the accessibility paradox/cheering for the little man
published on:July 25, 2008 / 12:16
back to overviewThe web is growing up, little by little, step by step. It used to be a barren place governed by no-one in specific, until a few people roared their heads and started organizing things. Those people were the forefathers of what we know today as "the web standards movement". A group of people defending the ideals of the web, fighting for universal standards and accessible content on the web.
Chances are that you, the reader of my blog, feel like you are a part of this community. Maybe not actively, but I'm sure you're trying your best to make the web a better place. The standards community is without a doubt a Good Thing™ and has an ever-expanding influence on the web.
But as is the fate of many movements that start of small, grow bigger and slowly grow out of control, there will be times when it's wise to look back and make sure that the current actions still represent the initial goals. Even though the standards community was built around the ideal of a web that is accessible for everyone, some of the efforts have backfired and have actively hurt this exact ideal.
Accessibility gone bad
Of course I'm telling nothing new here. We already know that if you over engineer your site, you might actually be hurting the accessibility of your site instead of improving it. There are two common variations of this problem.
The first variation is a direct result from lack of knowledge on how people with disabilities interact with the web. Excessively large alt descriptions or filenames on images that require no extra information, tons of skip links or unnecessary hidden headings might slow actual browsing down for people working with screen readers. These efforts are well-intended but often misguided because the actual benefits are not always fully understood.
The second variation is less obvious, and lies in the misconception that accessibility is targeted solemnly at people with a disability. Some people put so much effort in accessibility measures that they seem to forget there's an audience that views the website through a regular browser (which is probably still the largest portion of our target audience). Such sites often lack any decent functional design (fe. fully liquid layouts) and are often plain eyesores.
But there is more, seemingly hidden from the conscience of the standards community as it has received little to no attention at all. And in a strange way, it even seems to be promoted by the community. Bear with me.
The facts
Some time ago Microsoft dropped a tiny bomb. They announced the inclusion of a new meta tag in IE8. This tag is meant to indicate the browser version for which a certain page is developed. For example, when you define a page as developed for IE7, the browser will render the page according to the IE7 rendering rules, even when using a newer browser version. This measure was proposed to stop pages from breaking whenever a newer version of a specific browser is released.
Although the inclusion of this tag caused quite a stir within the community there seemed to be one main issue on which everyone agreed: the default handling of this meta tag. When the tag is not included in a page the browser will render this page to IE7's standards instead of picking the most current rendering engine available. Only by including the meta tag could newer versions of the rendering engine be used.
Not a good thing according to many, as IE7 is not really known for its support of web standards. Even the people backing up the decision of Microsoft didn't prefer this implementation, but merely empathized with Microsoft's reasons. Much rejoice when Microsoft announced that they would revert their decision and implement the meta tag the way the community had proposed. Victory! ... or not?
The dilemma
I've been following this debate from afar and something struck me when I went over the decision of Microsoft. At first I felt quite stunned, like most. After that I felt quite happy because Microsoft had shown initiative towards the standards community. But the more I considered their decision, the more I felt like they reached out to the community without much critical reflection.
Let's take a closer look at what we have been asking of Microsoft. When they first proposed their meta-switch solution they put the pressure on the shoulders of us web developers. We had to work the magic to render our pages according to the rules of the latest rendering engine. If not, our pages would still render the way IE7 rendered them, all bugs included. Annoying, but not very difficult to overcome.
By reverting their initial decision, Microsoft is now putting the pressure on the people that hardly know what they're doing in the first place. The people that just want their content published on the web. They know little to nothing about meta tags, standards or cross-browser issues. They just know their site as it shows up in their browser, often made with sub-standard authoring tools. They are also the people that write extremely inaccessible code, so I guess that serves them right ...
The least accessible content
It's quite difficult to predict the net effect of this decision on non-professionals. Maybe they might benefit from this decision as the original implementation would create an ever growing gap between the rendering of their pages in IE7 and modern browsers, making it harder to render pages neatly on all browsers. On the other hand, their sites will keep on breaking when newer versions of a browser are released.
But that is not really the point, what surprises me is that nobody even seems to consider those people. All we seem to think about are web standards. My fear is that these people are less involved with the web and are less inclined to look for possible solutions when they face a problem, so chances are that their disappointment will influence their drive to keep publishing content on the web.
For us web developers the meta tag is nothing more than a little quirk. And those who aren't aware of the meta tag have an obligation to look for answers, as it is their job to do so. Web amateurs have no such obligation and should spend their time on getting their knowledge out there on the web. They shouldn't be bothered with web standards, that is our job. So it surprises me that we are actively requesting Microsoft to bother them with it.
I am not foreseeing a huge drop in published content on the web, but I'm sure this will have an effect on some people. It would be a shame to alienate these people as they often have very valuable and rich information on often obscure and marginal subjects. This is a part of what makes the web great, and somehow we seem to be stopping that from happening because the way they are publishing their content isn't accessible to everyone.
The question is, would we rather have 100 sites with totally accessible content, or would we prefer 200 sites of which 50% is only accessible to a majority. Because let's be honest, designs might break, sites might be plain ugly and the source code might be a downright mess, as long as people can get what they're after, most of them won't ever complain.
The future
We can only hope that the tools to build sites will improve at a quick rate, or we'll lose out on people who have interesting content to offer but lack the skills to offer it in an accessible manner. Personally, I think this is a distorted view on "the web that is accessible to all", apparently the community has a different opinion.
In this article I have referred to the "community" as a group of web professionals that's promoting both accessibility and web standards. Web standards are obviously a way to improve accessibility on the web, but at the same time web standards driven to their extremes will hurt web accessibility just as easily by alienating people from the web, preventing them from publishing their content and thus participating on the web.
So let us revise what we are striving for. Do we want an accessible web, or do we just want all content on the web to follow the standards? Are we really supporting an ideal or are we just looking for an easier job?
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11 comments in total
I'm not sure how the existence of Microsoft's meta tag, whatever its final default behaviour or affect on web publishers, is the responsibility or fault of the Standards community? The meta-tag as Microsoft first proposed was, really, stunning. For many people, I think that some progressive change seemed better than none--but the decision was up to Chris Wilson and the Internet Explorer team. The Web Standards community has no authority over Microsoft. (I don't know if you saw the video clip over at Adactio that J.K. put up as his response, as where Web standards stood at that point to IE and Chris Wilson and their meta-tag, where one fellow begs another for his life, at gun point?"). Just as Microsoft was responsible for its original inception, so it is, completely, for its meta-tag's eventual implementation(s). The Standards community can voice its objections or ask for changes but even how progessive those are is only within Microsoft's frame work.
No, but it played a key role in their decision to come back at the implementation of the meta tag. Anyway, this article isn't really about the meta tag, it's about the way standardistas look at "accessibility" and whether the definition they use isn't too narrow.
Hello there! I'm Jojo Esposa and the current president of Philippine Web Accessibility Group. We advocate web accessibility for all but especially for persons with disabilities. Our official website is http://www.pwag.org and we are a semi-governmentm the only group of its kind in Asia. Since I serve a group of PWD sector (deaf) and maintain a blogsite about them at http://deafphilippines.wordpress.com so I am basically inclined on the PWDs welfare above anything else. I've read many debates about web standards as opposed to web accessibility. That's precisely our group promotes only the basic accessibility requirements in order for more designers to make minor site changes as opposed to standards that require much effort. Simply putting alt text on images, using descriptive links and titles while avoiding the use of "click here" etc. and skip to contents link are very doable and can create an even greater impact on the screen reader users and those with inability to use the mouse than by completely overhauling your site in order to conform with the stringent web standards. :-)
I’m pretty sure the legacy crap-HTML rendering built into every browser will be more than enough to handle the legacy-style crap HTML the authors you’re worrying about will produce.
Your argument seems to be based on a number of false premises.
Web standards is the same thing as web accessibility. While web accessibilty may, under certain circumstances be a nice side effect of web standards, it is foolish to equate these two concepts. You seem clever enough to figure this out on your own, but if this needs more explanation, let me know.
Making a new version of IE more standards compliant will break existing websites, every time. The whole point of the web standards movement is to create standards (agreed upon forms, measurements and protocols), which when conformed to, will result in the same interpretation of a webpage in every conforming browser/rendering engine. As IE becomes more standards compliant, it is converging on this standard- Making its rendered output more similar- not less, to other conforming implementations. By neccessity, this means less similar to the way IE7 rendered a page. But not as different as IE7's rendering is from IE6, or IE6 from IE5. Because it's converging on a standard, the changes from one version to the next are not arbitrary. They are not designed specifically for the purpose of breaking existing pages. They are deliberately implemented to conform. It's not going to be the same standards breaking each time, only the from the set of standards that IE7 didn't implement correctly. It will be more obscure and newer things that change from one version to the next. Things that most except the most cutting edge pages have implemented. Making a more standards compliant IE-8 is not breaking the web. It's fixing it.
Of course with that, I'm assuming that the IE team isn't intending to make a whole bunch of arbitrary non conforming changes, just to piss people off. I don't think they are. (much)
That's right, the metatag only applies to standards mode pages. The only people that the metatag effects- with EITHER implementation, are arguably people with some knowledge of web standards. The pages with no doctype render with quirks mode as they always have. Authoring tools, and Publishing systems that include the doctype SHOULD be rendering standards compliant code, which theoretically doesn't break in a standards compliant renderer. If this is not the case, it is the Authoring tool vendor's responsibility to deal with it, not the ameteur user, not standardistas, and not microsoft.
and finally, to the question of whether Web Standards movement people have lost their original focus? Well, the original implementation of the metatag would have resulted in forcing authors that wanted their standards compliant pages to render correctly in IE8, to put a proprietary tag in their website, or a proprietary header in their http headers, thus rendering their standards compliant code non standard. Though well meaning, this situation would have been no advancement towards standards at all, but a degredation.
Hey, where'd my numbers go?
I don't think I actually did that. But the "standards movement" is a big force in the web development community and it's pretty fair to say they are the biggest force behind spreading accessibility awareness.
It's like that now because new standards are taking ages to develop. I'm not sure if this will be the case when they start implementing css3 stuff. I've taken a look at some of the modules, especially the grid module seems pretty complex. No way they'll get that one right the first time around.
See, I guess I wrote my article to counter this kind of reasoning. You're right of course, it is the vendor's responsibility. But that doesn't really help us if they fail to live up to that responsibility.
Same goes for IE6. Of course you can say it's Microsoft's responsibility that IE6 fucks up the rendering of a page. And it is, but has that helped us as web developers ? Don't think so, it only made our job a whole lot harder. And 8 years later Microsoft is still trying to fix what they've broken.
The point I'm trying to make here is that sometimes the most ideal way is not always the most real way to implement something. I understand why people would choose for an opt-in solution, but I'm afraid these people argue mostly for their own benefit, not for the general benefit of web development.
I really don't think that's the case. I've read enough comments from people passionate about the web to know that there's a large portion considering the benefit of web development and the web in general, rather than their own personal agendas.
I also share Joe Clark's view that I don't think the amateur users are going to be affected that much by this issue. Even if it does have an effect on the way a lot of web pages are rendered (and the whole point is that it's not s'posed to), most amateurs who are purely concerned with getting their message out there use free templates designed by web designers. If designers create poor templates that don't work in new browsers, they'll soon get enough complaints that they'll need to change their templates and perhaps learn something in the process. ;)
You might not think you made that comparison, but you did, and you went on to build your argument on it. You wrote:
That may have been part of the core goal of the "standards community", but the way I see it, the community was built around the ideal of writing a page once, and having it work correctly in every client, without any special hacks or redirects or proprietary tags. That just happens to be one (rather important) aspect of accessibility, so that's, I think, how the two got "tangled up". That, and the fact that many of the web standards advocates also happen to be advocates of the broader aspects of Accessibility. However, that just makes them allies, not siamese twins. It doesn't mean, for instance, that when alleged accessibility concerns contradict web standards concerns, that web standards advocates should side with short term accessibility gains, at the cost of long term web standards losses.
Accessibility isn't just making a website work for blind people, or ameteur publishers who are only concerned with how their page looks in IE. It's making a website work for someone running firefox on linux, it's making a website work for someone on a mobile phone, and of course making the website work with a screen reader. Those are the aspects of accessibility that web standards are concerned with. The introduction of Microsoft's proprietary metatag, in the way that they originally introduced it, was inherently contradictory to that goal, for reasons that have already been covered. That's why so many web standards advocates were against it.
Some do, but I still run into a lot of sites made by amateurs, for themselves, by themselves. It would've been nice if a browser could protect them by default from their sites breaking in the future. Now the responsibility is with the software vendors, which I think is not the right place.
Well, that's exactly what I was talking about. Even though you made a fair description of what accessibility means to us web developers, accessibility on the web is broader than that. It goes from actually having a physical connection (so you can access the web) to participation of people on the web. Be it through commenting or publishing their own content.
What you're describing are simply passive events (people and software reading content on the web).
I can see that you're trying to broaden the definition of "accessibility" to include anyone who wants to publish a web site, whether they know HTML or not.
If anything, publishing content to the web is getting easier. Anyone can set up free accounts at any number of video-sharing, image-sharing, or blogging sites and publish their content to the world with barely a learning curve at all.
With a slightly steeper learning curve, they can get more control over their content by paying for a shared hosting service and using any number of free content management tools - many installed for them by their web hosts for free - that allow them to focus on the things they know best without having to worry about meta tags or whether their page renders correctly in every browser known to man.
A simple meta tag isn't preventing anyone from sharing their ideas with the world. If anything, moving Internet Explorer in a standards-compliant direction will make it easier than it is now as there will be less mystifying cross-browser inconsistencies to deal with for amateur web publishers.
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