. High-level concerns like social responsibility and liability may not be enough to motivate those at the coalface. Nicky Danino, on SitePoint, sums up many developers concerns, asking Kynn Bartlett: 'How would you undertake the enormous task of convincing designers that accessibility IS important, and there is a place for both extraordinary design and a high level of accessibility?' This is not just an issue of keeping designers on board or of avoiding stigmatising users; all members of development teams need to be committed to accessibility - most importantly, management.

Nancy Perlman of Synchordia in London, reported that 'in order for the development team to be actively engaged, the will has to come from above, from the board room; otherwise, no matter how enthusiastic and dedicated the development teams, their efforts will be stifled by account handlers, marketing and etc'.

5. Improving technology
40% of respondents felt that it is practical 'to design for all assistive technology devices'. However, a majority (53%) disagreed that ‘Web accessibility is purely a technical issue'. Some commentators see poor accessibility in terms of bad authoring packages, browsers, evaluators and assistive technology rather than nonchalant developers. To some these technologies are hindrances. Cynthia D. Waddell's comments still resonate years after they were expressed: 'In fact, many current web-authoring tools on the market make it extremely difficult to even design an accessible web page'.

The scarcity of tools also contributes to the lack of education among programmers and web authors on why and how to code an accessible web page. More recently, Diffuse stated that 'authoring tools... often produce pages that have accessibility problems, especially if they are based on "WYSIWYG" ... techniques, since such an approach makes it much more difficult to separate content and structure from presentation'. For some, the dearth of decent technology is frustrating. A WCAG discussion included the contribution that: 'I should say if those guys (at) Opera, WebEyes and Webformator merged their products and added MSAA to it the world would have a perfect browser'. In the context of CSS integration, the Decloak website argues that 'It's millions of times cheaper and faster to have a single programmer update a popular screen reader or non-visual browser to look for that ID attribute... instead of having millions of web designers ... redesign'.

6. Facing contradiction
49% of respondents agreed that 'it is impossible to cater for all users' needs'. The trade-offs in web accessibility are reflected in a majority (56%) agreeing 'there is a conflict between usability and accessibility'. Jenny Craven sums up a common attitude: 'accessibility does not equal usability'. Much of the literature questions the text-only advocates and points to the opportunities for enriching user experiences for everyone. Diffuse notes that 'there are situations where different problems may impose conflicting requirements on accessibility'. They go on to say that 'up to now, there has been little open discussion about this' and it would seem that work in raising awareness and checking sites is evolving toward solving the practical problems.

These include fundamental issues like what is an accessible site? Joe Clark, author of "Building Accessible Websites" contends that 'it is impossible to declare a certain Web page "accessible" or "inaccessible", for the simple reason that there are too many provisos involved. Accessible to which groups? Under what conditions? Using which adaptive technology, if any?'.

7. Improving understanding
66% of respondents disagreed that 'text-only sites are the most accessible', while and 72% disagreed that 'there is a conflict between graphic presentation and accessibility'. However, there is still some way to go, when PC World can discuss the rejection of an ADA lawsuit in November last year with a very narrow understanding of the issue.

'Southwest (Airlines) is "exploring some possibilities" to make "our Web site more user-friendly" for the blind or visually impaired. "We do everything we can, obviously, to make this Web site user-friendly. That's always been our focus for every customer," said Turneabe-Connelly. Problems with Web site accessibility aren't uncommon, and accessibility is strictly a matter of whether a Web site designer "programmed it for people who are blind," said Access Now President Edward Resnick.'

Such confusion is noted by accessibility advocates. Anthony Quinn (no, not the actor) notes: 'Many organizations genuinely believe that if their site passes the Bobby test and displays the Bobby icon, it is "accessible".' At a deeper level, some argue that the focus on Web site accessibility detracts from making technology work for the greater good. James Woudhuysen comments: 'I learn that Tim Berners-Lee and the Royal National Institute for the Blind - sponsored by Standard Life - award logos for accessibility to the right kind of Web sites. I have no quarrel with institutions as august as these. But I wonder whether certificates for corporate social responsibility on the Web distract society from the larger tasks of speech recognition and synthesis.'

8. Improving communication
50% of respondents reckon that 'clients specify WAI guideline compliance'. Accessibility champions and developers often have a less positive experience of the WAI. Joe Clark says: 'Virtually all online accessibility resources are glorified rehashes of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines, which are opaque, very poorly organized, daunting, and in many cases unrealistic.'

Commenting on Web accessibility resources, Cheryl D. Wise considers that they are uneven. 'Some are reasonably good but too many have usability issues in finding the information you are looking for. The W3C site is a prime example of a visitor unfriendly site. Finding useful information that can be understood by the average visitor is very difficult.' Diffuse sums up the situation similarly: 'The WAI recommendations are often regarded as difficult to understand and fulfil. Although they are relatively brief, they impose a large number of requirements, and an average author probably has great difficulties in understanding both the "why" and the "how" of the principles. The guidelines are relatively abstract, and they refer to three WCAG techniques documents. There is also a checklist. The organization of the documentation uses hypertext (links between different parts) quite a lot, which is often convenient in reference use but confusing to the uninitiated.'

John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine
User-Lab
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design

Thanks to Justin Sawkins and Yu Zhang at User-Lab, Cheryl D. Wise at Wiserways and Nancy Perlman at Synchordia for their assistance in this research.

Thanks to The SitePoint Community Forum, Jolt Public Forums, Web Developer Community Forums Mailer, UK-Design, UK-Usability and London Usability Group discussion lists for publicising the survey.

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