IceWeb 2006 notes - Joe Clark "AJAX and Accessibility"

Written April 28. 2006, at 14:04 GMT.

• One wonders who'll be taking notes on Joe's blog while he's up on stage. :-)
• Starts with reading an introduction in (surprisingly little broken) Icelandic. Crowd cheers.
• Mentions the fact that his reference material book Building Accessible Websites is available online as HTML.
• Says WCAG 2.0 (now in final call) is/will be shite. Why??
• Roughly defines "AJAX" as a webpage that changes dynamically as the user interacts with it.
• Notes that accessibility guidelines are vague and/or give conflicting (or even impossible) messages about Javascripted sites.
  • Says using javascript is no longer a faux-pas - like it was back in 1998. :-) Javascript works in practically every screen-reader available today.
• Speaks fast. Loads of info.
• Tells of a quick usability test he did on Basecamp. Asked his users (presumably using some sort of assistive technology) to try to create/edit/delete a todo list.
  • The Basecamp developers seem to have just left out accessibility.
  • However, "It seems that Basecamp is difficult and confusing, but possible to use. Especially on Windows. On Macintosh it's better because it has better assistive technologies built in."
• Introduces as (some of?) his testers:
  • "Brothercake" (a.k.a. James Edwards) who's every possible combination of screen-readers and OSes setup on his computer(s).
  • Derek Fetherstone (http://boxofchocolates.ca).
• Joe answers audience questions about "(why) does accessibility matter?". Joe's answer: "Ask a blind person. Does preseving the Icelandic language matter? Ask an Icelandic person". Next quiestion "You can't make something 100% accessible, can you?" Joe's answer: "No, some things are intrisically inaccessible to some people (henche the term "disabled") but you can try as hard as you can".
• HTML + CSS + JS is easier and more transparent than Flash [in terms of making it accessible].

All in all, a very important subject. Joe offered no big solutions but hopefully got a lot of people thinking.

More like this: English Entries, IceWeb2006.