Disabled People Want Friends Too
AbilityNet have just released their latest State of the eNation Report which, this time, focuses on social networking websites.
Social networking sites - such as Bebo and MySpace - may be revolutionising internet communication and creating new and exciting opportunities in both leisure and business, but AbilityNet’s examination of five of the most popular sites shows that millions of disabled people can’t even register - let alone participate in the rich on-line communities that these sites offer.
“With a disabled population of some 10 million potential users, these sites are inadvertently imposing a ‘technological lock-out’ on those who have most to gain from social networking - arguably the most socially
excluded members of the community.”
Research author Kath Moonan.
All of the sites that AbilityNet reviewed used CAPTCHA images as part of their account registration process - a known issue that was raised in an earlier Spider Trax post: The Problem With CAPTCHAs. Some, such as Yahoo and Facebook, offer disabled users an alternative, but these were found to be unusable in practice. Even when disabled users manage to get past the registration hurdle, they are likely to find a whole host of further usability barriers that result in many of the site’s facilities becoming completely inaccessible.
“We would like to ask the operators of these sites to look at some of the key factors governing disabled access, namely: the reduction of the amount of CAPTCHA and the provision of an intelligible audio alternative; user-friendly support for those experiencing access problems and lastly, adherence to what is, after all, the law.”
Kath Moonan
Download the full eNation report: Social Networking Websites
Probably because like most money making sites its targeted at the Largest group. The making your site accessible part takes second place due to the amount of extra work it would create to change all of the AJAX/DHTML based functionality into a form that’s 100% accessible.
I suppose if someone was to challenge them using the DDA they could potentially force change, but its very unlikely.
Realistically to cover all disabilities on a site/service like that would be a bloody nightmare, and I pity any mug that takes it on.
The “largest group” or the “most popular group? If you’re going to investigate the web accessibility issues that may be inherent on social networking sites, it does make sense to look at the biggest players in this particular sector. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, these should, in theory, be the sites who could focus the greatest resources into making their facilities more accessible, yes?
And, yes, it will now take a lot of extra work to make the currently inaccessible accessible but these are not legacy sites here. They’re all pretty new and were created after WCAG 1.0 came into force. CAPTCHAs have been known to create particular problems for years. It’s arguable that some of these sites either chose to ignore those issues or did not prioritise the needs of disabled users. Others have tried alternatives but, thus far, they haven’t really been successful.
Personally, I think legal action has to be the very last resort. For a start, even the largest charity/advocacy groups can only fund 1 or 2 law suits per year. You need big money.
Secondly, if a law suit did go ahead, just think of the sheer amount of hard cash that would be funnelled into defending such a suit. Money that could be better used in developing and testing the accessible versions of the very features that are being highlighted in the report. So why not just skip the law suit and go straight to adding some of the features in the next development roll out? Probably a lot cheaper and less stressful all round.
Whether anyone could “cover all disabilities”, I don’t know. But that’s not what is being asked here. What is being asked, pretty specifically, is that the site operators look at alternatives to visual CAPTCHA challenges and the provision of effective user-friendly support. Solving these two issues alone won’t magically make an entire site accessible but it will be a good start. Then perhaps the site’s operators could open a dialogue with disabled users and begin to consider their needs alongside those of other stakeholders.