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Do the Blind Deserve More Effort on the Web?
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Apr 17, 2008 02:47 PM
from the some-effort-would-be-a-good-start dept.
from the some-effort-would-be-a-good-start dept.
dratcw writes "An article was posted this week to ComputerWorld, detailing the frustrations faced by blind people struggling to use the Web. The piece shows how little progress has been made and the inadequacy of solutions such as Microsoft's Narrator screen reader. While the article generated many positive comments, one reader said the disabled should 'get a grip' and maintained they 'have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used.' Should Web sites and software makers do more, or does the reality of today's economics dictate that the blind/disabled will continue to struggle and learn to live with it?"
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Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Insightful)
- A link to download a file should just go to the file, not some clever javascript crap that tells you to please wait while you're redirected, your download should start in a few moments etc.
- Quit breaking stuff up into dozens of tiny bite sized pages. My scrollbar works just fine thank you very much, and it lets me scan all of the content in an instant instead of having to click through it all. Yes, I know that some people do this to goose their ad revenue, but you see it other places too.
- Don't use clever little graphics and pop-ups for every link, text works much better.
- I don't need links to "print this page" or "email it to a friend".
- You don't need to know what region of the world I'm in before I can download a damned printer driver.
- Don't use ridiculous URLs that query stuff from a CGI with a zillion arguments just to serve up a static page.
I could go on all day... fixing any of those design problems would automatically improve accessibility, not just for blind users but for mobile devices as well.
Thankfully we've mostly gotten rid of the horrible "splash pages", flash animations, and musical home pages. I'm sure in due time people will get their head around some of the other basic issues I've mentioned, but unfortunately people keep coming up with dumb new ideas much faster than that.
Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
Are you kidding? Those at least can be enjoyed by blind and seeing people alike!
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking as a guy that's 70% deaf:
F'r the love o' Pete, NO!
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
I want to share one of those I found a while ago:
Jones Partners: Architecture [jonespartners.com]
WARNING!! MAY CAUSE SEISURES, HEADACHES, NAUSEA, BLEEDING AND/OR EXPLODING EYES
Disclaimer: Following the link is voluntary. I am not morally, financially, or in any other way responsible for the wellbeing of those following the link in this post. You have been warned. Good luck.
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I finally found a use for psychoactive drugs. OMG. What were they thinking when they made that site? And more importantly, why is it still up? Ack!
InnerWeb
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the usability issues, they are indeed a "shitty web design" problem.
Program for events and NOT for triggers and your interface can be adaptive.
Most web (2.0 or not) stuff is coded like it was thought up by a twelve-year old and QAed by a thirteen year old.
Kids too ignorant to ever be let loose near firearms.
But instead there put in
Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:4, Funny)
There... I fixed it for ya...
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Ding! See what Janus [janusfunds.com] recently did to their front page. Because it uses Flash, not only can't the blind get to their accounts, but they have now forced people to use an insecure interface to access their account. Brilliant!
The same applies for those links you see. Click on 'Institutional Cash'. See what happens?
This is why, Flash must die! [slashdot.org]
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...pages entirely flash based... (Score:5, Funny)
Flash! Aaa-aah!
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Re:...pages entirely flash based... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:4, Interesting)
- People use different versions of Flash.
- People have different resolutions. Normal font can be very tiny on some screens.
- Some people don't have Flash at all.
So there goes your control.
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Informative)
You've never seen MySpace have you?
Most of the topics you've covered are that way because someone decided it was a better way to get another opportunity to serve you a targeted advertisement. The download links are that way to prevent other people from stealing your content, denying you ad revenue and leeching your bandwidth... It all comes back to money and some content providers heavily rely on ad revenue to pay their monthly hosting and bandwidth costs.
Others are just greedy.
When bandwidth becomes free, maybe you'll see the reverse to these trends. Maybe. Probably not.
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Sometimes it has no excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
1. government / local government pages. Even skipping past the issue that they should set an example by obeying the rules they voted into law... Exactly how do those depend ad revenue?
2. I go to some manufacturer's web page, to buy something or get some drivers like the GP, and... some are really a bad case of flash overdose, and some are full of ads too. Bonus points when occasionally it's not even to their own products. But anyway, WTF? I'm there either to buy something they make, or because I _have_ bought something they make. Why should I be bombarded with ads there? No, seriously.
And even skipping the banner ads, I've seen a couple where I had to go through loops and plough through pages after pages of marketing gibberish, just to get to the page with the prices. In at least one case I gave up because I just couldn't find the price list.
And a some have horrible colours, fonts and layouts too, and make wrong use of graphics at that, just because aparently someone thought it's all the rage to look like the funky marketing brochure. Thankfully that became a lot more rare over the years, but sadly it's still not dead, and it keeps coming back like a vampire.
This isn't just a case of "bad design" as in page layout and technologies used. It's outright stupid. It's not even just a case of letting the marketing drones in charge, it's letting the _stupid_ marketing drones in charge. If you want to sell me something, don't annoy me first and don't make it hard to get to (A) the specs, and (B) the prices and/or online shop pages. No, I'm not interested in how many decades of buzzwords you leverage, nor in your synergies, nor in how award-winning/industry-standard/customer-centric/buzzword-driven you are. I'm not there to play Bullshit Bingo, so just let me know (A) exactly what you sell, and (B) for what price.
At any rate, the couple of cents they might get in ads there, sorry, just aren't worth losing a potential sale over, no matter how I want to look at it. And it feels _petty_ that when I'm looking to buy something that costs hundreds of bucks, someone tries to shaft a few cents out of me with their maze of ads. It's like meeting their sales guy and seeing him trying to steal my office pens. It just doesn't make a good impression, ya know?
3. (Or 2B.) Some game publishers' pages. E.g., dunno, I want to know what their latest game is all about. Or I bought it and need a patch. Or whatever, really. And I'm forced to sit and twiddle thumbs while their flash loads, then have to read the information in a tiny window, with a tiny font, split into a gazillion tiny pages, and with a shitty colour scheme to boot.
I mean, wtf? Either I'm looking to buy their game, or I already blew some money on their game. And especially in the latter case, let's make one thing clear: the whole market for unfinished buggy games exist only because of the promise that they'll make up by offering a free patch later. I'm already annoyed by that deal, don't push it. Making me essentially pay for the patch by watching ads, or worse yet by putting it on some shitty site that makes me wait an hour for the download unless I pay to subscribe, is just adding insult to injury.
And let's make another thing clear: I _paid_ for that game. Don't make me go through a mandatory form that wants to know even my exact street number, telephone number, birth date, and size of condoms I use. I'm looking at you, EA. I already paid, ok? I'm not your data-mining guinea pig too.
Admittedly, probably the blind don't play first person shooters or console RPGs much, but I find it just as annoying as a guy who doesn't even need glasses yet.
4. But perhaps the best way to say it is that I have been before one of the guys who programmed those shitty sites, or helped fix their performance problems. I still have nightmares about some colour schemes like orange on orange-ish yellow, or cyan on bright blue, that I had to implement during the dotcom years. Or the clas
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying "This site is designed for Internet Explorer only" is like putting up a sign outside the Wal-Mart parking lot saying "This lot is designed for GM vehicles only". You'll still get plenty of visitors, but is there some good reason for keeping people (and their money) out of your business?
My company is about to move a PC-based system to the Web, and I'm going to be poking around as much as possible to get rid of IE-specific pitfalls. I may not have much luck, though... it's a vertical market app for an environment where "Nobody got fired for buying IBM^WMicrosoft" is very much in effect.
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You are in Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I notice the standards-compliant code I'm creating is accessible pretty much by default. If I pay proper attention to design (minimalist, easy to navigate) and not add features just because I think they look swell, the final design will be far more accessible than my present one.
It will be much leaner and easier to update as well. I am adding a content management system. Updates will be easier, and I will test the results using common screen readers.
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:4, Funny)
Rather than having html that uses an image link, use an href and swap the link out for an image using CSS. It's easy to do, and makes navigation MUCH simpler to implement and use.
If you open your page in Lynx (or disable CSS) and cannot decipher it, then it will not work for the blind. Frankly, it also makes me hate the designer. I will refrain from making comments about what Slashdot looks like with CSS turned off
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Funny)
This was when the boss angrily declared, "I am not an idiot!" when I tried to point out the problem to him.
The last thing I ever did for that company was finally give them something they really wanted: a frameset that constrained the usable real-estate on a page to be no more than 640x480. They then converted their own website to use that frameset and quickly went out of business.
The parent company though still publishes a free, local, ad-supported business magazine. Their website even as an "Accessibility Statement" page.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
- I don't need links to "print this page" or "email it to a friend".
I strongly disagree! Very frequently the "print this page" link remedies many of the problems you listed--gets rid of ads, all on one page, gets rid of navigation cruft, etc.
;-)
Also useful if you want to like, print the page
The other day an artiest friend of a friend heard I did some web programming and then equated that with web design. He said he was getting into web design too--he's been learning flash and might eventually get around to HTML. It made me sad.
Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do the Blind Deserve More Effort on the Web? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Alt Tags for Images (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alt Tags for Images (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree -- and if you've ever used a screen reader you'd understand how nearsighted (no pun intended) that comment is.
That's just the beginning. Not using alt tags doesn't "break the web" for screen readers, it's just less helpful. But not using semantically accurate tags can make it nearly impossible to read or navigate a page. The screen reader JAWS (what I was trained on) can jump through a page by header tags, so having a proper hierarchy is crucial to them being able to quickly locate the information they need.
If your site breaks with all plugins, javascript, and CSS turned off, then blind people will effectively NOT be able to use it.
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My philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, people should know that if their web page is not available to a group of people, then those people will not get the benefit of the web page. In addition, there is a market for folks to create (and sell, if they so choose) products that help people who have problems get around in society. Thus, wheelchairs and hearing aids and braille and such. It's always been this way.
To say that everyone must be included in the class of users makes no sense; do you have to make music accessible to the deaf, or visual art available to the blind? Of course not. Should you have to change your personal web page that you use to post pictures for your friends and family to make it more friendly to some disabled user you don't know? Of course not.
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I agree, it should not be mandatory (Score:3, Insightful)
How can rules be applied that would not be biased against the content choices of the providers? If a provider wanted to provide full length movies that they did not originate would it fall on them to provide versions that lend themselves to one disability or another or all?
The simple fact is, not all aspects of life are enjoyable by all people. The primary limiting fact
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Individualist: We are all different but should be treated equally under the law.
Collectivist: "Something must be done" to correct a tragically imperfect world.
The collectivist approach has the propensity to piss me off, because of course it results in more and more obscure laws.
If your on-line shop is unfriendly to screen readers you will likely lose blind customers. I think that this is punishment, and motivation enough.
Your philosophy is poorly informed (Score:4, Informative)
Those of us who work in the field of disability regard this issue as a matter of Civil Rights. Once you understand that about us, it may help you understand why we are dogmatic about it.
The analogies people make to the build environment (e.g., ramps) are apt. If a designer does not incorporate the best practices that constitute electronic curb-cuts, there is nothing the best assistive technology (even at the helm of the most skilled end-user) can do to surmount the barrier.
Fortunately, things have matured enough that I no longer have to convince programmers to do the right thing, as the law and economics are on the correct side (this time). If you want to sell to the Federal government [section508.gov] you need to make your stuff accessible.
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Re:My philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:My philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:My philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Your formulation of the problem is an example of how selfish people can be, how someone can believe their trivial desires not only can but should trump the right to life of others.
The reason a person might decide not to eat peanuts given that doing so might kill someone is that he or she might conclude that someone's life outweighs another's pleasure in eating peanuts.
Can you be that impervious to the concept of the greater good?
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Re:My philosophy (Score:4, Informative)
But you still miss the whole point of the web standards Right Way. Which is that, although it almost always takes a bit more effort, it's almost always possible to have your cake and eat it. Progressive Enhancement.
Your case is a good example of many cases, in fact. The Right Way would be to serve a 'vanilla' (x)html document where links are normal links, ie <a> elements, (or not links at all, if you REALLY know someone without javascript can't use what it links to anyway), which are assigned suitable IDs/classes, and then you have an "init" javascript routine which, assuming javascript is available and enabled in that user-agent, will run through those links in the DOM and rewrite them to your souped-up scripted alternative.
With a library like JQuery it's not even difficult: $('.rewritelink').your_transform_func() for the link rewriting itself, plus it gives you a robust method of attaching your init routine. So you don't even need to worry about browser javascript compatibility, the library abstracts that away from you.
Yes, it increases bandwidth (~53KB for Jquery) and CPU use, you could argue "unnecessarily", but it is a method of you, and everybody (blind and sighted users alike), having their cake and eating it. Hate javascript? Turn it off, get normal links. Resent even downloading the extra .js bytes? Well, at least this way it's a separate document, a distinct layer in the "onion skin", so the end-user still has the control to absolutely prevent that (eg, at HTTP or DOM level, Adblock, Greasemonkey, firewall/proxies, etc). Whereas if you leap into, say, Flash or Silverlight instead, you're leaving people an all-or-nothing choice.
Just some food for thought. Although my post is seemingly "disagreeing", thanks for your post, it was refreshing to read a cogent argument in favour of added web dev whiz-bang, which is rare on slashdot.
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It isn't that hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Googlephone (Score:3, Interesting)
Diabetic=Blind? I guess eventually... (Score:3, Interesting)
sigh.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why even debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Limited by management ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus, I've often been told that the pages must be forced via things like width= attributes to be exactly N pixels wide, even when there's nothing in a page that is dependent on any particular width. I've been ordered to present some data in pictorial form, even when simple text data was easier to understand and took less screen space.
So very often, managers explicitly order their developers to produce web pages that are inaccessible to anyone other than people exactly like them.
There are some ways that one can fight this. In a few cases, I've found that I can "go over the boss's head" by showing a higher-up something that they find useful. I happen to know that they have a Blackberry or a Treo that they love and use all the time, and my boss's declared page structure won't work on their machine, so eventually orders come down to make the web interface usable on the higher-ups' favorite little handheld gadget. While doing this, I can also sneak in things that make it more accessible to the disabled.
But this is a passive-resistance approach, and it's not always successful. I like to also try to get across the idea that you, yes you, may find yourself handicapped by this time next week, in a way that you can't predict. The sensible thing would be to guarantee that your minions' efforts are usable even after that accident or medical emergency has left you restricted in what you can see or read.
But few managers are willing to take such a long-term view of the situation. So all too often, my pages aren't as accessible as I know how to make them.
It would be nice to learn of other ways that we developers can fight such management intransigence.
You can't win them all (Score:3, Informative)
Redesigning a web page may or may not fall under undue strain... I'm betting not. Then again not all pages are in the US and would be subject to something in the ADA.
The largest difficulty (Score:5, Interesting)
1) there are great disparities between how the screen readers interpret things.
2) the most popular screen readers are expensive, and offer no free versions for developers.
The Microsoft Narrator didn't hit my radar. I don't know anything about it, but if it's free and of high quality, that's a major step forward.
It would be nice if it could be better... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I publish a few webcomics (at Ubersoft.net). A webcomic is an image file (in my case, pngs) which are flat-out useless to the blind. Now, there are specifications about how graphics should be used to make them useful to the blind (i.e., include a complete description of the graphic within the img tag -- using "alt" I think, though I'm not sure) but this seems counterproductive. Webcomics as a whole are somewhat useless to the blind because they are a visual medium. Granted, my art is lousy and static but it is still presented visually.
So how much trouble should I, a publisher of a medium that seems to fundamentally work against a blind man or woman's browsing experience, put into making my site accessible to them?
As it happens, I do try some, though I am unfamiliar with the latest accessibility guidelines. I use css and xhtml (as best I can) to tag the site properly and make it navigable to a screen reader. This is a bit challenging since the publishing system I'm using (Drupal) makes it difficult for me to sift through everything, but I'm making slow progress. I've also started transcribing my comic archives -- primarily to make them searchable by my site's search engine, but one of my readers pointed out that it also allows a blind visitor to actually read the dialog.
There are other types of sites -- political discussion sites, news sites, sites like Slashdot -- where accessibility would be far more useful. The web was originally primarily text, and on sites where the content is still primarily text there's no reason it can't be designed to make that text more easily accessible to the visually impaired.
check out Title III of the ADA (Score:4, Informative)
ADA being the Americans with Disabilities Act. In a nutshell, all "public accomodations" (such as restaurants, movie theaters, etc.) must comply with certain architectural requirements that make them accessible to the physically disabled. While there's currently no provision for non-brick-and-morter public accomodations, I could certainly see that being added. Of course it would only impact the websites of businesses with a presence in the United States, but that's still a big pool. Note that this would almost surely not cover personal websites that aren't related to any commercial activity. So the guy who hacks together a page of photos for his extended family wouldn't be affected by this legislation.
http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor62335 [ada.gov]An Easier Fix (Score:5, Insightful)
Greater than, quote, less than, semi-quote, have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, comma, as a diabetic, comma, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used, period, semi-quote, greater than, slash, quote, less than.
I got results like that when I tried to use a voice synthesizer to read HTML email. Note that it doesn't differentiate between reading the 'quote' inside the tags and the 'semi-quote' in the quoted text.
Good luck on trying to get everybody and his invisible pal to reformat all their web and email. Far more likely to succeed would be to entice browser and email client developers to produce smart HTML strippers (and Flash readers, etc.) to produce a text-only output for use in voice synthesizers, and/or develop voice synthesizer plug-ins that process the HTML etc. as proper inflections (for bold, underline, etc) or statements ("quote"/"unquote") to be spoken.
There's a relatively small but steady market for accessibility-related software. Much of what's produced is subsidized by tax money, of which there's a high user-per capita quotient. A developer might not sell as many of such programs, but with fewer users per dollar, that means less support downstream. And with only a few developers focusing on that market, they can each make some decent money. Of course open developers such as the Mozilla group could do the same, for the usual reasons.
To hook up with people in this area, visit with the accessibility people found at many public and university libraries (at some universities it's a separate department).
Another problem needing fixing is closed caption voice-to-text processing, to give the deaf (or the Deaf, the capitalization is an important distinction) the ability to watch the now ubiquitous videos on news site and such, without having to wear their eyes out trying to lipread the low rez/bandwidth video usually produced. Take in video, buffer for later use, read audio and produce closed captioning, and send output to a window with CC synced to and overlaying the previously buffered video.
Note to commercial developers: producing such things under tax-supported/non-profit/government agency label might not earn a lot of money, but what it does earn can be taken as tax-deductions, as can the "money" that goes into the inevitable (and admittedly high-per capita) support.
Speaking as one who has both problems (Score:5, Interesting)
While I think its nice if businesses accommodate those who are visually impaired, and I think its in their own best interest to do so (just because I have trouble seeing doesn't mean I don't spend money
There are a number of websites, both commercial and not, that I have trouble reading. Know what I do? I go browse somewhere else.
What are we going to require next? Special keyboards at public internet stations for those who are prone to hangnails?
If I had a commercial website and someone or some government entity *demanded* or *required* that I arrange my page a certain way, etc, quite frankly I'd tell them to go get fucked.