1. Trenton Moss

    Director at Webcredible

    29 October 2004 13:13pm

    Trenton Moss

    Web accessibility is about making your website accessible to all Internet users (both disabled and non-disabled), regardless of what browsing technology they’re using.

    More and more countries have passed laws stating that websites must be accessible to blind and disabled people. With this kind of legal pressure, and the many benefits of accessibility, the big players on the web must surely have accessible websites, right? Let’s find out...

    1. Incorrectly assigned ALT text

    Guilty party: Amazon

    Screen readers, in-car browsers and users connected through slow dial-up connections who turn off images rely on ALT text, in place of images. There are two types of images: informational and decorative. For optimal accessibility, informational images should have an ALT description that adequately describes the image and decorative images should have ALT="" assigned to them. By assigning this null value, browsers simply ignore the image.

    The majority of images on Amazon don’t have any ALT text - quite extraordinary considering how non-time-consuming it is to assign them. Even more bizarrely, some informational images, such as the Amazon logo, have been assigned ALT="".

    2. Non-resizable text

    Guilty party: CNN

    To take full advantage of the Internet, users with partial or poor sight need to be able to enlarge the text on web pages for the information to be accessible to them. As such, you need to specify the font size in terms of %, em or a relative value (small, medium etc.). CNN have specified the body text to be 12px in size.

    3. Text not created through markup

    Guilty party: AOL

    If images are used to display text then the text is obviously not resizable and not accessible to users with poor sight. Additionally, text embedded in images appears pixelated and blurry to users utilising screen magnifiers. The W3C Priority 2 guidelines (point 3.1) covers this so if your website uses images to display text then it is not AA or AAA accessibility compliant.

    Virtually everything you on the AOL homepage is created through images, even their phone number. What if I want to copy and paste their number into my address book?

    4. Forms aren’t accessible

    Guilty party: Most major websites (except AOL)

    For forms to be accessible, prompt text should be correctly positioned and assigned to form items. For more on accessible forms read the article, Build accessible online forms.

    To check if an input box is accessible or not, simply click on the text next to it (the prompt text) and a flashing cursor should appear in the box. For radioboxes and checkboxes, when you click on the prompt text the item should become selected.

    5. Invalid HTML code

    Guilty party: eBay

    With so many different browsers and browsing technologies available, invalid HTML code can have really unpredictable results. You can use the useful W3C HTML validator to check.

    6. Link text doesn’t make sense out of context

    Guilty party: Weather Channel

    Visually impaired Internet users often browse websites by tabbing from one link to the next, so for maximum accessibility all link text should make sense out of context. ‘Click here’ and ‘more’ are two common examples of non-descriptive link text. Descriptive link text also has web usability and SEO benefits.

    The Weather Channel homepage features a number of links, including a ‘Click here’ or two, that would make absolutely no sense when taken out of context.

    7. Using HTML to change font size/colour

    Guilty party: Google

    Web users with special needs may need to use specific fonts and colours when browsing the web to make a site accessible to them. They can utilise their own CSS document to override the fonts and colours you specify in your CSS document - but not the ones specified in the HTML document. As such, all formatting should be called up through the CSS document and shouldn’t be placed in the HTML document. Don’t do as Google does and use the <font> or <body> tags to change the colour and size of text. Google’s <body> tag, for example, looks like:<body bgcolor=#ffffff text=#000000 link=#0000cc vlink=#551a8b alink=#ff0000>

    8. Tables used for layout

    Guilty party: Virtually every major website (except ESPN)

    Tables are structural elements so any website laid out with tables is automatically ineligible to be W3C AA or AAA accessibility compliant (see point 3.3 of the W3C guidelines).

    Using CSS for layout ahead of tables means your website will be accessible to all ‘future’ technologies: handhelds, in-car browsers and WebTV. You can test how your website looks on a mobile phone with the Wapalizer and you can download the free WebTV Viewer and test your website on that too. Using CSS for layout additionally has search engine benefits and usually allows for a much quicker download.

    9. Website relies on JavaScript

    Guilty party: Expedia

    Approximately 5% of Internet users’ browsers don’t support JavaScript (source: The Counter) so alternatives should be provided to ensure accessibility to all.

    Turn JavaScript off on your browser and then go to Expedia. It’s truly remarkable that a website as large as Expedia can’t function without JavaScript.

    10. Separate ‘accessible’ version

    Guilty party: Manchester United

    The W3C says you should only resort to a separate accessible version "if all else fails". Separate accessible versions are strongly advised against because:

    • They often have less functionality than the main website
    • They’re often not kept as up-to-date as the regular website
    • They can be seen as one more way of excluding disabled people from regular society
    • The regular website may still cause accessibility problems for non-disabled people

    Manchester United’s website is so bad in terms of accessibility that it could probably have been named as the guilty party for each of the ten points in this article! Manchester United have completely missed the point of web accessibility: Web accessibility is all about following design standards and then adding in a few simple accessibility features. It’s not just about disabled users being able to access your website - it’s about everyone being able to access your website, including people using handheld devices, WebTV and in-car browsers.

    Conclusion

    So all-in-all, it looks like the big players aren’t leading by example when it comes to web accessibility. Surprising really as they’ll undoubtedly be the first ones to have legal action taken against them should more cases start to make it to court. So come on, guys, sort it out. Web accessibility isn’t rocket science. Any web developer with basic HTML and CSS design knowledge, and a bit of time on their hands, can easily learn and implement web accessibility.

    Trenton Moss, Webcredible

  2. Daniel Zambonini

    Technical Director at Box UK

    31 October 2004 18:06pm

    Daniel Zambonini

    Some nice finger pointing there.  I’ve been using the Google example for a while - it’s quite suprising.  I’m assuming they use ’old skool’ mark-up for really old browser compatibility (and some PDAs too, which used to prefer font tags to CSS) - but I wonder how much money they’d save on bandwidth by switching to CSS?.  I remember reading that they chopped a couple of bytes off their logo to save bandwidth, so just imagine what they can do when their user’s browsers are allowed to use and Cache CSS...

    A bit off topic, but whilst doing some AAA work recently, it struck me that it’s pretty much impossible to achieve AAA - depending on how you interpret the guidelines.

    I’ve seen Soooo many sites saying they’re AAA, but then I look at this checkpoint:

    "Provide information so that users may receive documents according to their preferences (e.g., language, content type, etc.) "

    And the sites seems to make no allowance for it at all.  In fact, I can hardly find any sites that use HTTP content negotiation.

    I wonder how far you have to go before you ’comply’ with this point?  Do you need to provide the content in _every possible_ common language? And what about content types?  Do you need to provide every page in every common format?

    What are people’s opinions on the interpretation of this checkpoint?

    Thanks,

    Dan

  3. David Wall

    Personal

    05 November 2004 22:12pm

    David Wall

    Interesting findings.  These large companies have less of an excuse than the many small companies that don't have as much web expertise or staff.

    I wonder what went wrong internally at these companies that allowed these oversights to occur.  I wonder if they actually built some level of W3C compliance into their web strategy or if they just don't have the right checks and balances in place. 

  4. Deri Jones

    CEO at SciVisum.co.uk

    08 November 2004 16:07pm

    Deri Jones

    sure, it's no surprise that the big players don't get accessibility right -in the same way the big players make regular web errors - Friday's news was that cahoot bank was showing customers account info of rother customers... or that there are some big name sites that if you visit without IE or javascript, won't even let you in the site at all!

    But agree overall - AOL appears in the list of course!
    And ebay too - which I always find too slow anyway to be comfortable.

    >7. Using HTML to change font size/colour
    >
    >Guilty party: (http://www.google.com/) Google

    Whilst you're strictly right, actually Google's site is pretty good - real basic colours and backgrounds and nearly no images, mean that very few people wouold want to fiddle with font colours.

    >9. Website relies on JavaScript
    >
    >Guilty party: (http://www.expedia.com/) Expedia
    >
    >Approximately 5% of Internet users’ browsers
    >don’t support JavaScript (source:
    >(http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/July/javas.php) The
    >Counter) so alternatives should be provided to ensure
    >accessibility to all.

    Not sure how reliabale those numbers are - the Counter's most recent data today (dated September) says 9% of browsers don;t have javascript - seems way to high to me at 5 or 9.

    >>Turn JavaScript off on your browser and then go to
    >Expedia. It’s truly remarkable that a website as
    >large as Expedia can’t function without JavaScript.

    Not sure why the size of the site matters here - but you're right, there are a number of sites that don't accomodate non-javascript visitors.

    >So all-in-all, it looks like the big players aren’t
    >leading by example when it comes to web accessibility.
    >Surprising really as they’ll undoubtedly be the
    >first ones to have legal action taken against them should
    >more cases start to make it to court. So come on, guys,
    >sort it out.

    They'll get there, there's a slowly growing awareness among developers <generalisation mode on>who tend to be young and with good enough eyesight etc... that designing for accessibility is no un-cool and doesn't have to cramp your creativity (well not too much anyway!)

    Deri Jones
    web app testers - www.scivisum.co.uk

  5. Dermot O'Mahony

    Global Enterprise Solutions Manager at Dell

    22 April 2005 09:56am

    Dermot O'Mahony

    What went wrong internally?  Simple...big corporates have very few DM's at the coal face and the decisions are based on paper info (the numbers) rather than real commercial (or social) considerations.

    So...they cut out Accessibility as it's seen as purely a cost.  After all, the law is only for 'reasonable endeavours.'  So they are not encouraged to do any more.  Another phenomenon I've come across is 2-fold:
    1 - agencies are worryingly unaware of how to build accessible pages (altho' Flash can be made accessible, agency designers seem blatantly unaware of basidc coding standards because they rarely hand code anything)
    2 - I've heard of agencies dictating to their clients how they will build pages/sites (What's that all about).

    If you want a proper web presence, employ someone internally who knows the channel and can retain control!)

    What we need isn't lawsuits and threats of action to make things happen... we need to start emphasising the commercial benefits of building accessible sites... remember when businesses wanted Future-proofing?  Well an accessible wenbsite is a future-proofed, device-independent website, SEO, Wider reach, Corporate Social responsibility and Brand, Customer experience (which does convert to sales), control!! _ never pay an agency to re-skin a site again...just change the CSS...and on and on...

    Dermot O'Mahony
    Head of Portal Production
    www.o2.co.uk

    On 22:12:09 5 November 2004 DavidWall wrote:

    Interesting findings.  These large companies have less of an excuse than the many small companies that don’t have as much web expertise or staff.

    I wonder what went wrong internally at these companies that allowed these oversights to occur.  I wonder if they actually built some level of W3C compliance into their web strategy or if they just don’t have the right checks and balances in place. 

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