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

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

#241

IE9 isn't a disability? Colour me shocked Apologies in advance for the poor (attempt at) humour, I don't mean to trivialise a real issue, only to ridicule IE9 users. In all seriousness it's due to the complexity of catering for certain disabilities each of which require entirely different technical solutions, and some of which depending upon OS and various devices can be seamlessly provided for. I would say a better…

IMO we are seeing that form sells more than function. MAC and Win 8 are a prime suspect. I am seeing UIs that look nice but are difficult to use for a fully able user, let alone a user with some kind of disability.

It's Mac, not MAC.

I don't use Windows so I can't comment on that, but OS X has a lot of support for disabled users. First, VoiceOver is a built-in screen reader and there are a variety of other options to adjust the contrast, cursor size, amongst other things. There's support for visual alerts, mono audio, and subtitles. One can also use switches to control the system if you have them connected.

Basically, Apple spends a lot of effort to make their products accessible. I know that iPhones are popular in the blind community as the VoiceOver support makes it easy to use.

I've found that OS X is far more usable now than the 10.1-10.4 years. So, while the form has improved, so has the function.

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

#242

With this one weird trick, you can make the web better for up to 20% of your visitors! Let me tell you for free! Please caption your videos, or make transcripts available. Did you get that? Please caption your videos, or make transcripts available. Yes: 20% of people over the age of 12 have some degree of hearing loss[1]. That's 6% more (two IE9 marketshares!) than the total of vision and mobility disabilities. And i…

Also helps with search, and it will often save time to let people in general skim a transcript instead of watching a video to see if really covers the subject they need to know about.

Precisely. What I'm asking for would benefit a lot more people than the 20% I'm calling out.

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

#243

I think the question is flawed. 1) We don't cater to IE9, which is at 5.11% according to stat counter. IE9 is a bad choice point for this - it's the first IE that had auto-update. Everyone left. We're catering to IE8+; 8 is currently at 6.5%. 2) You don't count the version; you count the version and all its successors. That is, we're not catering to 8, we're catering to 8+. 8+ is at almost 35% and is still the domina…

" 1) We don't cater to IE9, which is at 5.11% according to stat counter. IE9 is a bad choice point for this - it's the first IE that had auto-update. Everyone left. We're catering to IE8+; 8 is currently at 6.5%." Why bother? in a few months it will be 5.5%. Next year it will be 1%. Why invest any time or attention to a browser whose market share is low and continue downwards into nothingness? Do nothing. The IE8 pro…

> 1) Why bother?

Because the stakes are high enough that 5% validates the engineering effort.

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> 2) If 9+ is 30%, why quibble over the extra 5%

Same answer.

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> 5) The distinction between the two is two independent implementations.

I didn't know that. Thank you for the information. :)

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> 8 #1) Colourblindness (8% of Caucasian Men)

Jesus, really?

Luckily, my sites tend to be monochrome, so I get trapdoored on this.

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> 8 #2) Dyslexia

I wouldn't even know where to begin making a website be dyslexia-sensitive. I don't know anyone affected and don't even know what's important there. Is there a resource about this?

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> 9) The non-presence of ARIA does not make a site inaccessible.

In a question about why we invest no effort in accessibility, it is germane to point out the level of effort you have placed into accessibility.

And, respectfully, that markup.

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> Unfortunately, you are presenting the opposite side of the problem.

I'm just explaining why it isn't gotten right.

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> So you have a little more knowledge about accessibility issues than the OP - but not enough to pass a quick scrutiny.

Yeah, that was my point. My belief is that this limitation that you have correctly observed in me is the defacto case for nearly all web developers. I think it's just something most of us don't know.

Like, write a poignant guide or a learn you some consideration or something. Give people something to read, rather than to point out that they haven't read anything, you know what I mean?

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> Perhaps, what is needed is for you and I to stop being part of the problem of disseminating half-truths

I don't believe that I have done this. I did make an error in naming the kind of recommendation though.

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> spend that time quietly doing our jobs properly

I think that I actually do this. The world is full of a lot of hard, unfair choices, many of them outside my hands. I do my best to support as many people as I can within my time and budget constraints.

Perhaps we disagree on the choices, however.

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> Invest the time to teach someone else how to build accessible websites

Yes, that was my point. Easy to say; too hard, apparently, for either of us to do.

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

#244

IE9 isn't a disability? Colour me shocked Apologies in advance for the poor (attempt at) humour, I don't mean to trivialise a real issue, only to ridicule IE9 users. In all seriousness it's due to the complexity of catering for certain disabilities each of which require entirely different technical solutions, and some of which depending upon OS and various devices can be seamlessly provided for. I would say a better…

IMO we are seeing that form sells more than function. MAC and Win 8 are a prime suspect. I am seeing UIs that look nice but are difficult to use for a fully able user, let alone a user with some kind of disability.

The Windows 8 development tutorial stuff is actually heavily visual reader emphasized.

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

#245
post #129

I write sites for a government, and I most certainly write code to standards, then to aria, and finally pick apart any IE weirdness. This has been quite the fight over the years, but if we want to be considered professionals and called engineers, then we follow standards, and when an employer says "I want you to ignore standards because we don't need it" you have to say no, I'll do this right, or you can find someone…

That's wonderful! Both brave and very professional! :-)

Thank you, you made my day. Though in truth, I'm not very brave, I'm single, without wife, girlfriend, or kids, or anyone really depending upon me. And I work for government because I got tired of making rich men richer. I'm an idealist, and an idiot in truth. But thank you.

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

#246
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Solutions that start with 'let's change the world' never, ever work. Let's fix screenreaders. And help the blind by analysing what;'s in front of them, rather than changing it." It's not screenreaders that are the problem, its the quality of the content (in terms of structure, perceivability, operability, usability and robustness). In short, GIGO. The garbage input is where the fix is needed, not the tool that's att…

There was a period not too long ago where people were encouraged to build web apps without any behavior because screenreaders couldn't run JavaScript. Now nearly all screenreaders can run JavaScript. The thousands of hours spent, for a 0.5% (grossly overestimating) solution, are completely and utterly wasted. What specifically else is wrong? What wouldn't be solved better be actually fixing what screenreaders can't s…

"Now nearly all screenreaders can run JavaScript."

Saying all screen readers can run JavaScript is like saying all graphics cards can run JavaScript. Screenreaders don't run JavaScript. Screenreaders are not web browsers. A Screenreader is an audio interface on top of an operating system. It's the web browser that runs JavaScript, not the screenreader.

I know what you are attempting to convey, despite the factual incorrectness, and the way in which you describe it. But these are tougher problems to solve in a generic way - it requires expertise on the subject matter under discussion.

I took a sentence of words at their face value, recognised the incorrectness of your statement. Applied a context of accessibility to the statement, and discovered what your intended message was (which was quite different to the statement you used).

Human beings do this all the time. A computer would interpret your statement and say it is false. A human can divine the essence of the message without being blocked by an obviously false statement, a human can look past that and assess the statement in context.

I realise, as a human, your original statement is either intellectually lazy, or misinformed (perhaps you meant to say speech browser?). You either know how screen readers work and worded the statement badly. Or you have no idea how screen readers work, and don't actually realise your statement is factually incorrect.

So I can perceive the content of your statement: Screenreaders have the ability to deal with a dynamically updating DOM. That is a step forward, but minuscule in overcoming the typical accessibility problems present for screenreader users on the web.

"What specifically else is wrong?"

"What wouldn't be solved better be actually fixing what screenreaders can't see"

Your question is misleading. It assumes or implies that all serious accessibility issues can be fixed/addressed by a screenreader. Yes, it would be fantastic when every accessibility problem is thoroughly alleviated by a screenreader. But with today's technology it can't, not even in another 10 years. Many accessibility issues have to do with content gleaned indirectly or implied. It's a human trait of communication.

It's the difference between:

* "A red triangle"

* "Danger"

* "This side is up"

* "Go this way"

* "North"

The use of images is a serious accessibility barrier for blind people. It is not sufficient (or perhaps misleading) to just describe the image in isolation. An image conveys more information than the objects/concepts in the image. The meaningful content of an image can change as the context in which the image is used changes.

Perceiving contextually relevant content from an image - that is something blind people can't do because they are blind. It is also something that's awfully tough for a computer to do reliably. And it's something that a web developer can do in five minutes by authoring an appropriate text equivalent (in an alt attribute of an image).

The big accessibility issues aren't simple "let's parse the HTML, CSS and JavaScript", they come down to using context, visual cues, audio cues, spatial cues, implied meanings, intonation, cultural identification, localisation normalisation - a wide variety of human-based factors to extract the necessary contextual meaning.

Being able to extract the appropriate text-equivalents for an image is something that's trivial for a content writer to do - as the content creator. And exceedingly tough to do without a visual acuity, a visual acuity that computers are far from achieving.

And that's just one single accessibility issue: text-equivalents for images. If you fix that, you'll have the appreciation of millions of people instantly, a substantially accessibility barrier will disappear overnight. I strongly encourage you, if you think this is an easily solvable problem, to just solve it, or help the experts solve it. Seriously. Please.

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

#247
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wonderful! Both brave and very professional! :-)

Thank you, you made my day. Though in truth, I'm not very brave, I'm single, without wife, girlfriend, or kids, or anyone really depending upon me. And I work for government because I got tired of making rich men richer. I'm an idealist, and an idiot in truth. But thank you.

In a better world principled people wouldn't have to feel like idiots. Glad to make your day! :-)

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

#248
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of having any sort of standards and accessibility best practices taught and adopted industry-wide, that take into account a much larger spectrum of disabilities, the programmers reading this should just go and spend an unspecified amount of time using a screen reader from now on?

Definitely not, but as the OP wrote, you don't start at the HTML5 spec if you want to learn to make web pages. Learning to use a screen reader and actually testing sites with it is not only a very important skill to have, but it will give developers more insight and perspective into accessibility. Standards can fill in the gaps, but I believe you still need a 'wow' moment when you feel completely lost on a website.

I misinterpreted your suggestion, and appreciate the clarification.

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

#249
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not, but as the OP wrote, you don't start at the HTML5 spec if you want to learn to make web pages. Learning to use a screen reader and actually testing sites with it is not only a very important skill to have, but it will give developers more insight and perspective into accessibility. Standards can fill in the gaps, but I believe you still need a 'wow' moment when you feel completely lost on a website.

I misinterpreted your suggestion, and appreciate the clarification.

Thanks very much for your question. I didn't realize what a horrible job of writing I did until I read your response!!

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

#250
According to WHO only about 4% have a visual impairment of any kind, and how exactly would one design for a dexterity impairment? Simpler to navigate menus?

And as wfjackson notes below, the browser statistics appear to also be in question.

Finally, I'm sure that someone would contest the claim, but it's far more difficult to design for blindness than browser idiosyncrasies. The entire UX has to be re-thought down to the last detail. When you consider the myriad interactions that could occur and the difficulty of building & testing for a small audience, it's no wonder that it's still the status quo.

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