HCI2003: Accessibility Keynote shows Macromedia’s Commitment

Bob Regan is senior product manager for accessibility at Macromedia. His keynote presentation at HCI2003 was delightful in its simplicity, clarity and confidence. With 8 slides, he talked engagingly for an hour about the challenges of introducing accessibility to a product line that has become associated in the informed public’s mind with inaccessibility and lack of usability. But the world has moved on, and Flash with it, and it is a testimony to Macromedia’s commitment to addressing these shortfalls that someone of Regan’s vision and enthusiasm is working with designers, developers and engineers to communicate accessibility strategies and develop new ones.

Regan explained that the economic argument to produce accessible products was not ‘how many are there who would benefit in the market to date?’, pointing out that there might be zero blind customers. Instead, the question is ‘what is the size of the market where it matters?’ If legislation exists, such as our DDA, or there is a procurement policy, such as the US Government’s, that stipulates a degree of compliance, then accessibility is essential to sell products under these jurisdictions. He advocated collaborating with the advocacy groups driving recognition and to do so early, rather than as a rubber stamp, for connections, support, advice, and the pressure to push standards through.

At Macromedia, accessibility problems are treated like other bug reports and given to the engineers to be fixed. But although processes have been streamlined within the company, there are still aspects of the field that provoke sleepless nights. Regan pointed at two contextual elements: national standards that break away from the W3C guidelines, such as those planned by the Japanese at present; and also changes to assistive technologies that the products must function with. He also drew attention to inherent contradictions in the required solutions for different user groups. While for blind users, plain text is the most accessible, it is the least accessible form of content for people with a learning disability. Similarly, while those with a cognitive impairment prefer a wide, not deep, user interface; those with a visual impairment find the opposite easiest to access.

He made the point that accessibility is not a subset of usability – it is a measurable and validate-able design factor, whereas usability is ‘a more elegant art’ which takes a product on from what works, to what works well. ‘I know next to nothing about qualitative measures for these individuals,’ he said, reflecting a general gap.

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