I wrote a quick post on the lack of accessibility of Recovery.gov back in February. Jim Thatcher has now done an in depth study of that site as he recently did with WhiteHouse.gov. As I noted before, the Recovery site is surprisingly inaccessible. I'll let you read Mr. Thatcher's evaluation yourself, but I think there is one feature on recovery.gov that really shows how low a priority accessibility is on this site. The keyboard-only link to WhiteHouse.gov is a JavaScript based link that requires a followup mouse click to function. That sort of defeats the purpose now doesn't it?Go read Mr. Thatcher's Accessibility of Recovery.gov in full, it's worth the time.

There is an alarming trend in the art and design. Not in the artists and craftsmen, but in the clients.  The trend is, an insistence on mediocrity.  It is often an attempt to make something universally appealing. I honestly don't think that's possible. Both fine art and good design can evoke emotion, often strong emotion.  You have to realize though, that they induce both positive emotional responses, and negative ones.  Some people like them very much, but others will dislike them.  The only way to eliminate this negative response group is to lower or eliminate the emotional impact. This can only result in mediocrity. Let's consider this in terms of color. Can you name an intense, universally appealing color? The answer is no, you can't. Some people will love red, while others will hate it. Want to make it more universally appealing? Dilute the emotional response, by diluting the color.  Diluting and mixing the colors won't get a universally appealing color though. It will get you beige. The solution? Don't try for universally appealing. Try to please you. Not a personal design, but a design that appeals to you personally. Like red? Then use it. While you can't make something universally appealing, you can make it appealing. Don't be afraid to make a statement, even if it isn't a strong one. Concerned about that negative response? It is something to keep in mind, but don't let that fear define the design.  The only way to rule out the possibility of a negative emotional response, is to remove any chance of an emotional response. That path leads to emotional beige, it leads to mediocrity. Don't go down that path, don't insist on mediocrity.

Jim Thatcher has written what I hope will be the first of a series on the Accessibility of the White House Web Site. About a month ago I wrote a quick accessibility note about the new recovery.gov site. A pretty site, but not particularly accessible. As I summed it up then, "I see this site as a wonderful opportunity... missed." I wasn't pleased with my initial mechanical testing of recovery.gov, but I haven't had the time to follow up. Fortunately, Jim Thatcher has now taken the time do a quick audit of WhiteHouse.gov. It looks like the White House site isn't any more accessible than the Recovery site appears to be. The two sites share the same problems with the skip links, and the same poor use of headings. Serious accessibility issues with simple solutions. Another opportunity missed.

Why does making your site accessible matter? First let’s give a definition of accessibility, I like Jim Thatcher’s best. “Basically, technology is accessible if it can be used as effectively by people with disabilities as by those without.”

1. 12.8 percent of adults (21-64) are disabled in some way. Bjelland, M.J., Erickson, W. A., Lee, C. G. (2008, November 8). Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (ACS). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics (StatsRRTC). Retrieved April 7, 2009 from www.disabilitystatistics.org
2. 8 to 12% of males of European origin have a color deficiency. Accessibility and the Web
3. 5.5 million people have obstructed vision because of cataracts. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
4. 4.2 million people have impaired vision because of corneal dystrophies. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
5. Worldwide, 42 million people are blind. - Statistics on Blindness and Blinding Diseases in the United States
6. Approximately 17 percent (36 million) of American adults report some degree of hearing loss - NIDCD Health Information
7. Only 1 out of 5 people who could benefit from a hearing aid actually wears one - NIDCD Health Information
8. 5% of people have javascript turned off - W3 Schools
9. Internet Explorer 6 still has a 17% browser share - W3 Schools

Using IE6 isn't a disability, but it does fall into the realm of accessibility. Choices you make on your site platform and design can limit who has access to your site. Identify your links with only color? Did you eliminate 12% of the male population from seeing those links? Use sound without captions? Did you just remove 36 million Americans from your viewing audience? How many people do you remove from your audience if your site requires the use of a mouse and not just a keyboard? These all add up, and they add up quickly. Each accessibility problem you have removes people from your audience. Maybe the real reason that you haven't become a famous blogger is that the right people just haven't been able to see your site yet.

Interested in 9 Ways to Make Your Site More Accessible?

Celebrating a Newly Discovered Ability

Also, because this event was on accessibility, I needed my presentation to be ultra accessible. I needed a way to caption the presentation for those participants who were Deaf and hard of hearing. A transcript would be provided for those who were deaf-blind.

Glenda doesn't just write about accessibility, she requires it. She isn't just an expert in accessibility, she's also our target audience. Go listen to what the word accessibility means to her.

I was asked by a friend to take a look at recovery.gov yesterday. To be honest, I was disappointed. While it is a pretty site, it isn't nearly as accessible as it should be.

Here's a few things that I see that should really be fixed.

1. Content is not organized using headings as it could be. That would improve the ability of screen readers to navigate.
2. Color contrast is low in a number of areas. Difficult for the partially sighted to read.
3. No default language is defined.
4. Form controls need to be associated with labels.
5. In-line images are used as bullets rather than controlling with CSS. This can be awkward for screenreaders
6. The very clever looking sliding timeline at the bottom of the page is not keyboard navigable, making it unaccessible to anyone using a traditional browser without a mouse. I do see that it's replaced with a table version if you have JavaScript disabled, which is a nice touch, but  that doesn't cover everyone.
7. Skip Links should be fixed to work in Internet Explorer, and made visible at least on focus. (added (4/22)

There are some other minor issues, but those six bullet points cover the important ones I see. There is an accessibility page, but unfortunately it's been mostly used to make a political statement.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive agenda to empower individuals with disabilities in order to equalize opportunities for all Americans.

A wonderful goal, but that's not what accessibility pages are for. This is to explain accessibility functionality in general, and specifically for the site. There is a bit of that at the end, but not enough. This site should be a perfect example of accessibility. Don't say that you want to "empower individuals with disabilities", do it. Empower individuals with disabilities by giving them the means to access the information on your website. I see this site as a wonderful opportunity... missed.

More bad news from Microsoft. Despite the uproar caused when they originally suggested making developers opt in, to get standards compliance mode in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) they've now quietly returned to this unwise strategy. So developers are now back where we were a year ago, before Microsoft backed away from this plan. It seems we're being reprimanded for not making all of our sites compatible with a browser that hasn't been officially released yet. Why didn't I fix my sites for IE8 Beta? Because I'd have had to fix them again for IE8 Beta 2. Why not for Beta 2? Because I'd have had to fix them for IE8 Release Candidate 1. You get the picture.  Microsoft has a history of making significant changes right before the official release of their products, so I'll be waiting until I see a finished version before I change anything. Here's a few choice quotes about the progress of Internet Explorer 8. IEBlog : Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8

With IE8’s Beta 1 release, Microsoft demonstrated its commitment to interoperability by making the most standards-compliant default view for web pages IE’s default.

With IE8’s Beta 2 release, we introduced the Compatibility View button. This button enables savvy end-users to resolve compatibility problems they encounter with sites that rely on legacy IE behavior.

When users install Windows 7 Beta or the next IE8 update, they get a choice about opting-in to a list of sites that should be displayed in Compatibility View. Sites are on this list based on feedback from other IE8 customers: specifically, for what high-volume sites did other users click the Compatibility View button? This list updates automatically, and helps users who aren’t web-savvy have a better experience with web sites that aren’t yet IE8-ready.

I translate this progression of quote like this

1. We'll be standards compliant
2. We give you the choice of being standards compliant
3. We'll choose whether you're standards compliant or not for you

While they suggest that users will get to choose to opt out of this "compatibility list" on installation, how many users will select "review and modify each setting individually" on installation? I'd guess very few. This setting will theoretically also be in the preferences, but I'd be willing to bet few IE users will go looking for it there either. Microsoft says that they're taking this course of action because they became aware that:

"...large groups of people were having a less than great experience because they weren’t aware of the manual steps required to make certain sites work."

They were surprised that a new feature was not being properly used in a Beta product? Did it occur to them that fixing the problems with the Beta product would alleviate this issue? How about educating their users about their new feature? Apparently not. Why spend all this time and money to improve their product, and IE8 is a big improvement, if you're going to force it to replicate the behavior of its flawed predecessor?

The City University Web Team has produced what they call an executive summary of the WCAG 2.0 in less than 100,000 words. It's a very well done summation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 that is significantly under 100,000 words. That's more than I can say about the original, which at least feels much longer than that. If you're trying to explain WCAG 2 to anyone, letting them read this would be a great place to start.

Website's in general, and blogs in particular, are all about links. Sending people where you want, to content that they want. Are your links easy to find? How about if your site was viewed by someone colorblind or partially sighted?

Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" the functionality, and possible benefit, of some system or entity. - Wikipedia

If your viewers can't find your links, can't navigate your site, can they benefit from your content? The problem I often see with links isn't with the main navigation, but with links in the content of a page. Too often I see content links that don't contrast enough with the main content to be easily identifiable. They blend in to content, and therefore are useless. A link unseen is a link unused. In this sentence, which words are links? It's a trick question actually, because every word is linked. I've used a bit of inline CSS to change the appearance of most of them. I've also suppressed the hover and focus psuedo-classes on some of the links. This means that they don't change when you mouse or tab over them. Not a helpful change if you're trying to find links, but one I've seen in use. The important part of links is that they are consistently identifiable. They need to be seen to be used. Links can have just about any effect applied to them you'd like. Choose from things like added color to bold, italic, underlined and overlined text. These can be done singly, or in any combination. For accessibility purposes, you should use at least two of them. One thing that accessibility guidelines agree on is that color should never be the sole method of passing on information. WCAG 1, WCAG 2 and Section 508 all have similar things to say on this subject. If color is your only identifier, it only takes a poor monitor to make them invisible. Use multiple signals to identify links and everyone will be better off. I'll go into the CSS of links in another post, but for now think on this. The design of your links is important. Color and style, underlined or not, background color or not, these are all can affect the flow of traffic through your site. How important is visitors finding your content to you? Thank you to Glenda Watson Hyatt for starting the discussion that lead to this post. Now I suggest reading her post on 3 Tips for Making Your Hyperlinks More Usable.

I finally installed IE8. It's time to starting making sure all my sites working in IE8 before it comes out this spring. I'm using Internet Explorer Collections to run Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, 7, and 8. Internet Explorer 5.5 isn't really necessary I suppose, but I was curious how it stacked up. It's doing about the same as Internet Explorer 6 in my testing. Internet Explorer 8 isn't as bad as I'd feared, but it's not as good as I'd hoped either. We'll see how the final version comes out.