Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
From Mike Zarro Nicholas makes a great point. The best (and only?) way to ensure accessibility is to test with users who make use of assistive technologies (not just screen readers). It is essential to take this a step further: The best (and only?) way to ensure accessibility is to test with users who have disabilities. Reason: lots of people with disabilities (the majority, even?) don't have any assistive technologies. Example: the very large numbers of people with age-related eyesight problems. Example: the people with cognitive disabilities. There are very few assistive technologies that will help with text that's too difficult to understand. Possibly none. And it's also important to understand that people with disabilities who use assistive technologies may use those technologies in a different way to people without disabilities who use them. Example: many people with disabilities who use a screen reader 'speed hear' in a way that the casual user of a screen reader wouldn't be able to emulate. Longer article on the topic of working with assistive technologies as a non-disabled person: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1773.asp best Caroline Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Great article, Caroline! Thanks for that. I work with a guy who teaches people with low vision and blindness to use those assistive technologies, and I lean on him for that kind of insight. But I don't recall ever reading it anywhere, and I have looked! I regularly consult resources published by the RNIB, AFB, WebAIM and others, because accessibility is a high priority for me. Anyway, I think more people would make an effort to think and code accessibly if they could gain some small measure of the understanding you have. Please keep it up! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Echoing Nicholas and Jeff, I believe it is important for designers to have a fundamental understanding of how interactions are implemented online (or in any environment) in order to understand possible accessibility implications. In my designs, I've always tried to lay out two paths for interaction. One that makes use of the lowest possible level so that those faces with accessibility issues are still able to utilize the tool, and one that builds on top of the first to streamline interactions for those whos technology can handle it. One thing to mention though is that there have been times where even though I take this approach, one interaction path is adopted/implemented by the development and business areas and not the other. This primarily happens when those areas (for some reason) implementing 2 paths is twice as expensive, and/or accessibility is not a concern. Sad, I know. -adam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
I should add that while designing two interaction paths might sound like double the work, once you have a basic understanding of Progressive Enhancement and implementation techniques, the amount of additional work is typically minimal. -adam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
I have found I just think that way about the rich interactions I design now. It is just another factor to consider as you explore the design space of your project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Hi All,Can anyone shed some light on whether using AJAX makes a website non compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act? I know there would be violations using some controls of Ajax and not in others, but is there some study/information on this somewhere (about which controls are non compliant etc)? Would appreciate any help on this topic.. Sudhindra V. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
With most modern screen readers, JS is not the problem is is CSS. Accessible needs to consider not just JS off, but CSS off as well. You will have a better chance of ordering your content how the screen reader will read it if you view your page with CSS off. Better yet, try out your code with a screen reader! Finally, as with usability, no cook book checklist will help you 100%. Your best bet is to bring in folks with various disabilities and see how well they can use your application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Don't you'll think that the question is not whether AJAX is compliant and should be used or not, but rather : Can people with disabilities access and complete the tasks that other can do also? The answer should not be based on the technology but on the design / architecture of the site to support its various users. AJax can be compliant or not depending on how you implement it. just an opinion. Regards, Jay Kumar On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sudhindra Venkatesha Murthy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All,Can anyone shed some light on whether using AJAX makes a website non compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act? I know there would be violations using some controls of Ajax and not in others, but is there some study/information on this somewhere (about which controls are non compliant etc)? Would appreciate any help on this topic.. Sudhindra V. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
At Iceweb 2006 Joe Clark gave a presentation on this topic. His conclusion may still be valid: ...Ajax has problems. Maybe not fatal problems, but problems nonetheless. [...] You%u2019re more than halfway there just by getting your page to work in the first place. What I expect to happen, though, is that the remaining half of the problem will not be addressed %u2013 because accessibility is viewed as a %u201Cfeature%u201D that gets left off in the other half of the product. http://joeclark.org/access/research/ice/iceweb2006-notes.html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
This may be a little off subject, but I'd like to see a debate about screen readers themselves. Many agencies (here in France) freeze when the client starts requiring full-on accessibility. Designers gasp in horror as their ideas for rich interfaces are reduced to cumbersome HTML pages with multiple screen refreshes. I've heard on many occasions questions like why are we having to downgrade the experience for everyone? or how can we achieve experience excellence for those with and those without disabilities? Surely the answer here lies in the screen reader software. I'm certainly no expert in accessibility issues or screen readers themselves, but instead of asking can AJAX be accessible, I'd like to ask when will screen readers be able to interpret AJAX... Sam Woodman Adobe Consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
the two are not mutually exclusive. I have designed many rich interaction for clients that are still accessible. The goal is to think in terms of progressive enhancements instead of graceful degradation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement That will get you a strategy for your rich interactions. Then you take care designing the templates and stylesheets for much of the remaining work. Screen readers are making many strides to bridge the gap. But if you are communicating information via position and motion only, then it will be a challenge to translate that into a purely spoken mechanism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Nicholas makes a great point. The best (and only?) way to ensure accessibility is to test with users who make use of assistive technologies (not just screen readers). Here in the US accessibility remains somewhat obscured, I guess we're waiting for the courts to figure out what defines accessible. Recently Target settled a lawsuit for $6M with the National Federation of the Blind regarding its website. While this does not provide a legal precedent, it is at least an indication of where we're headed. You can read about the settlement here:http://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled/ An argument I have used to promote development for accessibility is that the same techniques often make the site/application mobile-friendly. That seems to assuage my designer colleagues to some extent. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Disability Discrimination Act and AJAX
Some resources that might help you, Sudhindra: http://tinyurl.com/6xv6d6 http://xtech06.usefulinc.com/schedule/paper/29 http://webbackplane.com/thought/pbe http://adactio.com/journal/959 http://tinyurl.com/2xtugr http://www.sitepoint.com/article/simply-javascript/ http://tinyurl.com/3sx7jj Nicholas is right. Accessibility is all about progressive enhancement, and once the proper habits are developed it makes a lot of sense. It's like dressing in layers, each of which can be added or removed as needed. The problem with a lot of rich interaction is that some designers leap forward to the next new technology before building an adequate foundation in HTML and CSS, both of which are simple and straightforward, but also powerful in their own way. They jump right in and build a site that relies heavily on AJAX or Flash, and only later wonder why some people complain that they can't access essential content. The Tower of Babel comes to mind as an apt metaphor. For the sake of accessibility, everything should be done at the lowest possible level. If there's a way to structure and style it appropriately in HTML/CSS, do that first and add the rich interaction later. Otherwise you may find yourself needing to retrofit for accessibility, and that's just as messy as stripping off the icing to rebuild a cake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32646 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
