From Wired:
A few weeks ago, Lucy Greco heard a story on NPR about more clothing retailers shuttering their stores and moving online. Oh, great, she thought, recalling some of her past experiences with online shopping: “You’re clicking on something that says, ‘graphic graphic graphic,’ or some numbered file name, or some gibberish like that.”
The internet can be like this for Greco, who is blind and uses a screen reader to wayfind online. Screen readers convert display text into synthesized speech or refreshable Braille, giving visual displays an audio equivalent. But many websites have features that make them impossible for her to use—unlabeled graphics, forms with missing field labels, links mysteriously named “link.” Greco says she runs into issues like this “90 percent of the time” that she spends online. When she does, entire chunks of the internet disappear.
Since the 1990s, the popular narrative of the internet has been one of progress: More people are online than ever and the web is increasingly open. But today, the internet is far from fully accessible. By some measures, it’s gotten even worse.
There are around 7 million people with a visual disability in the United States, according to the National Federation of the Blind.
. . . .
One study by an accessibility software company this August found that 70 percent of the websites it surveyed, ranging from ecommerce to news to government services, contain “accessibility blocks,” or quirks in the design that make them unreadable with assistive technology. Another accessibility report analyzing the top million homepages on the web estimates that just 1 percent meet the most widely used accessibility standards.
Link to the rest at Wired
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“Another accessibility report analyzing the top million homepages on the web estimates that just 1 percent meet the most widely used accessibility standards.”
Follow the money. Is it worth it to those sites to spend the extra time/man hours/money to make what they say/sell accessible/more accessible to those seven million people?
And many a site can’t afford to do more than is needed to just keep the site up.
One other thing is that “most widely used accessibility standards” bit that only one percent manage to do. How many of those other 99% are mostly/partly readable? Or better yet, what percent are totally unreadable? I know, having any of those questions answered might make things not look as bad as the OP is trying to get across.
The problem is accessibility is a legal requirement.
And the requirement is absolute, not “only if it is profitable”.
There is an out if it is an “undue burden” technologically but that goes away as soon as it is actually doable.
The standards as they exist are supported by the available tools but you do have to want to use and test the features.
Most non-compliant sites simply haven’t bothered to test.
Or pretended the law doesn’t apply to them, thinking nobody would bother to call them out.
Testing is easy, there’s even special tools tbat scan and report accessibility errors.
Like this one:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-tool/jbbplnpkjmmeebjpijfedlgcdilocofh
@Anonymous, as well as the tools listed here, at a11y project resources (yes those are ones, not els). I once tested the NVDA screenreader emulator myself; it’s free to use.
The site audit in Chrome’s developer tools also includes accessibility checking. Any random developer is already using the Chrome developer tool, which is free, and can be installed by anyone.
Making sure to set proper alt texts on images is a free fix; just fill out that box in your site’s CMS when you upload an image. Or if you’re making the site by hand, it’s not as if it will take more than a second or two to add it. I remember telling the head of my paper’s digital department that we needed to include alt text. At the time it was just for SEO purposes. It’s better explained here: https://axesslab.com/alt-texts/
Plus, for years there’s been a thing called “semantic HTML,” which assists screenreaders. Simple things like putting your site’s navigation links inside a nav tag, and using the h1 to h6 tags for headers, which creates a hierarchy for the information in your site. If you use an h1 tag on a header, it should be for the most important header, e.g., the site’s name. You can see more examples of Semantic HTML at W3Schools.com. It doesn’t take any extra time to use the correct tags.
A huge part of what is accessibility-friendly is just good web design, period. I’m disappointed that the NYT failed this test, because I once knew a developer who went to work for them. Perhaps he’s no longer there. At any rate, I’m skeptical that the DOJ would take it seriously if the NYT claims they can’t afford to have their webdevs make their site accessible.
As to the NYT, if they’ve gotten lazy and careless in their core business, it shouldn’t be surprising they’ve gotten shoddy in other areas.
“The old gray lady just ain’t what she used to be.
Many years ago.”
True. Very, sadly, true.
“Testing is easy …”
But making it go – not so easy it seems. And I wonder how many of the OP’s ‘top million’ websites are so top anything and would find it cheaper to close than to hire someone to help them become compliant.
I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just wondering if it’s really 99 out of a hundred or if the OP is like the anti-gun types that throw suicides into their ‘number of gun related deaths’, the 1 in 100 makes a better story than what the numbers may actually be.
The Axesslab site I linked to above also has great examples of accessible design.
Believe it or not, some of what the above link demonstrates takes more work to make inaccessible. A lot of HTML elements are accessible out of the box, such as the focus state, but developers actively make them inaccessible. Unwittingly rather than maliciously, because it doesn’t occur to them to just style those elements. The Chromatic HQ link points out that developers could actually make the focus state on links visually appealing for the sighted, rather than ruining the experience for the blind by stripping off that state.
You’ll also notice that the accessible-friendly improvements also improve the experience of those who don’t have disabilities. I’ve seen that phenomenon repeatedly; where accommodating a disability actually gives a better experience to those without disabilities. We talked about that here with audio captions on TV shows and movies: you might not be deaf, but you still might not have heard a line of dialogue correctly. Captions to the rescue.
I think a lot of people are resistant to accommodation because they’re assuming that the issue will be approached like so: Group A enjoys some benefit, so let’s extend that benefit to Group B … by degrading the experience of Group A. Zero sum, fixed pie thinking.
But in this case, it doesn’t work that way. Nothing you see in those two links degrades the experience of Group A, but they do improve the experience of Group B. Coincidentally, in several cases accommodating Group B improves the experience of Group A. The zero sum mentality doesn’t apply here. I’ve never seen it show up in commercial realm anyway, e.g., video game developers readily accommodate the color blind and the deaf without wrecking a game for those who can see and hear.
Game developers work with pre-pakaged Development Kits and (for consoles) have to pass inspection by platform holders.
Microsoft, in paticular, is very particular about accessibility. It’s long been a standard trait of both Windows and their consoles.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessibility
As you said, it is often more work to use accessible templates and tools to make the output inaccessible.