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July 22, 2005
How many accessibility experts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Ok, please refrain from answering that question in the comments. I wanted to respond to a comment made by my friend Jeffrey Zeldman the other day about the JK Rowling site. I tried to make this point initially and don’t think I did.
One of the concerns that he expresses is that Flash can be accessible, but only with a panel of experts that includes me, the RNIB, and the RNID. The long list of names on the press release might convey that sense and I am sorry that it did.
The JKRowling.com site was really done primarily by Lightmaker. When they first started looking at it, I spent an hour on the phone with the developer. Most of what he did was taken straight from my whitepaper on Best Practices for Flash Accessibility. I got a couple of questions via email but that was it. A couple of months later I got a message reading ‘we’re done’. The work they did to that point was really impressive and very close to what you see today.
A natural step in the process here was to find people with disabilities to review and comment on the site. There are a number of ways to accomplish this informally. However, this is a high profile project and reflects a number of firsts. Thus, we really needed to get the RNIB and the RNID involved. The RNIB made a list of suggestions. The list was extensive, but relatively simple to implement. About a month later, the site was finished. I don't think you would see much more involvement from the experts on a high profile HTML site.
What makes the site so amazing, from my humble perspective, is that it is a great teaching tool. The techniques are easy to understand and simple to implement. I went over the most complex issue yesterday. My hope is that designers will take from this that accessibility in Flash does not require a huge amount of extra effort, but even implementing a limited number of steps, a site can be made much better.
So to answer the original question…at least a couple. Whether you are working in Flash, HTML or C++, you should:
- Get some advice before you start, it'll save you time and effort
- Follow best practices along the way
- Get feedback from people with disabilities, it makes a huge difference
Posted by Bob Regan at July 22, 2005 08:33 AM
Comments
Following this article, I tried to view the JK Rowling site - in IE6 on a PC with JavaScript and flash. On the homepage I could use my keyboard to tab to "Accessibility Enabled Version" but I couldn't make it follow that link. I tried the return key, the spacebar, then every key on my keyboard but it wouldn't load the Accessibility Enabled Version of the site.
What's going on here? I can't access via my keyboard the version of the site specifically built (as far as I understand) for people with limited ability. Please explain if I'm wrong or how I can access this contact via my keyboard.
[My wish to be anonymous shouldn't make my comment any less relevant.]
Posted by: a b c at April 13, 2006 04:21 AM