Goal of web development
“
Goal of Web developer is not merely to dazzle, but to deliver information to the widest audience possible
”
Developers on the web
- Today web developers and designers are more concerned about dazzling the customer with fancy features
- Web developers are self educated, and often focus on visual aspects
- Internet is a world wide information and communication medium. One of the biggest reasons its so popular is because it is a medium to get information and deliver content
- And since information is useful for everyone, delivering that information to the widest audience possible, irrespective of Medium, platform and capability is really important
Neither Accessible nor Usable
- Web Designers and Developers are usually ignorant or arrogant
- Lack of awareness and Interest create problems and add to the list of badly developed websites
- According to a report, commissioned by the United Nations as part of its International Day of Disabled Persons
- 93% failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphics
- 73% relied on JavaScript for important functionality
- 78% used colours with poor contrast, causing issues for those with colour blindness
- 98% did not follow industry web standards for the programming code
- 97% did not allow people to alter or resize pages
- 89% offered poor page navigation
- 87% used pop-ups causing problems for those using screen magnification software
Accessibility is more than a checklist item
- Lot of developers usually treat developing accessible web sites as a check list item
- Topics like semantic web, CSS3, ARIA are all developer favorites at conferences, but actual application is a hurdle
- In many companies, not being 508 compliant means a Million dollar law suite
- So Developers always live in fear and think of accessibility as a road block
- Developers think that making a site accessible will mean radical changes in design and additional man hours
- It is a radical change if you do not apply guidlines and best practices ground up
- Procrastination is the root of all accessibility failures
- We as technologists portray accessibility as a gigantic problem to solve and being incredibly hard to tackle
Change in Mindset
“
Mindset and approach has to change. Doing things right will help everyone ”
Rethink the approach
- To threaten people with big laws and law suites is point less
- You cannot sell anything by showing that it doesn’t work. Approach must be positive
- Developers, Designers and Engineers are really creative people, need to channel their interests better
- present the technology as a useful add on rather than a check list item
Consider common Module patterns on Web pages
Markup focused on presentation
<div id='container'>
<div class='header'>
<div class='headertitle'></div>
<div class='closelink'>
<img src='close.gif' alt='Close link'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='body'>
<div class='list-item'>
<span class='list-bullet'> </span><span class='list-text'>Some Text 1</span>
</div>
<div class='list-item'>
<span class='list-bullet'> </span><span class='list-text'>Some Text 2</span>
</div>
</div>
<div class='footer'></div>
</div>
Markup focused on content and semantics
<div id="container">
<h2>Header Title Text
<img src='close.gif' alt='Close link'>
</h2>
<p>
<ul>
<li>Some Text 1</li>
<li>Some Text 2</li>
<ul>
</p>
<div class='footer'></div>
</div>
Actual Markup of the examples
Good clean code benefits all
- Semantic markup will benefit everyone. Web crawlers make better sense out a page, pages fare better for Search engines (SEO)
- Simplicity is everything. Start off with a simple design and then layer endlessly
- Progressive enhancement is a great approach
- Offer functionality only when platform has capability of handling it
- Opposite of graceful degradation
- Never depend on Javascript, Flash or Silverlight for major functionalities
- Always design for basic functionality, not for enhancements
Working with technology add-ons should be fun
- Through correct mindset and approach, solving problems ground up is actually fun
- Solve real problems that impact real people
- Fancy Ui's with 100 click throughs are not a useful solution, but a challenge to get from point A to point B in the fastest easiest time is a good problem
- Smart solutions to solve real problems
- http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/
Developer Limitations
“
The developers of today are only as capable as their current limitations, and one of our biggest limitation is attitude and mindset
”
The New mindset
- Content is the most important component on the web. Content must always come first
- Knowledge of assistive technologies is as essential as knowing HTML, CSS or Javascript
- Smart user engagement techniques is really important
- Clean Layouts
- Ground up standards compliance
What Tech industry can do
- Educate their employees about benefits of scoping in for accessibility best practices ground up
- In many cases, accessibilty is an after thought, and teams scope for it as a separate activity
- This is when it becomes extreamly hard to handle and time consuming
- Have the tools in place right from the start
- Invest in Accessibility as a solid test criteria for success of a product
- User engagement design groups need to factor in application usability with application presentation
What Education institutes can do
- It is important to start with strong fundamentals. One cannot teach great Web design without proper fundamentals
- Place emphasis on content and not presentation
- Do not start with fancy titles like Ajax, Flash, DHTML etc
- Stress on features as core components of an application, not colors and font sizes
What Yahoo! Inc. is trying to do
- Accessibility is no longer a separate discussion topic
- We are working towards improving our existing solutions
- Emphasis on Clean and Simple designs
- Develop for Core functionalities first, then layer endlessly
- 'Code Preliminaries' even before a single line of code is written
- Focus on what needs to be done for a given UI mock
- Cover all accessibility related items ground up
- Periodic reviews
- Focus on ARIA on our platforms
What Yahoo! is trying to do ...
- Yahoo! UI libraries have ARIA support and are all progressively enhanced
- Explore cleaner ways to indicate progress, show dynamic updates and Ajax status
Examples of what we have been trying to do
Examples of what we have been trying to do ...
Break the Barriers
“
Accessibility is about removing the barriers and a mindset change can break barriers
”
References
- http://www.slideshare.net/guest2d6a45/yahoo-accessibility-rewiring-inclusion-strategies-tools-and-techniques-to-promote-barrierfree-learning-a-national-one-day-conference-in-nottingham-at-the-national-college-on-tuesday-9-february-2010
- http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/accessible-web-applicationss
- http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/seo-and-accessibility
- http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/liberated-accessibility-presentation
- http://www.accessibility-professionals.org/accessibility/mindset.html
- http://dnis.org/interview.php?issue_id=1&volume_id=7&interview_id=132
