People are passionate about the issue. I think that’s great. It makes for a much richer discussion. However, when passions run high, sometimes tempers flare. Acknowledging the limitations of understanding accessibility is crucial to keeping an even keel, for me.

For me, the biggest acknowledgement to make in accessibility is that you (speaking abstractly) just never know everything: who is (or will be) accessing your site, with what tools, with what goals - so it’s inevitably a Sisyphean battle. We will never get to the top: all we can do is try.

John, interesting and insightful response, and a couple of comments in reply:

* Some people won’t consider themselves disabled, even if they have vision, dexterity or hearing difficulties - yet a disability it still is, regardless. Its a reduced or lack of a sensory perception or skill. We deal with vision impairments regardles of whether someone is legally certified as being vision impaired or not. The legality or acknowledgement of a disability is irrelevant. Its the act of not discriminating against someone on the basis of their disability - whether they acknowledge that disability is not important, and does not change the approach.

* Regarding the battle against “adding accessibility almost always has a trade off of some kind” - it sounds like you are saying there’s no trade off in making content accessible? Am I reading that right?

* I understand, and agree with your point on relying on enhancements being a barrier. Although I point out Flash isn’t always an enhancement. When it is used to enhance content - fine, then there should be a fallback. When it is used as a means of making content accessible, then no fallback is necessary - unless your audience is of people with disabilities that cannot, because of their disability, access the content, or use the technologies needed to access the content.

* “the same blog article where I was called a troll” - that was deserved (and I don’t mean that as an insult - just a fair reflection of that particular thread). I was surprised it was you that got snagged on that hook.

* In Jeff Croft’s case - accessibility wasn’t just an additional feature. He’d already catered for accessibility up to a certain level. What he pushed back on was the overly crude reaction he got from accessibility people when he rejected the idea of implementing a reverse-colours option. He made a reasonable decision based on time, cost and benefit, and opted not to do it. (And his grounds for doing so were sound - why replicate something in an inferior way on one website when it can and should be done in the browser in a way that can be used on all websites? - its the same rationale as the font-resizer widgets and print buttons that clutter up many pages)

I also note with great interest that the real problem zealots and “experts” have been remarkably quiet and well behaved in the last two weeks. Perhaps that’s a good sign.

Mike.

But graceful degradation is an utterly critical portion of web accessibility, regardless of any difference in terminology: having a “Plan B”, like you mention, is too important to be left behind. I hadn’t seen Robert Nyman’s article: that was very interesting! Yet another reason to be cautious when using client-side scripting!

Thanks for your comments!

When it comes to online accessibility, it is important to remember that is not just about “disabled” users, it’s about all users - “disabled” is a label that many people do not want or feel applies to them. However, a study by Microsoft in 2004 showed that among adult computer users in the United States:

* 1 in 4 has a vision difficulty
* 1 in 4 has a dexterity difficulty
* 1 in 5 has a hearing difficulty

The Microsoft Survey also found that 16% of users have a cognitive difficulty or impairment, and few (3%) have a speech difficulty or impairment.

Today’s multitude of web-enabled devices relies on online content that has been optimized, not for a specific browser, but rather for Universal Accessibility. As developers, we have many tools at our disposal today, many more than we had even 5 years ago. But as a “web accessibility advocate”, the real problem is that the notion of graceful degradation apparently has gone missing. Flash and AJAX (to name just two of the “hot spot” debating points) *can* aid in the goal of improved access and improved user experience for some users. But too often what I see is an all or nothing approach - positions are polarized and many developers refuse to accept that there must be a “Plan B”.

“Plan B” acknowledges that there are a myriad of possible approaches to our web content, and we need to be cognizant of these differences and be prepared to deal with them. The foundation of all web based, human consumable content (and even interaction) is the exchange of ideas or knowledge, and so at its base, that knowledge exchange *should* (nay, *must*) stand on its own. We can layer on enhancements and designs which may improve some user’s ability to deal with this exchange, and this is a positive thing - it improves accessibility. If these enhancements improve the user experience then I’m all for it. But when you sacrifice the access to the basic exchange by relying on these layers of enhancement, then you are creating inaccessible content - and it is here that I become a zealot. Use the enhancements, but always be sure that there is a Plan B - what happens when your enhancement is not accessible (to any user, for any reason)?

Recently I was researching information on AJAX for my new position, and one of my favorite “warnings” on AJAX was from Robert Nyman, who wrote:

…After some digging, we found out that the JavaScript file was completely blank! The reason for this, apparently, is that the proxy server they had to go through to access [the] internet totally cleansed any JavaScript file that contained this text:
new ActiveXObject
So much for object detection and every other approach we recommend to web developers. Not a single line of code was left behind in the file. And the problem is that it won’t throw an error or show the content of a noscript tag either; everything just stops working.

http://www.robertnyman.com/2006/04/25/an-important-lesson-learned-about-ajax-and-accessibility/

(Note that he used the word “access” when connecting to his web application…)

Finally, the bigger battle is (should be?) against those “zealots” who are starting to think aloud “Has accessibility been taken too far?” and “…adding accessibility almost always has a trade off of some kind.” (
www2.jeffcroft.com/2006/aug/21/has-accessibility-been-taken-too-far/
- the same blog article where I was called a troll). Continuing to think of accessibility as an enhancement or add-on misses the point entirely, and here both “Camps” still have much work ahead of us.

JF