Web Accessibility: Will WCAG 2.0 Better Meet Today’s Challenges?

Experiences Of WCAG 1.0

Brian Kelly

UK Web Focus

UKOLN

University of BathUK

Contents

• Introduction• What's Happening?

• Survey of UK University Home Pages• Reports From Other Sectors

• Typical Problems• Conclusions

UK University Home Pages

In Sept 2003 survey of accessibility of 160+ UK University entry points carried out

• Used Bobby (to report on problems which an automated tool could spot)

• How many WAI AA pages were found?

The survey found:• Only four entry points complied with AA• One was a JavaScripted page so isn't accessible

The UK HE community is generally aware of and supportive of WAI issues, uses email lists to discuss issues and share solutions (esp. in light of legislation introduced in Sept 2002). So why this low figure?

Wh

at's

Hap

pen

ing

?

See <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue33/web-watch/>See <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue33/web-watch/>

Scottish Political Parties

Survey of the accessibility of 8 parties standing in May 2003 Scottish Parliamentary elections carried out (by David & Martin Sloan)Four parties' home page failed Cynthia Says test and manual testing found that all have accessibility problems across the Web sites:

• missing ALT tags, contrasts, graphical navigation, poorly implemented frames, non-compliant HTML, PDF files, …

A number of political parties pledged support for accessibility, the Web sites had been developed for the election and had a high profile. So why the poor findings?

Wh

at's

Hap

pen

ing

?

See <http://www.dmag.org.uk/election/>See <http://www.dmag.org.uk/election/>

RNIB Web Site

Bobby was used on 7 May 2003 to test the RNIB home page at <http://www.rnib.org.uk/>Two priority 2 errors were foundIs the RNIB home page really inaccessible?

Wh

at's

Hap

pen

ing

?

Similar findings have been reported for other high-profile accessibility organisations

The Context

One University Web manager, following survey publication, said:"I too have been struggling with just how rigorously the WAI guidelines should be implemented … I certainly aspire to comply as full as I can with the WAI guidelines but …"

• Some guidelines are too theoretical• I will have a pragmatic approach:

• Will use tables for positioning• Will not associate form controls for search

boxes• Will not necessarily nest headers correctly• …

Co

nce

rns

These are seen as WAI requirements. Are they?

Specific ProblemsTypical problems reported by Bobby's automated testing:

• Missing ALT text• Missing DOCTYPEs• Use of absolute positioning• Repeated link phrases

The justifications for these requirements is well-known

They could be fixed easily for an entry point

But:• What about workflow issues• What about tools used today• Are there usability issues?

Co

nce

rns

MS Office Case Study

A typical organisation (including universities):• Has significant investment in Microsoft Office

products• Has conservative users who typically won't

appreciate new tools being forced on them)

In MS Word / PowerPoint:• How many users will know how to add ALT text to

images?• How many would use this option if they knew

about it?

Typ

ical

Pro

ble

ms

If PowerPoint presentations are held on the Web primarily for file delivery with little expectation of use by others should (a) effort be spend on ALT tags, (b) do as at present or (c) remove files from Web site?

If PowerPoint presentations are held on the Web primarily for file delivery with little expectation of use by others should (a) effort be spend on ALT tags, (b) do as at present or (c) remove files from Web site?

Using A Text Editor

Many experienced Web authors / software developers may use a text editor in preference to a HTML authoring tool (I use HTML-kit)

This should be more usable these days (just create simple HTML elements, and leave formatting to a CSS file)

But:• Isn't it too difficult to maintain ids for cell elements

in complex tables• Isn't it worse to get ids wrong than not have

them?

Should the WAI guidelines be explicit on this point?How will users of text editors react?

Should the WAI guidelines be explicit on this point?How will users of text editors react?

Typ

ical

Pro

ble

ms

Large Web Sites

A typical university Web site:• Has devolved authorship• Uses a wide range of technologies, applications,

etc.)• Has hundreds of thousands of Web resources

Differing perceptions:• Web teams would like to install centralised

Content Management Systems to help apply consistent best practices

• Users typically don't like central service departments and want to manage their own resources, use their own favourite applications, etc.

Typ

ical

Pro

ble

ms

WAI Compliance Levels

Is it unreasonable to regard:• WAI A = Good effort• WAI AA = Even better• WAI AAA = Top of the class

But:• Is this really the case?• Aren't some of the AA and AAA requirements

based on assumptions of how the Web will be in the future?

Typ

ical

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ble

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Too Theoretical?

Are some WAI guidelines too theoretical?

Typ

ical

Pro

ble

ms

13.2 Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites. [Priority 2]For example, use RDF ([RDF]) to indicate the document's author, the type of content, etc.

Some questions• How many use RDF today?• Isn't RDF an unproven technology which is

currently of research interest?• Isn't this using WAI as a mechanism to promote

a favoured W3C format?• If I can't / won't do this, will other

Priority 2 requirements be ignored?

Too Theoretical?

Have some WAI techniques not being used sufficiently to expect widespread use?

But• longdescr not supported in widely used browsers• There is little implementation experience:

• Should the file be text, HTML, … (it's not defined)• How will the information be rendered?• Should I provide navigation to the original document?• What about the management of the content?• If it's not widely used, can we implement a better

solution (e.g. based on XLink)

1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or …T

ypic

al P

rob

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Best Practices Or Today's Practices?

Does WAI:• Act as an evangelist for emerging W3C

technologies?• Assume that the W3C philosophy is true ("by

following these guidelines content developers can create pages that degrade gracefully …")

• Address real world concerns in an environment of broken browsers, commercially driven interests, proprietary formats, …

XML

CSS SMIL SVG RDF

XML

CSS SMIL SVG RDF

G6 Ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies .. not supported

G6 Ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies .. not supported

If I use SMIL, how do I dumb things down to HTML?

Typ

ical

Pro

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Cost Of Web Accessibility

But doesn't:• #2 ignores the workflow issues• #2 ignores the documented costs of providing and

maintaining metadata (an ALT tag is metadata)• #3 ignores the real world difficulties of, say,

deploying CSS

MYTH #2: Accessible Web authoring is expensive and time-consumingMYTH #3: Web accessibility is too difficult for the average web designer

http://aware.hwg.org/why/myths.html#m2

Wouldn't it be better to be open about the costs in order to gain acceptance? We don't pretend that safety in cars, providing fire safety in building, etc. is cheap.

Wouldn't it be better to be open about the costs in order to gain acceptance? We don't pretend that safety in cars, providing fire safety in building, etc. is cheap.

Typ

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It is acknowledged that this is not from WAI

Cost Of Web AccessibilityDiveintoaccessibility.org provides valuable advice on making Web sites accessible.

But look at what it describes:

1. First, we're defining an absolute size (12px) for every <p>. All browsers apply this style …

2. Then we include the odd-looking comment "/*/*/". Due to bugs in Netscape 4, everything between this comment and the following one will be ignored. That's right, all the following styles will only be applied in non-Netscape-4 browsers.

3. Immediately after the odd-looking comment, we include an empty rule "a {}". Opera 5 for Mac is buggy and ignores this rule (and only this rule). It applies everything else.

p {font-size: 12px;}/*/*/a{}body p {font-size: x-small;voice-family: "\"}\"";voice-family: inherit;font-size: small;}html>body p {font-size: small;}/* */…

Conclusions

To conclude:• Public sector bodies who want to provide

accessible Web sites seem to find it difficult to do so, even on individual high-profile pages

• The WCAG 1.0 guidelines appear to promote little-deployed emerging W3C technologies

• It appears to be difficult / expensive to produce richly functional & accessible e-learning resources

Or is this taking the WAI WCAG guidelines too literally? Don't the guidelines do a good enough job in the majority of cases, and to highlight exceptional cases or esoteric aspects is to undermine the valuable work that WAI is doing (and provide a loophole for avoidance)?

Or is this taking the WAI WCAG guidelines too literally? Don't the guidelines do a good enough job in the majority of cases, and to highlight exceptional cases or esoteric aspects is to undermine the valuable work that WAI is doing (and provide a loophole for avoidance)?