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3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

fionatg.com

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Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#151

Post by tombrossman »

steven2012 wrote: post #131
fionatg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, it sort of re-inforces my point that when I was designing that site I didn't really think about it. I don't have to be an accessibility expert to discuss the fact that developers don't tend to create accessible sites!

It doesn't reinforce your point, it makes you look like a hypocrite.

That's an unfair criticism. The author (and I, and the rest of us) are not focussing our efforts logically. We can see browser stats in server logs, but measuring disabled or impaired visitors' traffic is easy to overlook - servers don't collect this data point.

She's now raised the issue for a wider audience and this could only be hypocrisy if she held herself up as an example of how to do things correctly. She isn't, and says so right at the top of the article.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#152

Post by judk »

hluska wrote: post #81

I don't agree that accessibility is a training issue and I certainly don't agree that it would take a month to become familiar with accessibility guidelines. Rather, download a screen reader (for Windows I like Windows Eyes), learn to use it, shut off your monitor and spend one hour trying to use the web. That will give you all the context that you need. Once you're armed with this experience, make navigating through…

That tells you what the problem is, but solving it with current tools is still very hard.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#153

Post by evunveot »

If you want to get started with WAI-ARIA and don't want to read hundreds of pages of documentation, these two references are very helpful:

http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#role_definitions

http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-aria-in-html-20131003/#recommen...

Then you can test with the screenreader NVDA (if you have access to Windows or a Windows VM):

http://www.nvaccess.org/

I'm no expert, but the process of using ARIA in HTML feels very much like trying to employ "semantic" HTML5 tags, except that ARIA provides a much richer vocabulary. It can be good inline documentation, too: when you come back later and wonder, "What is this div for?", seeing a role="presentation" attribute is a handy thing.

It starts to feel like ARIA takes over the responsibility of semantics and HTML becomes just a scaffold, even moreso than it has been in its relationship with CSS (tags that serve no purpose except as hooks for styling). Which I appreciate, because "semantic HTML" has always felt limited, awkward and a bit pointless, apart from the small part of the effort that has known SEO implications (h1 elements and so forth).

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#155

Post by Gracana »

fionatg wrote: post #49
eknkc wrote: post #6

I hate the font choice of this article.

I think its a love/hate thing with my site theme. I've had a lot of comments that it looks fantastic. I think I'll have to increase the font size at least.

I actually like the font... but I'm not surprised that a lot of people don't.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#156

Post by leeoniya »

justinsteele wrote: post #137
leeoniya wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the irony is palpable

Did you read the article? There is no irony here, she immediately points out her lack of understanding of fundamental accessibility principles. That is why she wrote about how we as an industry allow that to happen (senior engineers who know nothing about catering to disability).

sure there is. it's like an investigative journalist learning nothing (or failing to apply lessons learned) about good investigative journalism while writing about it.

another comparison would be like a professional driver admitting he knows nothing about hand brakes, writing an essay about why he knows nothing about them, how he can learn and be more knowledgeable about them...and then proceeding to drive 1,000 miles with the hand brake engaged.

i wouldn't expect her to learn or apply all of WAI-ARIA, but you'd think after doing so much research on the subject, she could change a simple font-family tag to help her case.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#157

Post by Zelphyr »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #149

I imagine the main reason is that catering to disabilities is much much more expensive when you consider the variety of disabilities that there are and how much they differ in severity and how they will affect different individuals in different ways. I also guess that people with more severe disabilities are less likely to control large corporate or personal budgets than the general population and those that do are e…

I'm sure it is quite expensive but then again, as we a web developer, my job is easily made 50% more difficult (thus VERY expensive) when I have to support IE.

The problem as I see it--and to your point--is that I work on enterprise web apps and my Fortune 500 customers have never said a word about accessibility for some reason. I'm sure they honor their Americans with Disabilities Act obligations and build ramps into their buildings. Do they then not care about employees (or customers and vendors for that matter) once they're at their desks?

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#158

Post by coherentpony »

Couple of things.

First, these two groups may or may not be mutually exclusive. Catering for the former may take care of some of the latter too.

Second, this question is actually very easy to answer. Catering to disabilities makes almost no money. Catering to IE9 gets the customers that forgot or don't know how to upgrade. That's a wash when it comes to advertising.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not playing devil's advocate. I do my best to cater to people with poor vision for anything I write. That includes anything I use colour for. I'm simply answering the question as if I were the CEO of a company, where my goal is to make as much money as possible, and not care about anything else.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#160

Post by thefreeman »

fionatg wrote: post #30
thefreeman wrote: post #23

Where are those numbers from? 3% seems really low. I would guess the IE8 (being the highest version that can run on XP) population is much higher then that, but IE9 was chosen to make the number look better.

IE8 was 6%, which I think still validates the point. I actually chose IE9 because a lot of companies have actually dropped support on IE8 but are still supporting IE9 (mine included).

Fair enough, I guess the usage is just lower then I thought which is great news. As another commenter mentioned though it is very dependent on industry, I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprise applications have much higher IE usage.
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