Comments on: Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

By: Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:50:06 +0000

Hi Helen
I agree completely with you when you say “websites cannot meet the needs of every visitor”. The problem is that the guidelines developed by WAI and the accompanying hype has led people to believe that applying a few simple rules will provide universal accessibility. And the dangers with this view are that people may think that WCAG conformance is all they need, that if WCAG conformance proves difficult they should ignore the guidelines completely or if WCAG conformance proves difficult they should not deploy a service, even if it proves beneficial to many.
I have written a blog post which summarises my views in the context of e-learning, which is available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/rethinking-web-accessibility-for-e-learning/
I should add that I have submitted this blog post to the Edublogger Scholar contest, so I have a vested interest in clicks on the Edublogger Scholar contest logo – but if you think it would be beneficial to those interested in promoting best practices for accessibility if a blog post on accessibility was to win a prize, then I’d be happy for you to do that :-)
Further thoughts on my views on accessibility are available on my blog:
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/category/accessibility/
or have been published in various peer-reviewed publications:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/#accessibility

All the best

Brian Kelly, UKOLN

By: Helen

Helen — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:12:03 +0000

Hello Brian, Thanks very much for your comments, which have provided some great ideas for future posts! The article is simply an introduction to accessibility for corporate website managers, and we hoped it would create some discussion. As with most things, websites cannot meet the needs of every visitor. The aim is to make as much content accessible to as many people as possible. If we could encourage corporate websites to meet even minimum requirements, it would make them much more accessible for a larger range of visitors (across as many browsers as possible, even if they’re far from perfect). We tried to provide a few ideas for things web masters could change in the short term to make a small difference, but also help them open internal discussions on the business benefits of replacing legacy systems or technologies with those that support accessibility best practice when the time comes to update. The DRC (now the Equality and Human Rights Commission) report from 2004 that you mention (which I previously hadn’t read) received a very mixed response. Here are a few of the interesting and varied posts I found: - ’The DRC report into UK web accessibility’, by Mike Davies (who was the Technical Lead Web Developer on Legal & General's web accessibility project) - ‘DRC report says accessible websites are 35% more usable for all’, AbilityNet - 'The DRC blew it', Webcredible (Read the report ) The accessibility guidelines aim to make websites more accessible and therefore more usable for disabled users. However, just because a website is accessible, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s usable for all visitors, and vice versa (although both go a long way to helping the other). I’m not sure that it’s helpful for companies to believe that because their website is usable, they don’t need to implement or worry about meeting additional accessibility standards that could make it more so. They need to meet both requirements, as Mike Davies notes in another post on the subject. We’ll try to cover some of the issues you’ve raised in coming posts. I’d be interested to hear what you think, Brian, and what other experts also think about these topics. Do you agree? If you're a corporate web manager who’s tackled these issues, get in touch! Helen

By: Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:06:32 +0000

Although the blog post provides some examples of potential benefits of implementing best practices to enhance accessibility, it fails to provide any advice on the approaches organisations should take if there are conflicts with other business objectives.

For example, what if:

o There are tensions between the requirements of different groups of people with disabilities?
o Business have existing systems which don’t support accessibility best practices?
o Browser support lags behind best practices (e.g. IE 6)?
o Evidence shows that Web sites which don’t implement accessibility guidelines do well in usability studies by people with disabilities (e.g. the DRC report and the Egg.co.uk Web site)?

By: Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

Corporate websites and the case for accessibility — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:54:27 +0000

[…] Excerpt from: Corporate websites and the case for accessibility […]

By: Jonathan Waddingham

Jonathan Waddingham — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:23:28 +0000

I think Helen makes some great points there – especially about having better accessibility making sites easier for *everyone* to use. There’s really no excuse for jargon-filled brochureware sites these days, and they are ultimately self-defeating – if a site isn’t clear, obtuse, or just plain unfriendly, then people are less likely to use it.

Thanks for the insight!