A Case for Web Accessibility – it’s not just for the disabled anymore!

Times-are-a-changing and accessibility adoption on the web is going to have an impact of enormous proportions. There was a time when accessibility was a word far removed from the web design community (in the US at least). More recently the term has transformed into ‘Section 508 compliancy’ – branding it primarily a concern only for the government. Today however, it is faintly more common place – almost synonymous with ‘web standards’ — or at least overly complimentary.

I’ve been an advocate of web accessibility for several years; my personal stance is that at present time it is difficult (taking into account time and cost) to produce the perfect experience for all users – but it is a rather easy and effort-less procedure to produce a suitable and pleasant experience for all. My efforts have often been trumped with statistics – stating that if only 1% of 1% of all users will be on a screen reader, then any additional time/cost to accommodate such a small minority shall not be incurred. There are a variety of reasons why this type of argument is invalid, inappropriate and even unethical; the point being that most business owners yet to see the value in web accessibility. Be on notice as that point of view will drastically change; not by the attitude or personality of business owners, but by advancing technologies, legal grey-lines and changes within third-party dependencies.

I, a perfectly healthy and able individual, have recently found myself apart of a very small, very unique and ever growing audience base – those dependent on accessibility implementation for proper web usage. What has caused this sudden change in my browsing abilities (or lack there of)? No, it wasn’t an incident, accident or a result of ageing – it’s my new Dell! I purchased a new Dell notebook a few months ago; hoping to get greater performance and a larger viewing screen; I ended up with something else – a personal appreciation for proper accessibility implementation.

My new Dell notebook has a 17 inch monitor with its screen resolution default set at 1920×1200. Now, I actually prefer the larger screen resolution (more windows I can fit on my screen the better), this does prove problematic however. Because of the higher resolution and larger screen, I now notice it being tremendously more difficult to read the equivalent of a 10 pixel font on a standard webpage; thus forcing me to increase text size via my browser (Ctrl-+ for you Firefox users) – this from a guy with better than 20/20 vision. I now find myself unusually frustrated when a website isn’t designed to properly accommodate the increasing of the font-size.

As technology advances — screens will get as substantially larger as they do smaller, the migration of systems such as computers and televisions will increase and the display of these systems will become unpredictably more complicated to correct for in dealing with user-experience. Traditional accessibility issues such as screen readability, which has traditionally been associated with poor eye-sight, will increase rapidly and with them their need to be corrected.

There is currently no US legal mandate for public websites to adhere to any form of accessibility on the web. As the baby boomer generation continues to age, we may see subtle change. However, the legal line today will get exceeding greyer as business’ move towards pushing more users onto the internet via online exclusive promotions and services. Recently, Southwest Airlines was sued over price discounts on plane tickets offered exclusively online at southwest.com – due to the sites inaccessibility; it was a clear case of discrimination. The law may never mandate accessibility – but it will keep our business practices in-check and enforce equality. It is going to become exceedingly more difficult to have any distinction between off-line and online without a fully accessible website.

Third party dependencies are the true route toward mass-adoption of web accessibility. What entity do most online business owners value over all else? Google! While this isn’t always the case, Google has proved to be an enormous third party that most have become overly dependent on. As Google announces its plans to work on “Accessible Search” – one must wonder; would they role this out as apart of the primary Google search algorithm? Imagine the day when one of the driving factors in your Google page rank is your sites’ level of accessibility – if that were to happen web “accessibility” would become a hot multi-million dollar business over-night. Social responsibility is going to become the new grassroots-buzz campaign across the web – it will become clear that as those with influence enforce accessibility, its adoption will truly strive.

While the world would be a wonderful place if accessibility were embraced solely for equality and the benefit of all – that just isn’t the business-centric web environment we currently have. However, through advancing technologies, legalities and shifts in external culture, we may see adoption sooner than we think.