A comment to a recent post highlights a common question asked of accessibility experts: why bother making your main site accessible when you can just do a site on the side for users with disabilities?
I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.
A partially sighted person can’t sue a magazine because the layout or text is too small. Why should the Internet be any different?
Why don’t we are just do white backgrounds with huge text and then there would be no argument at all?
I still make 2 versions of sites, 1 for accessibility – then I can still go to town on my design version!
This commenter brings up a number of accessibility myths in one post, but I’m narrowing my focus on one: that a second “accessible” site is good enough.
First off, if you create a downlevel site for accessibility, how do you discover it? More to the point, how disabled do you have to be to use it? My grandfather cuts his own firewood, plays a round of golf every morning, and uses bifocals if he needs to look at a screen. How would he know you think he’s disabled, and how pissed would he be if you told him that? People with disabilities don’t come with fluorescent jackets or RFIDs. Most don’t even identify as having a disability. You can rationalize covering for inaccessible design by producing a largely textual site on the side, but it will be ignored by just about everybody, including its supposed beneficiaries.
Someone with low vision has a very easy solution to fine print in magazines. It’s called a magnifying glass. The resolution of the average magazine print, at 1200dpi and up, is more than sufficient to blow up to a usable size, user fatigue and frustration notwithstanding.
However, at 72dpi, and with browsers that don’t zoom well, there is no equivalent excuse for the web. Readable fonts are something that you can do easily on the web, and therefore it is something that web content producers should facilitate at all times.
A deaf person can’t sue a radio station because they don’t produce captions, either. The reason is obvious enough: there is no mechanism on a radio to provide an equivalent alternative. But televisions were retrofitted with closed captioning decoders, and stations were equipped with encoders, once the technology existed to do it. That helped deaf and hard of hearing users to access that form of media. Decoding functionality is now required by US law in TVs above a given diagonal size, and broadcasters are compelled to provide closed captioning (or teletext) by governments around the world. The principle is simple: when you have the ability to increase the number of people who can access a piece of content, do it.
Creating two versions of a site so you can “go to town” is a wrong-headed approach. That usually means different URIs for different users; content that doesn’t refresh at the same time, if at all; and the risk of creating barriers to content that users otherwise could access, based solely on the prejudice of the content producer. It’s worse than merely being inaccessible. It’s a cop-out. And instead of welcoming users regardless of their abilities, it pushes them off into a drab, featureless user ghetto.
It is a far better approach to set your design goals first, and then ask: how can I do this inclusively, without losing the essence of my original vision? Sometimes, especially when you’re just starting out in accessible design, that’s hard. But asking this question clarifies a lot more design issues that arise, and it leads to a more stable and effective design than would otherwise have been achieved. And speaking as a consumer of web design talent, I place a much higher value on people who work to solve these problems than on those who shy away from them.
Only caption decoders were required, and it wasn’t “once” they were available, but over 10 years later, and only in the U.S.(An “encoder” inserts caption or other data into a television signal.)
You missed the chance to fisk your commenter on his claim that accessible sites are by definition undesigned.
Misleading text clarified.
I’m saving the accessible design rant for later. I’m working on a site which should provide a good counterpoint.
You and Joe are right about caption decoders / encoders. Only TV sets 13 inches and larger are required to follow the rule. Sucks as I can’t enjoy portable TV and DVD players (unless the movie comes with subtitles as opposed to captions). Webcasting is another problem area (http://www.meryl.net/ci/archives/003887.html) as more and more Web sites are using video and podcasts — I am feel more and more out of the loop.
But don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all the technology and services that do work for others with disabilities and me today.