February 28, 2005
How much do you really care about accessiblity?
A lot of people who were once preaching the accessiblity dogma are now hooked on the implications of XMLHttpRequest as the next big thing for web applications. Clearly browsing tools designed to aid the visually impaired will not get along with this new breed of über-dynamic DOM remixing, but the resulting challenges of downgrading gracefully aren't being discussed. This makes me think how honest the heavily hyped move to "accessible" markup has been in the first place.
The way accessiblity is prevalently dealt with feels more like a cargo cult than a well-founded discipline. We have all converted to table-less designs with semantic markup and hidden "Skip navigation" links because someone said it was the Right Thing To Do™, but how many of us have actually used a screen reader? Where did the unanimous consent originate that screen readers would go belly-up at the first sign of a non-semantic <table>, as if these tools were built for a web that didn't even exist at the time? Have you ever watched a handicapped person browsing the Internet?
It is about time to become more honest about accessiblity. A lot of damage has already been done to the integrity of the trade by using "accessiblity", "standards compliance" and "semantic markup" as if they were exchangable terms. Let's stop showing off "AAA compliant" badges as if pleasing a piece of software said anything about your site being accessible. Accessiblity is more than a convenient argument to sell clients another reconstruction of their old site. Accessibility is a serious issue. Don't have your résumé claim you mastered it only because you know how to separate style from content.
Comments
I make a difference between websites and web applications. Websites should be accessible, for applications it depends on the userbase. Also, these technologies often allow for a more advanced usage which cannot be provided in another way: are they not to be used in this case, while the site itself remains accessible?
Posted by Mark Wubben (#)
It's possible to degrade gracefully in a lot of cases. While what you're saying is true, there are a lot of reliability issues which get dealt with in reasonably good ways when you "separate style from content", and often the size of the data you need to download while browsing a site goes down, which makes things faster for users.
Posted by Treehouse Cityguide Maintainer (#)
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