Misleading BBC report - Disabled website access
Discussion
Interesting BBC report, not exactly 'news', but I think it really misses the crux of the problem.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3623407.stm
"A thousand websites were tested for the survey using automated software, and detailed user testing was carried out on 100 sites, including government, business, e-commerce, leisure and web services such as search engines."
"The problems most commonly encountered by the disabled website testers were cluttered pages, confusing navigation, failure to describe images and poor colour contrast between background and text."
"Mr Massie warned website owners to improve accessibility or be prepared to face legal action."
My point is that the problems are a side effect of current web technology and it is not as easy to solve as the BBC report makes out. "It is an environment that could be made more accommodating to disabled people at a relatively modest expense." and goes on to advocate use of screen readers.
The main problem is that users expect really slick, graphic rich webpages, often animated; and this problem is compounded by webmasters making heavy use of colour to give the site a visual identity and then the webmasters clutter their pages up with advertising. Increasing use of Javascript simply makes the situation worse!
Traditional disabled workarounds like using scaleable fonts and providing alt-tags for voice readers are becomming far less meaningful, it's not just that webmasters sometimes forget to put them in!
I feel that at the moment disabled access can only be improved by seriously simplifying the look and feel of problem websites. This is not something that either the webmaster or the majority of users would be prepared to accept!
Is there a solution?
I'd love to know......
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3623407.stm
"A thousand websites were tested for the survey using automated software, and detailed user testing was carried out on 100 sites, including government, business, e-commerce, leisure and web services such as search engines."
"The problems most commonly encountered by the disabled website testers were cluttered pages, confusing navigation, failure to describe images and poor colour contrast between background and text."
"Mr Massie warned website owners to improve accessibility or be prepared to face legal action."
My point is that the problems are a side effect of current web technology and it is not as easy to solve as the BBC report makes out. "It is an environment that could be made more accommodating to disabled people at a relatively modest expense." and goes on to advocate use of screen readers.
The main problem is that users expect really slick, graphic rich webpages, often animated; and this problem is compounded by webmasters making heavy use of colour to give the site a visual identity and then the webmasters clutter their pages up with advertising. Increasing use of Javascript simply makes the situation worse!
Traditional disabled workarounds like using scaleable fonts and providing alt-tags for voice readers are becomming far less meaningful, it's not just that webmasters sometimes forget to put them in!
I feel that at the moment disabled access can only be improved by seriously simplifying the look and feel of problem websites. This is not something that either the webmaster or the majority of users would be prepared to accept!
Is there a solution?
I'd love to know......
But also disabled means a variety of problems, and what will help one type of disable may hinder another.
You may well get to the point where you have a website with the content laid out in different ways to suite different disabilities (may become expensive when you have to host a site 20 times it's original size), just to stay within the law, what about homepages will they also be subject to this.
You may well get to the point where you have a website with the content laid out in different ways to suite different disabilities (may become expensive when you have to host a site 20 times it's original size), just to stay within the law, what about homepages will they also be subject to this.
Nacnud said:
I feel that at the moment disabled access can only be improved by seriously simplifying the look and feel of problem websites. This is not something that either the webmaster or the majority of users would be prepared to accept!
This particular user would like nothing more than to see websites seriously simplified. If I want all the irrelevant crap, that frequently doesn't work in non-IE browsers, I'll buy a popup book. I for one never return to all-Flash sites, for example.
Yeah - but take a look at PH for a moment.
I actually think PH is a GOOD example of a clear and easy to use website, but it's not perfect.
E.G. Gassing station title text is actually a graphic. It has an alt but will not re-scale for the visually impaired.
E.G. Half the posts have the PH handle in blue ontop of a grey background lowering contrast significantly.
E.G. The gassing station menu - I've not tried it, but I bet it give page readers a coughing fit.
E.G. Anyone tried only using their keyboard on PH? That's another classic weakpoint which wouldn't surprise me if the Gassing menus fall foul of.
Before I get chucked in the Sin Bin by Ted, I'd just like to reiterate that PH is comparatively very clear and easy to use.
The BBC site on the other hand - talk about cluttered
I actually think PH is a GOOD example of a clear and easy to use website, but it's not perfect.
E.G. Gassing station title text is actually a graphic. It has an alt but will not re-scale for the visually impaired.
E.G. Half the posts have the PH handle in blue ontop of a grey background lowering contrast significantly.
E.G. The gassing station menu - I've not tried it, but I bet it give page readers a coughing fit.
E.G. Anyone tried only using their keyboard on PH? That's another classic weakpoint which wouldn't surprise me if the Gassing menus fall foul of.
Before I get chucked in the Sin Bin by Ted, I'd just like to reiterate that PH is comparatively very clear and easy to use.
The BBC site on the other hand - talk about cluttered
voyds9 said:
But also disabled means a variety of problems, and what will help one type of disable may hinder another.
You may well get to the point where you have a website with the content laid out in different ways to suite different disabilities (may become expensive when you have to host a site 20 times it's original size), just to stay within the law, what about homepages will they also be subject to this.
Yeah! I'm all for sites providing low-bandwidth, ad-free pages. Sod the disabled, I'll use them!
I don't see how its such a big deal, most sites consist of just a few pages.
Its a case of making a very simple version to use as an alternative and copying the text body. The BBC might have a fairly cluttered site (though I must say I'm a fan) but they have a text only button which works fine.
In the future though I imagin that XML will make tailoring sites to individual users a lot easier (perhaps we will have browsers which read the XML and we skin the site ourselves?)
Edited to add - The system which the BBC uses, betsie, is open source and doesn't need any page conversion, its a simple case of uploading the script and providing a link to it, the script does the rest for you. Not very pretty, but it works. (link : http://betsie.sourceforge.net/)
>> Edited by rpguk on Thursday 15th April 13:12
Its a case of making a very simple version to use as an alternative and copying the text body. The BBC might have a fairly cluttered site (though I must say I'm a fan) but they have a text only button which works fine.
In the future though I imagin that XML will make tailoring sites to individual users a lot easier (perhaps we will have browsers which read the XML and we skin the site ourselves?)
Edited to add - The system which the BBC uses, betsie, is open source and doesn't need any page conversion, its a simple case of uploading the script and providing a link to it, the script does the rest for you. Not very pretty, but it works. (link : http://betsie.sourceforge.net/)
>> Edited by rpguk on Thursday 15th April 13:12
rpguk said:
(perhaps we will have browsers which read the XML and we skin the site ourselves?)
Wasn't that the idea with HTML originally, until all those "designers" and marketing dweebs got involved and broke it all.
Still, nice to see Berners-Lee winning 1 million Euro for inventing it all.
rpguk said:
I don't see how its such a big deal, most sites consist of just a few pages.
Hmmm, I look after a couple of websites which are both a fair size. But overall you are right, it's not a big issue for these sites.
However, commercial websites are a whole different kettle of fish.
At work we are currently releasing a web-based application (distributed decision making) where this is a big deal and it's proving blessed nightmare.
The example we love is whether Photoshop can (or should) be usable by the visually impaired.
rpguk said:
Edited to add - The system which the BBC uses, betsie, is open source and doesn't need any page conversion, its a simple case of uploading the script and providing a link to it, the script does the rest for you. Not very pretty, but it works. (link : <a href="http://betsie.sourceforge.net/">http://betsie.sourceforge.net/</a>
Interesting link - Cheers!
However, the guys weren't totally impressed with the low graphics pages available from the BBC News site.
Main criticisms were:
1) An awfull lot of white space in the page source. I didn't run any stats but it looks like it's a signicifant part of the overall page size. It's a common side effect from using XSL and/or JSP and is very hard to solve.
2) If you run a search from the low graphic page it dumps you straight back in the high graphic content pages; very helpful - NOT!
At this point the guys lost interest in betsie!
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