USA Accessibility resource. (Full Version)

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jaybee -> USA Accessibility resource. (1/18/2007 11:18:10)

http://www.knowbility.org/main/



Nicole -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 5:04:21)

Okay, this has gone on long enough!

This post is now a week old, 25 hits, 3 are mine, 2 are probably Jaybee and I hazard a guess that probably the vast majority of the other people are UK or Australian visitors.

I think this post alone rings some alarm bells, or just raises a lot of questions.

Aren't Americans interested in Accessibility?

Aren't the American Outfront members Accessibility enthusiasts?

Why is it that every single accessibility site I visit eminates from the UK or Australia? None from the US, what is the problem?



jaybee -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 5:24:07)

Mainly because it's not being pushed out as an issue but some people are going to get a nasty surprise. Take a look at the "Do you need to comply thread" where I've updated the US section.



Nicole -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 5:29:39)

Apologies if my response sounded as if I was "trying to start something", but I do find it frustrating.

We read threads occasionally about "who owns the internet" and all that, we laugh at the French because they wanted to start their own, but we all acknowledge, don't we?, that it was started in the US, but they are so lacking in Accessibility it isn't funny, actually besides a couple of Australian sites I have bookmarked, mostly they're from the UK.



Tailslide -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 6:02:22)

Without wanting to state the obvious and sound glib - but America is a large country with a big population.

I'll go out on a limb and say that probably about the same amount of US web designers give a toss about web standards and accessibility as UK and Aus ones do (I dunno maybe 5-10%?) - it's just that numerically that means that there are still an awful lot more US designers that don't around than in UK or AUS.

There are many well know US standards advocates - indeed apart from Tim B-L I'd say that the whole standards movement originated in the US and is US driven.

If you counted UK designers in with European ones (sorry Donkey!) then the figures are probably slightly closer. There'll still be a discrepancy because of varying laws around Europe (some good like in Italy, some not good like in the Irish Republic).




jaybee -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 7:17:56)

You reckon it's as high as 5-10%? I suppose if you're talking about pros who have been in the business a while it could be but if you take into account all the sites out there I'd reckon that's high.

If you take a look at the W3C Sites site there are roughly the same number of US sites on there as there are for the UK. Given the size of their population there should be significantly more. 5% of the US is a heck of a lot more than 5% of the UK.

England 347
Wales 17
N.Ireland 8
Scotland 31

US 416

Australia 121

Cripes even Brazil has 133

If you add all of the EU based countries you get 1610 almost 4 times the US tally.



Tailslide -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 7:26:09)

Interesting figures - I'm suprised (see told you I was guessing).

Oh well. I still like Americans (but I couldn't eat a whole one).



mar0364 -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 10:07:47)

My internal stuff complies section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The only way I was allowed resources to do was to frame it as a Civil Rights issue and not some geeky phase.

http://www.section508.gov/

ps: next time try a subject line like "hot steamy USA Resources" I'll jump on that one.




jaybee -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 10:35:58)

quote:

hot steamy USA Resources
Sheesh!



womble -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/25/2007 15:45:18)

Without going into the whole "business case" for accessibility again (I still haven't recovered from Round 1 [:D]), and I've no idea about the numbers of web designers who are "into accessibility", from experience I've found that in general the big companies, the ones with lawyers telling them what to do, tend to make at least some effort towards accessibility.

The big problem as I see it is the mom and pop stores and smaller sites, and what you'd call I suppose "hobby" sites. The voluntary and govt sectors are a different thing entirely, because in general they "have to" be accessible, or tend to have more of an interest in accessibility. There are vast swathes of the internet though that are inaccessible to disabled people - and that's not just Joe Bloggs from the US - there are sites all over the world that are a disaster accessibility wise. The people who design these sites aren't pros and aren't relying on having to build in any accessibility costs into quotes and working to a tight deadline. They're the people that need to be educated into the ways of accessibility - kind of from the grass roots up.

Another area of importance, which was raised at Multipack's Geek in the Park event last summer was the responsibility of the software developers to integrate accessibility into their products. I think for the non-pros, until the WYSIWYG interfaces and the various bits of stuff you can add to sites without having to get too embroiled in the code, start taking accessibillity seriously and actually start to implement it, it's gonna be difficult to change the current status quo.

Yes, big business needs to know it's responsibilities and the legislation, and maybe, hopefully, some of that'll get through, but IMHO if we can show big business that if the little guy can do it, so can they, and there's a sea change in attitudes wholesale, things might change. In the meantime though, all we can do is continue with the drip, drip approach, and hope it makes some difference.

Oh, and I can't eat a whole American either. [;)]



jaybee -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/26/2007 6:30:04)

OK, this thread has gone completely off track and given its subject we should be a little more serious. Please forgive me but I'm removing all the posts about haggis, boiled beef and tripe.

[edit]and banana fritters

Culinary and cannibalism discussion continued in the lounge in a thread called Boiled Beef.



mtfm -> RE: USA Accessibility resource. (1/26/2007 11:48:56)

As an American (intra) web designer, I believe the problem is this-- unlike many other countries, the law has not been specifically stated to include websites. It's an odd hodgepodge of things, and if you're doing business with the feds, then you need this, all other sites should comply with the ADA. But it's hard to comply with the ADA because it's not really specific right now, if one hears anything at all, it's that you should comply but no one really knows how exactly because it is not clear. (So why bother.) Right now things are so nebulous that a case could be made and a lawsuit brought no matter what efforts were initially made. If I owned a big business and were looking strictly at the bottom line, I'd wait for the lawsuit and then fix whatever it is. Only pay once that way. Otherwise I'd spend $$ as a preemptive fix, get sued anyway, and then be out the initial investment plus the lawsuit.

It's sad, but with things not being clearly defined it doesn't make good business sense to be proactive.

And I disagree with the grassroots approach, I believe that when big business begins to comply, then:

a) people will be taught how to in their job, and will most likely make their personal websites better with the skills they learned there.
b) schools will begin teaching these as skills and educating people in the idea, since that's what it will take to get into a job and that's usually the point of a school
c) MS and other developers will need to clean up their coding software to sell it to the big businesses, eventually producing a trickle-down effect as this software gets used by more 'hobby' sites.




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