My Dream of an Accessible Web Culture for Disabled People

Speech given at Web Enabled: museums, online access and ability. UK Museums and the Web conference 2004

Date: 22/04/2004
Venue: University of Leicester, UK

For the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

Earlier this year when the e-Access Bulletin celebrated its 50th monthly issue it asked me to say how my ICT life had changed during the past four years. Sad to report, my PC and consumer electronics access had got worse, my difficulty with telephone access was static and only in the cookery department had my life improved with a talking microwave cooker and weighing scales. This is the context for any consideration of the Web. So when I use the word "Dream" in the title of my presentation I am talking literally; I don't mean long-term vision, I mean something as improbable as a dream.

In the context of a general access agenda I am not sold on the idea that because we can achieve interactivity we have to use it all the time. I think we need a much more purpose-driven, rational, market approach to information transactions with people. Very few of us produce more information than we consume; most of us only produce the kind of information that responds to questions and could be supplied through choosing 1-9 on a numeric keypad; so those who need a qwerty keyboard to produce information from scratch are not the norm round which everything should be designed. The book was not interactive; classical broadcasting, theatre, music performance, dance, are not interactive. So the first part of my vision, as opposed to my dream, is that we need to focus much more strongly on the new medium of digital broadcasting to meet the information needs of citizens. There are problems for me with the accessibility of remote controllers and tuners but these can be overcome relatively simply.

If we are sensible about why we need interactivity in citizen transactions then we are much more likely to think clearly about our market; well, that is the theory; but in fact web design is still in the hands of the aesthetes and the engineers; people even in large organisations rarely ask: "What is it for?" "Why do we need a web site?" "Who will use it?"

You will hear from Helen Petrie how difficult it is for disabled people to access Web sites. I used to think that the problem lay with the economic or the demographic case. I no longer believe this. I do not think it much matters what demographic or economic case you make, those who build web sites think they are an extension of the media industry; they do not trace their inheritance to the manufacture of graph paper, they are only a step away from television.

Think about Professor Petrie's eight factors causing more than half of the problems for disabled people and ask whether these call for emasculating creative sacrifice?: (Table 6: www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/report.asp [no longer available]).

As Prof. Petrie will describe generalised problems, I want to concentrate on my own particular requirements and, again, ask yourselves whether it is me or the designers who are being unreasonable or unprofessional:

Define taxonomy carefully so that people can find things through simple, logical navigation
To that end, use the (7 + or - 2) rule so that in complex arrays or searches there are no fewer than five and no more than nine elements.
If these first two have not been observed, it is vital to enable cursor establishment from the keyboard; without this, shopping, form filling and using key words in search boxes is impossible.
Allow adjustability for print font, size etc for metadata as well as data.
Only use tables, frames and other devices for the purpose for which they were designed
Allow exclusion of recurrent metadata
Don't describe what you can link
Balance aesthetics, purpose and end user requirements
Do not slavishly digitise paper content
Update or die.

Here are some implications of what the more cryptic of these mean:

Taxonomy as a discipline is not usually combined with aesthetics but without it complex web sites are useless.
I simply cannot imagine why such a well researched rule as (7 + or - 2) is ignored by people whose objective it is to help people to choose
For people, such as blind people, who may find spatial navigation difficult, the use of keywords is essential but often a cursor cannot be established from a keyboard but requires a mouse.
Often you have to reach wonderfully accessible data through woodenly inaccessible metadata.
Often a screen reader will indicate a table with, say, 5 rows and 4 columns; you search methodically for the 20 elements but only find three. Why was the table used?
Most web pages have a mass of repeat data at the top of each page and sometimes new data is sandwiched between repeated data at the top and bottom; this makes using a screen reader very difficult.
Frequently highly skilled aesthetic designers write poor descriptions when good ones are readily available. If I wanted to describe the Mona Lisa I would link to the appropriate page of the Louvrecatalogue.
I frequently wonder whether sites were built for the pleasure of designers rather than the benefit of their organisations or users.
It is amazing how often digitisers just scan in a print document so that, for example, in form filling, the appropriate notes are not at the side of the operative box.
Updating is obvious.

So the second part of my vision, as opposed to my dream, is that:

Inter sectoral teams of web designers will
Create sites focusing on corporate objectives and end users and
User test sites on a representative sample of users.

I heard it said the other day that finding a representative sample of disabled people to test sites was difficult; my guess is that it's much easier if you offer to pay them. What justification is there for unemployed or poorly paid disabled people cross subsidising Government Departments or major corporations. User testing should be incorporated into all estimates.

The third part of my vision is that people should get what they pay for. Again, the other day I heard someone say that accessibility might cost too much taxpayers' money; but he forgot that it is taxpayers like me who pay for the information to be created. I also pay for the products whose profits produce the funding for web sites.

These three pieces of vision, then

Appropriate medium
Client and user centred design
Just access

are hardly controversial but they are as distant as a dream.

Why?

People tend to travel into the future with their backs to the engine so, for example, they have not come to terms with the possibilities of digital television or broad band
Policy makers and marketing departments do not control the process which links their mission and vision to their media policies
Web design is classified as art not craft
Disabled people are marginal or invisible.

These are not technical but cultural problems. Our usual way for handling difficult cultural challenges is to legislate to change behaviour as a means to changing attitudes over a longer time period. To dream of statutes and court cases is an odd dream; but it's the only one I've got.

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My Dream of an Accessible Web Culture for Disabled People

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