Yesterday, two unrelated events made me think about accessibility and communication – and in particular the impact of accessibility and usability on a communication system.
Tag: assistive technology
How the west was won and where it got us
I read a blog post by web standards advocate Drew McLellan yesterday, the opening sentence of which alarmed me greatly:
As a web developer, there’s little I dislike more than building sites to be accessible.
That’s some confession. Now, cards on the table – I don’t know Drew, though I do appreciate his efforts in promoting web standards adoption. And I’m not here to suggest he is arguing against accessible design – on the contrary, from his blog it’s something that he feels obliged to do, so he does it:
So as much as I find it an unpleasant chore, I’m firmly committed to building sites that can be accessible as I can make them.
What I do take from the blog, though, is that this is an example borne of frustration that accessibility considerations are stifling innovation in web application design and development. As I’m not yet familiar with the technologies discussed in the blog, I’ll leave the details of the argument surrounding those technologies to others. I will say that much of Drew’s ‘accessibility’ objections seem to focus on the avoidance of dependency on JavaScript – which, since publication of WCAG 2, is no longer considered a disability accessibility showstopper (in other words, the very use of JavaScript does not immediately exclude a particular group of users on account of a disability).
The '58 sound 