SCN: Access

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

======================


(Sarah Horton, NY Times)---There is a wall outside my window. I 
have an attractive first-floor office in a newly constructed building 
on the campus of Dartmouth College. But my view is obscured by 
a pillared free-standing wall that runs parallel to the north face of 
the building. The wall has no structural purpose; its function is 
purely aesthetic.  

Contemplating this wall daily has brought me face to face with the 
senseless barriers that are built in the name of design, particularly 
in my own design specialty: the Web.  

As a Web designer, I do not consciously build walls, but like the 
architect of my office building, I do fall prey to vanity. I use design 
to draw attention to myself and to my work. I want people to be 
delighted when they look at my Web pages. I want them to notice 
my designs. But just as the wall obstructs my view of the world 
outside my office window, my fancy graphics and page designs are 
often simple barriers between people and the information they 
seek.  

Take something as basic as access to the daily news. People who 
cannot see can nevertheless read the Web using text-to-speech 
software. And because there are loads of news sources on the 
Web, blind people should theoretically have access to much more 
information online than in the print world, where they often must 
rely on the availability of alternative versions, like audio recordings 
or Braille.  

But with the Web's current hyperactive state, text-to-speech 
access to the daily news is tedious at best, impossible at worst. 
Screen-reader software works only when it has text to read. 
Graphics are not text. Flash animations and navigation are not text. 
Video is not text. PDF files often are not text. So unless the Web 
developer provides a "text equivalent" in the page's underlying 
code, material in these formats is inaccessible to people who rely 
on screen-reader software.  

Consider the news site MSNBC.com. The site uses graphic text for 
its navigation links, which cannot be read by screen-reader 
software. Nor can the text be enlarged by people who can see only 
large type. Because the site's developer did not provide alternative 
text in the code of the pages, when the screen reader encounters 
the Sports link, it reads the link's U.R.L., which sounds like "slash 
news slash s p t underline front dot asp link." Huh?  

Another potential barrier on the MSNBC site is the video, which is 
great and interesting and useful, but only if you can hear and see 
(and are running Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Windows Media 
Player). There are no captions, text transcripts or descriptions to 
accompany the video and audio material.  

Peter Dorogoff, a spokesman for MSNBC.com, said the site's 
developers would continue to assess its usefulness to the largest 
possible audience. "We've addressed the broadest accessibility 
issues within the constraints of our publishing tool and other 
necessary resources," Mr. Dorogoff said. "We continue to monitor 
and evaluate accessibility across the site and have made a 
concerted effort to achieve this goal on a consistent basis, 
sitewide."  

There is no reason to single out MSNBC.com. The New York 
Times on the Web, for example, presents its own barriers. Every 
page on the Web site has graphics and advertising at the top and 
an extensive set of navigation links along the left side. Sighted 
people, if they choose to, can skip the advertisements, the last 
updated date, the search features and log-in information and the 
more than 50 navigation links and jump straight to the headlines.  

But for people who rely on text-to-speech software, skipping over 
those elements is not an option. Screen-reader software reads 
sequentially, starting at the top of the page. This means that blind 
people must listen to the advertisements and navigation before 
reaching the main content, and they must do this on every page of 
the site.  

Stephen P. Newman, the assistant general manager of 
NYTimes.com, says the Times Web site is frequently redesigned. 
"For each redesign," he said, "we gather feedback from our 
readers during comprehensive user testing and focus groups. So 
our designs currently reflect the needs of the majority of our 
users."  

Accessible design does not mean doing away with navigation links, 
graphics and banner advertisements. Accessible design means 
designing in features that accommodate all users. For example, 
some sites, like CNN.com, have added a special "skip navigation" 
link at the top of every page that is invisible to sighted people but 
is detected by screen-reader software. When activated, this link 
directs the screen reader's focus to the main content of the page.  

The "skip navigation" convention is a fairly recent one, and sites 
that lack this feature were probably designed before people started 
talking about accessibility. Indeed, most Web barriers result from 
errors of omission and unintended consequences.  

But some Web sites do seem designed with a deliberate lack of 
flexibility. People wanting to play games at HarryPotter.com, for 
instance, had better arrive with a current browser, the Flash plug-
in, and good vision and hearing. Otherwise, they won't make it past 
the intro page. Most of the site is in the Flash format, which allows 
animations, sounds, fancy fonts and other cool features that are 
not available using standard Web coding. It also means the pages 
on this site cannot be enlarged or rendered to speech, and they 
are not easily accessible from the keyboard.  

The site is fun for those who are able to use it, and I doubt that its 
developers are mean spirited. But they did make a choice to favor 
the cool over the practical and most widely accessible. 
Macromedia recently released a new version of Flash, Flash MX, 
which allows developers to include more accessibility features in 
their Flash presentations.  

Don Buckley, the senior vice president for interactive marketing at 
Warner Brothers Pictures, said that the topic of access for people 
with disabilities was "of great interest" and that the Web site's 
developers "would certainly be looking at the technology." Maybe 
the developers at Warner Brothers will revise the site to include 
some of these new features, or, better yet, use plain old HTML to 
build a new, flexible Diagon Alley that's accessible and fun for 
everyone. Now that would be cool.  

It does not necessarily take more time or cost more money to 
design accessible Web sites. The Web was designed to be 
flexible. Why not work within the medium and build Web sites that 
are accessible to the largest possible audience?  

The Web is so much more than image. The Web is an access 
point, an entryway, a window on the world. Let's not allow fancy 
walls to block the view.  


Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company





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