What do you want to know about accessibility and web apps?

As I mentioned to you on Twitter, I'd love to see a demonstration of some common sites as they're being read by a screen reader. If you can include examples of good ones AND bad ones, that'd be great.

I think that a lot of web devs will feel much differently about accessibility once they hear the painful experience of a screen reader going through a poorly marked-up site.

An update of http://diveintoaccessibility.org would be interesting - this was my start when building quippd, but I'd definitely like to know if there is more that Mark is missing.

Our application is used by a lot of seniors. So I'm interested in this topic.

I received an email last week from a 70 yr old lady who was using our software. Not the typical web-app user base.

Outside of trying to close the big knowledge/generation gap when I design for these users, I'm starting to look at accessibility problems, since they are likely more prevalent with seniors.

When I first started writing web apps in 2004, I tried to make everything nice and accessible. CSS, semantic HTML, etc. However, it was a huge pain in the ass.

So now, for my b2b startup, we ignore that. We move quickly and try to push the product out the door so we can succeed. One of the things that has fallen by the wayside is accessibility. Further, with 15 different balls to juggle, I just can't make myself care about the percentage of users who can't use our site.

For my startup, it seems that we would have a negative ROI for making our site accessible. In fact, I suspect the only way to get people to build better sites is for the money to clearly be worth it.

So my question is this: why should a startup invest effort into something that will only affect a small number of users? Similarly, we don't test our site for IE6, just because it's a pain.

I admit I haven't done any research on it, but I've always assumed that it's a pretty easy problem if you're talking about relatively static content-driven pages, but I've always assumed that when it comes to highly interactive web apps it becomes very difficult or even borderline intractable. Is that true? Are you able to use a site like, say, pivotaltracker? And if not, how would you get it to work?

That would be wonderful.

I would love to see a list of the simple things to do that are more or less trivial from a developer's perspective, but have a vast improvement on a disabled person's ability to use a website (alt tags on images is one that comes to mind). Especially if you were somehow able to demonstrate the improvement it makes for you (some kind of before/after thing would be great). I think most devs don't realize how hard it is for people with disabilities to use their sites.

Would you be able to comment on this website? http://www.looktel.com since it's important for us to target the visually impaired but wanted to get some outside validation to see if we designed and implemented the site in the right way for situations just like this.

I'd like to know how to make an ajax web app accessible.

If something changes you can change a background color on an element for a visual user. Is there something similar you can do for someone using a screener reader.

At work we sometimes use asp:Label instead of just putting out the text since with labels we can get a tooltip. We typically use this in table cells to present only 20 chars of a string, and have the full string as a tooltip(alt="the tooltip").

The label doesn't have a "for" attribute.

I wonder how those tools blind use are affected by this. Do you happen to know?

Nice timing on exploring this topic. The DoJ just finished a round of title III revisions to the ADA, they've been exploring expanding the mandate for accessibility to more websites. (If anyone has a good analysis of the final rules wrt the web, I'd appreciate a pointer. I'm under the impression that any changes aren't very broad-reaching.)

"The Department has consistently interpreted the ADA to cover Web sites that are operated by public accommodations and stated that such sites must provide their services in an accessible manner or provide an accessible alternative to the Web site that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The final rule, therefore, does not impose any new obligation in this area. [...] The Department intends to engage in additional rulemaking in the near future addressing accessibility in these areas and others, including next generation 9-1-1 and accessibility of Web sites operated by covered public entities and public accommodations." (fedreg pp56236-56285)

They use an example of online ticket purchasing as a common hardship. (eg by losing timely access to popular events due to the need to use another method to purchase the tickets.)

If you really want to drive change, do this:

- Create a very convincing, clearly written and illustrated report on the top 100 visited websites (Amazon, Facebook, etc.) and how they fail on accessibility.

- Film yourself and your daughter struggling with these sites (burn to DVD).

- Contact well known film directors you think might do a documentary on people with disabilities and send them the video and report. Contacting enough people will make a difference.

- Getting a half-hour spot or so on a major U.S. television network wouldn't be too shabby either, so try to make connections there.

- Contact and work with the politicians and others updating the ADA, but be wary of big talk and no results. There is a lot of lobbying power from a lot of industries that don't want to have to spend the money to make their sites and software accessible.

Other than that, I side with the guys that say that as long as providing accessibility is not enforced and there is little or negative financial incentive, it just won't happen. Which is sad.

Very few places I've worked and done web-related and web development for have cared much if any about accessibility. Any effort I put into making a site more accessible was not met with any praise, and usually I felt as if people thought I was wasting effort.

My heart goes out to you and your daughter.

I have a medical handicap and two special needs sons. I got a job about 4 years ago. My first full-time paid job. Almost everyone at work that I have talked to for any length of time has some kind of medical problem. Some of the ones I know of at the company I work for:

  Quadraplegia
  MS
  Fibromyalgia
  Cancer
  High blood pressure
  High cholesterol
  Diabetes
  Asthma
  Allergies
  Insomnia

I have to manage my condition and finally getting a diagnosis late in life was very empowering in that regard. Based on some of the comments here (and general life experience), one of the things you might do well to address is that a) most folks have some kind of limitation, even if they don't self-identify as "the disabled" and b) accessibility = ease of use, and that = both larger potential user base and likely higher traction.

I don't know much about web design, but the target market for two of my websites is people who tend to have both physical limitations and financial limitations (rooted in their physical limitations, which can be expensive and also inhibit earning capacity). Those financial limitations frequently translate into hardware and software limitations. So I keep those issues in mind when thinking about what to do with my sites.

Good luck with this. It's important stuff.

Like I mentioned on Twitter, its really all the little things (like how annoying vertical bars to someone listening to it) that have been helpful. Looking forward to your articles.

Sounds like a great idea!

1) I'd love to hear about the different issues people have and what tools they use to overcome their problems. Seems like this would help give everyone a level playing field to start talking about developing for accessibility.

2) I've always had trouble with the "build it however now and we'll make it accessible later" approach. Unobtrusiveness needs to come first, Ajaxifying later. However, it's hard to sell that when you don't have much time to begin with. Perhaps you could speak to how we, as developers, could convince our clients (and fellow team members) that accessibility is a) so damn important and b) not just for blind people.

3) I'd also love to read how to make unobtrusive, accessible development work on a team. Do you develop the whole thing with no Javascript first, then come back around and hit it with Ajax? Can you do both at the same time? How would non-technical testers determine it's working properly?

Just some thoughts. It's a great idea and I can't wait to see what you come up with! Keep fighting the good fight Brian!