There’s No Such Thing As A Magic Bullet
ITPro are currently hosting a Reuters’ article entitled “Websites must be accessible to disabled, firms told” that contains a somewhat inaccurate statement. Namely:
“It’s the silver bullet,” IMRG’s Chief Executive James Roper told Reuters. “Put this little button on your site and suddenly you are legal.”
The ‘it’ being referred to is apparently (and once again) the Textic Toolbar.
Now there is some suggestion that Reuters mis-quoted IMRG’s Chief Executive James Roper and a later copy of the article on Reuters’ own site quotes him as saying:
Not only is it right and proper that Internet retailers comply with the law … but also it just makes fantastic business sense
which may still be debatable but at least isn’t wildly inaccurate.
However, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard overblown claims being made for the Textic toolbar, so can we just get one thing straight?
This toolbar is not an alternative to generally improving a web site’s overall accessibility level.
It will not help people who already use a screen reader.
It will not help the deaf.
It will not help sighted keyboard navigators.
It will not help those who have cognitive disorders such as Down’s Syndrome.
It will not help those with motor impairments such as Parkinson’s Disease.
It might help people with dyslexia but that’s about all that can be said with any real reassurance. Also, given that it relies upon javascript, it certainly won’t help anyone who either doesn’t have access to javascript or who has deliberately disabled it. My own research, and all of the statistics I have seen on the subject, suggest that as many as 10% of all web surfers may browse without javascript.
So this particular ‘magic bullet’ seems to have more holes than magic or bullet.
There is no quick or easy way to accessify a bad site. There is no way to circumvent the WCAG checkpoints or the best practice recommendations laid out in PAS 78 “Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites”. There is only way to accessify a site properly and that’s to do it the right way - from the ground up.
Hi.
Just to say that the article was duely corrected on reuters (see below), however we are not in comunication with ITPro, as they took the story automatically from the Reuters first release. Here is the corrected story on Reuters (which has removed the slightly misleading quote you’ve highlighted above) :
Amended Reuters article
Also, I believe you may not yet aware of all the functionality available through the system. For example this is a system that would be of benifit to many of those you mention above. It is not a silver bullet in the sense you have interepted above, nothing is. But I believe you’ll see that this and many of the other features available could be of benefit to the majority of those faceing barriers:
http://81.149.150.32:8080/loband/
I’d be delighted if you might offer feedback on it.
It offers access to most users, on most machines, on most pages. But not all. But what good about it is it does it without needing a screenreader to be installed. It’s in early public beta.
What do you think?
Hi Phil,
I did try to make the point in my post that the Reuters seem to have mis-quoted James Roper and I managed to find the amended quote (thanks for the link, by the way). The problem we have now is that the original article is ‘out there’ - mis-quote and all - so I feel we have to go some way to correct this misconception that there might be a magic bullet to be had.
Please understand that I have no argument against any toolbar of this type. The more the better, in my opinion - providing site owners understand that it cannot be used as an excuse for correcting any existing accessibility issues on their site.
What does concern me is some of the marketing that I have seen. I fully appreciate that I may have not seen all of the marketing but the bits that have come to my attention leave me feeling a little…uncomfortable. Just to reiterate, it’s not the toolbar but the way it is sometimes presented as The Accessibility Solutiontm that I object to.
With regard to Viki, I’d be a lot happier if it wasn’t ‘On’ by default. As someone who is intermittently hearing impaired, I’m very sound sensitive. Unannounced sound on sites can cause me anything from mild irritation to real shock depending on the volume. I’m also conscious of the fact that it could cause problems for users who are already using a screen reader by interfering with their ability to hear their own application’s output. Why not configure it to be off by default and allow users who do want to try it out to turn it on at will?
Phil, can you explain how this “slightly misleading quote” came to be published. Journalists often paraphrase their interviewees but the original quote is so utterly different from the ‘corrected’ quote that it is inconceivable that it was just a bit of journalistic licence or a misunderstanding.
Moreover, the quote does not sound like something a journo would write, but you can easily imagine it coming from a CEO.