What is Digg?93 Comments
- topcataj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Alt ATTRIBUTES, not tags.....
And there's a bit more to accessibility than alt text.... - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23@mrfoos,
It's not that simple, developing a browser that can understand what is graphically laid out in order to describe it in a non-graphical way is essentially impossible without solving the holy grail of AI.
Consider this example: There's a website for a zoo. You have a picture of a tiger to find out about the big cats, you have a picture of a snake to find out about the snake house, and so on.
What is easier - writing a web browser that can look at pictures and figure out that it's a picture of a particular animal, or simply adding alt="Big cats" and alt="Snakes" to the images?
And now generalise that to just about any potential image you might have. Starting to look a bit difficult?
It's not possible to solve the accessibility issue with smarter user-agents. The real change has to come from the content providers. And it's actually easy for them to do in most cases. So why ask the impossible of user-agent vendors? - nitr021, on 10/12/2007, -9/+26Wouldn't it be another web burden to some?
- burke, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Web accessibility isn't just for blind people, it helps normal people and search engines too. Look at what happens if an image doesn't load. If the alt is meaningful enough, it can save the effect.
- saska, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Misleading title and summary. The requirement is that public procurement sites be e-accessible, which is a completely reasonable requirement. This isn't saying that your blog has to have alt attributes or you're going to get fined.
- Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"Requiring" it is one thing. Actually enforcing the law is another.
As the article states, 81% of websites in the UK are inaccessible, however the UK already has legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act and SENDA that require most medium to large organisations ensure that their websites are accessible.
Unless directives like this are followed up by actual enforcement, instead of waiting for a disabled person to waste their time and money on lawsuits, they aren't going to do much good. Organisations are quite happy to carry on breaking the law if they think everybody else is doing it and they are going to get away with it.
And yes, alt is an attribute, not a tag. Calling it a tag is like holding a sign telling everybody you don't know what you are talking about. - joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9You then realize you hired an ad agency that makes really crappy, inaccessible all-flash web site monstrosities and that you got screwed when you hired them.
- jiminoc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11if you went blind next year, wouldn't you still want to have your screen reader be able to read you the headlines on digg?
- rmspangler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Why does everyone think that website accessibility is just about blind people, such a common misconception...Don't forget about hand/finger dexterity problems, color blindness, or other limited vision issues...
I'm sure we all know people that can benefit from web standards/accessibility. - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7> I know this isn't a US law yet (not that I'm aware of)
The USA has a number of laws regarding accessibility, as do other countries.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/Overview.html
> let the market decide how I should or shouldn't code my site.
The amount of pressure that minorities can put on an organisation through normal market forces is limited by virtue of the fact that they are minorities. They don't have the same power in numbers that the rest of the world does. - MattLat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It also means being able to access the content of websites when using a pda, cellphone, web tv, etc.
Basically it means you should be able to access content no matter who you are, or where you're viewing it from. (And note I said access content. it's not going to look the same, obviously) - somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"OR... make 1 special web browser for blind people that's capable of figuring out what's on a web page? 2 billion people versus 1 web browser. My votes on the 1 web browser."
Yeah, good idea. Put all the blind people in a special corner, and ***** everyone who has an accessibility issue other than being blind or partially sighted.
Besides, I heard that people with mobility issues aren't disabled, they're just really lazy.
Anyone who wants to look at a website on something like a PDA or smartphone or anything other than a desktop computer or laptop can just wait until they get home.
I mean, it's not as though basic HTML is perfectly accessible in the first place, and it's only made inaccessible by people who don't understand the concept of graceful degradation, is it? - quine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Oh its law here in the US alright. We have Section 508 ( http://www.section508.gov/ ) - requiring all federal contractors and public facing sites to be accessible... its a pretty big deal, if you do web-biz with the government and aren't 508 compliant, you could potentially lose your contract. No joke.
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You work harder to make your Flash site accessible. Yes, it is possible: http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/best_practices/bp_fp.html
Or you just ditch Flash except for places where it's actually needed. Flash is wonderful, but it's also higly mis- and overused. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The problem with accessibility is even if you have an accessible website you still have major inconsistencies across the aiding software.
There was an interesting writeup @ sitepoint recently that compared 6 or 7 of the more popular screenreaders, and the results varied immensely.
I think a stronger focus needs to be made on the actual aiding software rather than the umpteen billion pages that are _never_ going to be "accessible".
OCR is a great example of the mising features in this software. Why is it we can get OCR software with a $40 scanner, but screen readers can't? It wouldn't be perfect and it would not solve everything, but that doesn't mean it should be disregarded. How many bilions of images out there are or contain text with no description? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -19/+25Let's analyze the numbers. Over 2 billion websites on the Internet. Less than 10 major web browsers. Where is our effort better spent? Educating, lobbying, legalizing, prohibiting, limiting, controlling, and enforcement on 2 BILLION web designers? OR... make 1 special web browser for blind people that's capable of figuring out what's on a web page? 2 billion people versus 1 web browser. My votes on the 1 web browser.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+20Wow, this is great!! ANother step forward for web standards. Awesome!
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10"If digg wants to make it accessible, then they will."
And the government should never have made people end slavery. Or give women rights. Or... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5generally, people who call things stupid, are the ones who don't understand it in the first place.
Stupid computer!
Stupid car!
Stupid phone!
and so on... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Because without laws, the minority is left to the weyside by single minded corporations in their ever reaching march for profits. Without the law, corporate sites would very quickly become flash heavy mega ad-laden, javascript ridden, one-browser hell abominations, getting rid of all minority in order to save money.
If they're not already like this as it is. See Fox / CNN vs BBC. - arnaudh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"why does the solution to every problem end in legislation from the government?"
Spoken like a handicap-free white male. - Hidekatsu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'm glad Europe is taking action!
- pornel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Then it's not a website, but a presentation/movie. You're screwed.
Maybe by 2010 I'll be able to open flash links in a new window... ;> - arnaudh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Socialist drivel"?
The simple fact that you'd use this kind of Bill O'Reilly ***** shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Don't forget the most important visitor to your website, is blind: Google.
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"why does the solution to every problem end in legislation from the government? let the market decide"
Well, a) every solution does NOT come from the government and b) when it does, it's because the market can't resolve it itself. - rr525356, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5All government websites in the U.S. are required to be 508 compliant. When I was working as a webmaster at a state university, I was required to make all of my pages compliant. As much as I hated it at first, it forced me to write good code, and saved me a lot of time and frustration in the long run. Not that I'd support a silly law like this for the commercial/personal sector, but it's not a bad idea for information heavy sites.
http://www.section508.gov/ - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3An easy fix would be for search engines to reward semantically mark up (more), so it appears earlier on SERPs compared to badly written / generated HTML.
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4MrFoos:
Yes, it's impossible. HENCE LEGISLATION. ;o)
Accessible design isn't rocket science. It's quite easy.
The web needs this because the web is one of the few (only?) medium that can be TRULY accessible to such a wide variety of people and devices.
Also, 'accessibility' is *not* 'make your site work for blind people'. That's only a very small part of it. Web accessibility is making your content more accessible to more people using more devices. The whole point is browser agnosticism. - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3> I do understand this, but where does it stop? where is the limit? We can accommodate for the blind, but what about the blind and deaf?
Most laws talk about taking "reasonable steps" to provide the same service without discrimination.
How many websites would actually need to do anything special for deaf people? About the only thing you actually need are captions for videos and transcripts for audio interviews.
> should all websites be forced to send braille versions of the site?
No website ever has to produce a "braille" version. The information available for blind people can be used with a brailler just as it can be used for voice synthesis. - DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4So what happens when your website is mainly flash?
- pornel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There are W3C WAI guidlines for devices as well.
- Unicron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"(Please hear me out...)"
I'd like to but the your post is rather (ahum) inaccessible - looklikecontest, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's not made clear in the artice, but it's very very likely not a law that will apply to the private sector. It's about all the official and governmental sites, and that's not something 'the market' has any rule over.
By the way, it probably wont be enforced very much either. Governments tend not to fine themselves. - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) are available here:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag.php
It's unfortunate that most user-agent developers don't pay any attention to it. - diggnate, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10I know this isn't a US law yet (not that I'm aware of), but come on! a law!?
why does the solution to every problem end in legislation from the government? let the market decide how I should or shouldn't code my site.
(BTW, I'm a big advocate for web standards, I am a strict devel myself.) - seanieb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@san1ty
What makes you think that creating a Web accessible website costs more? - spydrlink, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3For every single one of you web developers who are complaining about making your site accessible, complying with HTML 4.0 standards that have been in place since 1998...your blind yourself, damnit! If you can't code to basic HTML standards then you should be developing in the first place. RTF(HTML)M! Making your site accessible increases your user audience. In increases the ability to share your information with and additional 20% of the world that has either a sight, hearing, or motor disability. It's not hard to do. I mean there's free tools that can help point out problem. Even the HTML Validator extension for FF will show you problems with your pages and accessibility and XHTML/HTML compliancy. Besides, 508 in the gov't requires at least Priority Level 1 compliancy...but if you code to standards, you'll easily meet many of the level 2 and some of the level 3 areas.
It's not hard. Do yourself a favor...pick up a book or read a website...learn the basic HTML language correctly instead of coding for IE with dumbass marquee banners, pages filled up with useless Flash and other items. If you can't do that...get a new job. - joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"I do understand this, but where does it stop? where is the limit?"
It changes from day to day, industry to industry, court to court, etc.
The 'slippery slope' arguments rarely make a whole lot of sense. They basically say 'if my english web site can't be read by blind chinese dogs that don't have internet access, why should I bother at all'? - Nightspark, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The market does decide how you should or shouldn't code your site. Unless you run an EU government site, this plan doesn't affect you.
- CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why will it screw the little guy? I can make websites that comply with web standards, even without having ever undergone any training whatsoever. Oh, and by the way, the software I used to do it costs £0, $0, €0. Nvu.
- Unicron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Know what else is funny? Not reading TFA or the 30-something comments that have already pointed out that, like the American section 508, this only applies to government sites/contractors.
- Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The Disability Rights Commission have been very clear on the matter. It isn't arguable, it's 100% fact that websites are covered by the DDA. The reason why there have been no court decisions on the matter is because the DRC were taking a cautious approach until PAS 78 was published.
If you are involved with web development in the UK, I suggest that you read:
The Disability Rights Commission's Codes of Practice:
http://www.drc.org.uk/the_law/legislation__codes__regulation/codes_of_practice.aspx
Bruce Lawson's article on PAS 78:
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2006/pas-78-guide-to-good-practice-in-commissioning-accessible-websites/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The problem is that every day colleges and universitys are churning out students taught only how to use dreamweaver to create poorly validating and needlessly image heavy sites that Google has no idea how to index.
When the curriculum changes, then the web might change too. - bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think this is a great idea becauuse in my mind, web accessability is very important. Most content providers don't give a #(@*.
On the other hand, as Web 2.0 rages on - are there any screen readers out there yet that support changes in the DOM? Because I have seen some controversy lately over who should be responsible for handling that. In my mind, it shouldn't be the content providers, but the Screen Reader vendors. - CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's actually arguable that, in the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act ALREADY forces web accessibility, although there have been no court decisions on that point. It's nice to see the rest of Europe getting into line!
- pornel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2True. Basic accessibility doesn't take any special extra effort, if done by someone who knows and uses proper techniques.
It just seems impossible to webmasters who only know how to spew table tagsoup ("add alt to 100 spacer gifs on every page!?" ;) - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> Also there is currently no implemented method of making javascript, AJAX, DHTML accessible
You are completely wrong. Just because a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon and are busy cutting corners with their Ajax implementations, it doesn't mean Ajax itself precludes accessibility.
It's easy to make JavaScript and related buzzwords like Ajax and DHTML accessible. You build the application so that it works properly without JavaScript, and then you write the JavaScript as an optional enhancement. The difference to people with JavaScript enabled is zero, the difference to people with JavaScript unavailable is immense.
The first use of Ajax that really caught widespread attention was Google Suggest, which works fine without JavaScript. - CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not on the entire internet, but on sites in the EU certainly.
- CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, the way of making Javascript accessible is to provide a non-Javascript alternative - Gmail does it, for example, with the Basic HTML interface.
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