Comments on: 13 Tips For An Accessible Site

By: Black Widow

Black Widow — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:01:42 +0000

@Stevie D: I appreciate your point but then they’re not the kind of CAPTCHAs I meant when I used the term “visual CAPTCHAs”. I’d class them as text based. it’s the standard distorted characters on patterned backgrounds that I think have to be avoided at all costs. I failed such a CAPTCHA 4 times the other week. And I was wearing my glasses! So what chance does someone with a significant visual impairment or dyslexia have?

Yes, the text based CAPTCHAs have their own problems - not least of which is the fact that they depend completely on what kind of question is used. Standard I.Q. tests are often criticised for being culturally biased and I think there is a risk that the questions used in text CAPTCHAs can be, quite unconsciously, similarly biased in a way that has nothing to do with language skills or cognitive abilities.

Ideally, I’d like to see all forms of CAPTCHA abandoned (sooner rather than later) in favour of security methods that don’t make users jump through hoops but I freely admit that I don’t have any solutions myself. For now, I think text-based CAPTCHAs are the best of a bad lot providing they’re implemented as sympathetically as possible.

By: Stevie D

Stevie D — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:40:24 +0000

I know that it is not right to discriminate against anyone, but realistically, if someone has such poor English skills, or such severe cognitive disabilities, that they can’t answer the question “Is fire hot or cold?”, you have to ask how much value they will be getting out of your website. It’s a serious question - if someone can’t answer a simple question like that, are they really likely to be reading and commenting on your blog?

By: JackP

JackP — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:03:29 +0000

I don’t necessarily see ‘a completely automated test to tell computers and humans apart’ as a bad thing. What is a bad thing is having ‘a completely automated test which will block all blind users and about 80% of spam bots’. If you’re going to have a CAPTCHA, use some form of logic CAPTCHA (but it needs to be relatively simple, and with an element of randomness). Don’t just use the standard ‘distorted text’ business.

…admittedly, even if you do that, your site will not be usable to people with certain cognitive disabilities, but if you pitch it so that the difficulty of the question is no more difficult than the complexity of the site content, that ought to ease that problem slightly…

[other than that, top list!]

By: Stevie D

Stevie D — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:20:54 +0000

Re: point 5
Be as flexible as you can when requesting data in form fields.

For example, I have seen some sites that require you to enter the date in the form dd/mm/yyyy, and won’t accept d/m/yy.
By contrast, there’s another site that will read and parse the date in whatever format you write it (eg UK or ISO), including “11th July”, “tomorrow”, “next Thursday”.
If one hobbyist site can do this, why are some huge professional sites so finicky?

Similarly, any site that requires telephone numbers or addresses to be entered in a particular format is likely to be difficult/impossible for overseas users, as well as putting up considerable accessibility barriers to “local” users.

By: Blair Millen

Blair Millen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:29:53 +0000

Excellent list. As you say Mel, keeping the list down to ten (even thirteen) is tough, but I have to say you’ve covered, rather comprehensively, every important aspect one should consider when trying to make their site accessible.

A good reference point for any web designer whatever level of expertise they claim.