I agree. James, would you be willing to talk to some of the accessibility team members? You volunteered and Mel and I went overboard helping. :D
It's good to know that at least one country puts the onus on site owners. I still believe that WordPress needs to step up more and making link titles and image alternative descriptions required (in addition to the title for the database) is a simple and easy to implement step. Hard to do that when people click and drag stuff into WordPress, but it is a start for those who use it better. Glenda Watson Hyatt has offered her services and advice to WordPress in the past on accessibility, and I've recommended hiring her as a consultant for years. Here are some of her recent posts on the subject. http://blogaccessibility.com/take-the-accessibility-challenge-make-your-next-blog-post-accessible-in-75-seconds/ http://www.21times.org/archives/glenda-watson-hyatts-top-7-countdown-of-common-accessibility-struggles/ She wrote a great post about WordPress accessibility - several of them, but I can't find them and I have to race out the door to teach. ARGH. Anyway, thanks, James, for letting us run off on our favorite subject. Mel and I have very vested interests in accessibility issues - as you can tell. :D Lorelle On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:12 PM, esmi at quirm dot net <[email protected]> wrote: > on 20/11/2012 19:17 Lorelle on WordPress said the following: > >> On the issue of WordPress "preventing building accessible sites," >> that's not true. > > > Out of the box, WP + Twenty Eleven is pretty accessible. It's not perfect > but it's a lot better than many CMS out there. There's also a very strong > commitment to make WordPress core even more accessible - which is a far cry > from some of the stories I've heard about Drupal or Joomla. Without the > current accessibility level and the desire to improve it, I doubt I'd be > hanging around here. :-) > > >> Accessibility is mostly reliant upon Themes and >> Plugins. > > > To some extent, yes but there is room for improvement in core. And this is > being worked on but, like all improvements, good stable changes tend to > happen slowly. > > >> That must be clear, however, WordPress does not enforce >> compliance with images and links which is part of the requirements for >> accessibility and part of the WordPress core programming. > > > The problem here (as I see it) is that WordPress is a tool that has to be > everything to everyone. And like any tool, it helps if you understand how to > use it properly. Make it too restrictive in an effort to enforce > accessibility and you will cause problems - not least for those who do > actually know what they're doing. So you have to strike a reasonable balance > and try to educate those using the "tool" badly. > > Site owners must take responsibility for their own sites. WordPress core, > themes & plugins can only do so much. Everything else is down to site > authors. They have to create their content intelligently to complete the > accessibility picture and we can help them to some extent. That's why I > re-wrote <http://codex.wordpress.org/Accessibility> to try and focus on > practical steps that non-technical site authors can take. > > It's also worth bearing in mind that disabled users also have a > responsibility to learn how to use their AT software effectively (a factor > often gets overlooked). > > <snip> > >> An accessibility expert told me one time that it would be interesting >> to see a WordPress specific lawsuit over this. Would the site owner be >> completely liable or would some of the onus be on WordPress and/or the >> web developer(s), Theme designers, and Plugin authors for >> non-compliance. I think that's a valid question that needs answering >> to help protect all parties involved. Hold harmless can only go so >> far, and we all know that ignorance of the laws means squat. > > > Under UK law, the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the site > owner. It is up to him/her to choose the right CMS and there is a fair > amount of documentation available to help would-be site owners in this > regard. We even have a published British Standard: > > <http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/Browse-by-Subject/Accessibility/> > > I'm pretty sure that other European countries have similar laws & resources. > Germany & the Netherlands spring to mind. The Philippines are also being > very pro-active in promoting accessibility across the ICT board. > > >> I hope I am not muddying the waters. I just want to make sure that >> compliance with international law is considered in the article so we >> can best serve our audience. This is no longer an ethical decision but >> a legal one. Having followed the lawsuits of these cases over the >> years closely, there is a lot of legal involved, but it boils down to >> simple things that could have been done right in the first place, if >> people understood these are not ethical or "right" choices but the >> law. > > > That's definitely The Stick but there's also The Carrot. Accessible sites > very often out-perform their less accessible counterparts - both in terms of > SEO and user popularity. Tesco.com (one of the world's largest grocery > retailers) take web accessibility really, *really*, seriously. Ever since > the response to their first "accessible" site exceeded their wildest > expectations. Legal & General (a big UK insurance firm) reported a 90% > increase in online sales 12 months after launching their first accessible > site. > > These are not fluffy social organisations. They're hard-nosed corporations > with their eyes firmly fixed on the bottom line. They both made their > initial site changes based on the fear of legal action but became very > public advocates of accessibility once they realised its benefits. > > I think that's the line that we need to promote to site owners. > > In terms of supporting disabled owners of WordPress, I agree that we've not > really got much in the way of specific Codex documentation or pages in > <http://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/> to support them. And that's > something that should really be rectified. Perhaps I could ask some of the > AT users on contributors to <http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/> to > help with this? A couple of them are pretty experienced. > > Mel > > -- > http://quirm.net > http://blackwidows.co.uk > _______________________________________________ > wp-docs mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs _______________________________________________ wp-docs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs
