I’m in the very early stages of putting together accessibility improvements for an e-commerce web site. The site is several years old, and while it isn’t a complete accessibility disaster, there are many ways it can be improved. The markup was constructed decently enough, but it’s safe to say that accessibility wasn’t so much as even a fleeting thought.

My efforts are part of an overall project to improve and refresh the look and information architecture of the web site. From both a design and user experience perspective, we’ve advocated refreshing the site through gradual enhancements, instead of a massive, all-at-once redesign.

I’m excited at the chance to steer some real accessibility improvement on this project. This is a chance to get in there and make immediate improvements.

Some of the things I aim to do right out of the gate are:

These are easy “quick wins” that can be done without massive amounts of effort.

Not every accessibility undertaking — or redesign/refresh overall — needs to be a huge undertaking. For one, there may not be a budget to completely overhaul a site. Also, such overhauls can potentially be too sudden and startling a change for visitors who have been there before.

You don’t have to wait for the big, all-encompassing project to make improvements. You can tackle it piece and piece and, incrementally, improve the accessibility.

As I knock off each of those bullets above as well as whatever else I find, the site will become better and better for those who visit via screen readers, keyboard navigation or whatever means they need to. The site will become better and better, period.

Tags: accessibility, alt tags, color contrast, header tags, keyboard navigation, screen readers, usability, user experience

I was just recalling a recent firsthand experience with web accessibility ignorance, and thought I’d share, to kick off 2010.

Not long ago, I was involved in a conversation about incorporating security measures to a registration process on an e-commerce website. One solution that emerged was using CAPTCHA.

For those of you not familiar with the term, CAPTCHA is a process used to protect web sites from automated agents (bots, scripts, etcetera). This is most often done through adding a step in which a user must decipher distorted or obscured characters, or solve a puzzle.

The traditional implementation of CAPTCHA has met with significant outcry from the accessibility minded. Quite simply, how can a blind or visually-impaired user be expected to discern garbled characters on the screen? In such cases, the visually disabled are simply unable to do whatever it is that the CAPTCHA stands in front of, such as registering on a site before purchasing and accessing information.

Alternatives have emerged such as providing an audio equivalent, like reCAPTCHA does.

Anyway, when CAPTCHA came up in my scenario, I quickly pointed out that, whatever solution we seek, we must ensure we’re using a security method that doesn’t render the site inoperable by the visually disabled.

One person responded by pantomiming being blind, finding himself to be hysterical in the process. Another person said — and to get the full effect, be sure to insert dripping sarcasm — “Yeah, because blind people use the Web”.

Even as I typed that, it sounded ridiculous and made up. Needless to say, I was floored by such over-the-top ignorance. I don’t expect everybody to suddenly embrace accessibility because I have, but still hoped that my insight would be taken somewhat seriously, not met with jokes and quips.

I’d like to think that such reactions are rare and will only decrease in the web industry, as accessibility becomes more and more a hot button issue. Some businesses and web services are better than others.

My response, by the way, was something to the effect of, “I imagine there were people at Target.com who made light of accessibility before the multi-million dollar lawsuit.”

Tags: accessibility, CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA

Back in April, Jared Smith at WebAIM posted “Accessibility Blog Roundup II“, a list of noteworthy blogs that cover web accessibility. I was already following some of the suggested sites, but overall I found the post to be incredibly useful.

I thought I would follow suit with a listing of the accessibility-focused sites that I currently frequent. I use Bloglines for feed reading, and this is pretty much my whole “Accessibility” list.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the best sites out there. I would absolutely love getting comments recommending others of note.

In no particular order:

• WebAIM Blog by Jared Smith et al
• Do It Myself Blog by Glenda Watson
• Web Axe by Dennis Lembree and Ross Johnson
• Accessites.org (The Art of Accessibility)
• Action for blind people by Sandi Wassmer, Kevin Nuttall et al
• Adobe Accessibility blog
• All Access Blogging (Tips for making your blog more accessible to people with disabilities)
• iheni :: making the web worldwide by Henny Swan
• Box of Chocolates by Derek Featherstone
• Bruce Lawson’s blog
• Digital Likeness by Andrea Hill
• Dingo Access by Roger Hudson
• Dotjay by Jon Gibbins
• Accessible Web Design by Joe Dolson
• Learning the World by Martin Kliehm
• Oz by Glenda Sims
• Wait Till I Come! by Chris Heilmann
• Beast-Blog by Mike Cherim
• Accessibility Tips by Mike Davies
• web output by Dirk Ginader
• 456 Berea Street by Roger Johansson

Tags: accessibility, accessibility blogs, web accessibility

In a settlement of a California-based lawsuit, online travel juggernaut Expedia and its Hotels.com will add content and search capabilities to their online reservations systems for would-be travelers with disabilities.

The lawsuit stemmed from two California women who claimed that Hotels.com discriminated against them by having a shoddy experience regarding wheelchair-accessible rooms. There was no clear-cut means of guaranteeing such a room.

Expedia has been working with Disability Rights Advocates to provide greater accessibility for disabled travel shoppers.

Source Materials:

• Expedia’s hotels.com settles lawsuit over wheelchair access (Deseret News)
• Expedia and Hotels.com agree to provide information for disabled travelers (Internet Retailer)

Tags: accessibility, Expedia, Hotels.com, lawsuit, wheelchair access

Even the most well-intentioned business or web site owner, when faced with the prospect of having to make their site more accessible to people with disabilities, may find themselves asking, “Do I really have to go through all of this for such a small percentage of visitors? How many disabled people actually will come to my web site?”

The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2007 Annual Disability Status Report¹ provides statistics based on several criteria, from age brackets to income and employment.

Amongst U.S. population from the “working-age” demographic of 21 to 64:

Disability Type – Percent
Any Disability – 12.8%
Sensory – 2.9%
Physical – 7.9%
Mental – 4.7%

If you look at straight-up numbers from age 5 and up (with the caveat, of course, that the youngest and oldest ends of those spectrums have a lower percentage of actual web users):

Any Disability – 14.9%
Sensory – 4.2%
Physical – 9.4%
Mental – 5.8%

Percentages are one thing. 2.9-4.2% of the U.S. population having hearing or vision disabilities isn’t a number that may wow you. However, when you equate that to real numbers — 5,033,000 to 11,696,000 — it suddenly doesn’t seem so insignificant.

Obviously, those numbers apply broadly to people with disabilities, not people with disabilities who specifically surf the web.

Pew Internet’s The Ever-Shifting Internet Population (link to a PowerPoint document) cites statistics from 2003 that shed some light on disabled web users:

Some highlights:

• 38% of Americans with disabilities surf the web
• Almost 20% of them say that their disability makes web browsing challenging
• Nearly 30% of disabled Americans live in households netting less than $20,000 a year, which makes challenging — if not impossible — the procurement of assistive technologies, which are often expensive

Again, while 38% of what is already a small percentage of American society doesn’t seem like a staggering number, but they are people in cyberspace trying to make the most of their experience, be it research, entertainment, or even shopping.

I’ve heard similar arguments in my life about the need to go out of one’s way to make websites 100% aesthetically-clean and functional in non-IE browsers like Firefox and Safari. That sentiment seems more and more antiquated and silly now, but it’s of a similar vein as the accessibility question.

Are you willing to simply say “Too bad” to 5% of potential visitors/customers? 10%? More?

If web developers or designers engrain in their coding acumen the basic fundamentals of web accessibility, such as proper title and alt tags in all images or not forgetting to list out your doc type or assign a language to your html tag, it’s not moving mountains or spending gobs of money to make your site easier for assistive technologies and disabilities browsers to get around.

It’s not only becoming more and more of a legal issue, it’s also an issue of ethics. It’s maybe hokey and Wilford Brimley-esque to say “It’s the right thing to do,” but really it is. Are you really willing to say that what you’re trying to sell or convey on the Internet isn’t important or relevant to would-be disabled visitors?

You can’t make a site 100% accessible to everybody — it’s just not realistic and somewhere you have to draw a line. But following basic standards will not only make your sites easier for blind, deaf, and physically-limited surfers to get around, but they’ll tend to be more standards-compliant and easier to navigate for -everybody-.

That’s an all-around win.

Footnote
¹ Houtenville, Andrew J. 2005. “Disability Statistics in the United States.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Statistics and Demographics, www.disabilitystatistics.org. Posted May 15, 2003. Accessed March 28, 2005.

Tags: 2007 Annual Disability Status Report, accessibility, disability, pew internet, statistics