I have to agree with Julie here. Working for the largest UK retailer we pay a lot of attention to accessibility.
Currently reviewing http://www.tesco.com/ in response to only five minor issues raised by the RNIB accessibility report. The way we state it is web standards and validation are the first step in creating an accessible site. Though to be fair we struggle with even that as the sites are huge. Personally I'd say any developer (novices excluded) who doesn't give a damn about accessibility should give up coding and focus on design instead. Regards Mike -----Original Message----- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Julie Romanowski Sent: 23 August 2011 16:12 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] How do you cater to users with disabilities? Mike, maybe you should have worded your question a little differently. At my company, we don't approach accessibility as "catering to users with disabilities", but we work toward making applications accessible to the greatest number of users possible. No application will ever be 100% accessible, but following standards and WCAG 2.0 guidelines helps us to get as close to 100% as possible. To answer your question - Sticking to standards is not enough. Accessibility and usability testing are critical. At my company, we have both an accessibility lab and a usability lab. We have accessibility and assistive technology (AT) experts onsite who test using various AT, and who work with actual AT users to identify issues with applications. We also train designers and developers to identify accessibility issues early in the design and development lifecycle. There are several other companies I know of that are doing the same and so much more, such as Adobe, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo. As for developers not caring about people with disabilities, I disagree. There is a large community of developers who take accessibility seriously and are striving to make applications accessible to people with disabilities. -----Original Message----- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Mike Kear Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 2:54 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] How do you cater to users with disabilities? The conclusion I am coming to, with 5 days since I asked this and no-one actually saying they do ANYTHING to cater for people with disabilities, is that even after all this time, no one really spends much time thinking about users with special needs, other than to code to standards and hope that does the trick. No one either agreed or disagreed with the proposition that sticking to standards IS in fact enough. I asked this question, wondering if someone would say 'yes we have a usability lab' or 'we have a consultant who runs our sites through his screen reader for us' or 'we have meetings before launch specifically to discuss' or something. But no one has said they do anything at all for users with disability. The only responses I've had to this question are people referring me to documents on line that I found long ago with google. I was interested that none of the people who gave me those URLS (except Josh Street) said they actually used the advice in the documents themselves. Josh wasn't specific about how he caters to people with special needs, but seems to speak with some knowledge so I'm assuming he caters to Dyslexics in his designs. I guess it's going to take another law suit like that one against the Olympics2000 site to get anyone to take users with special needs seriously and actually lift a finger to cater to their needs. The conclusion I'm being forced towards is that developers are basically saying that users with special needs will have to swim for themselves and it's up to them to find some software of their own to get around all the obstacles the A/Bs put in their way. I'm glad at least property developers have been forced to change that attitude. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion 9 Enterprise, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month -----Original Message----- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Mike Kear Sent: Thursday, 18 August 2011 11:12 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] How do you cater to users with disabilities? How to the rest of you a/b people (i.e. able bodied) cater to users with various forms of disability? Up until recently, I've tended to rely on keeping my code to standards, eliminating tables except for their proper purpose of tabulating data, and hoping that will give the accessibility level required. Do you go to the step of accessing your sites with JAWS or something similar to see how the site works for users with screen readers? I remember in the 1990s when I was working at Australian Consumers Association (choice.com.au) we had someone come and bring his PC with JAWS. The web team all sat in the boardroom getting ever more glum looks on our faces as we saw to our horror how terrible our new design was for this poor guy. We thought we'd got a terrific new design, and were about to launch it, when he did this demo for us. We had to go back and recode everything. This was before anyone was talking about standards though - it was back when the normally accepted method of laying out pages was to use tables, and buttons were nearly always images. I remember being astounded at how fast he was moving around the page, even though we'd unwittingly designed an obstacle course of humungous proportions for him. Our anguish at the time resulted in a far better web site, and convinced me to pay attention to standards and accessibility ever since. But now I'm wondering if simply sticking to standards is enough? What do you all think? Do you include JAWS in your site testing? Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion 9 Enterprise, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ******************************************************************* This is a confidential email. Tesco may monitor and record all emails. The views expressed in this email are those of the sender and not Tesco. 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