Accessibility myths for a mobile generation

Checking our footing…
Web accessibility myths for the mobile generation
Prof Jonathan Hassell (@jonhassell)
Director, Hassell Inclusion
CSUN 2014 – 19th March 2014
Photo by jjuochka - flickr

I’ll challenge the orthodox views…

Why believe me? My experience…
• 13+ years experience in accessibility and inclusion
• regular international speaker and thought leader
• lead author of UK Accessibility Standards BS 8878
& chair of its drafting committee
• former Head of Usability & Accessibility, BBC Future Media
• led work to embed accessibility across
BBC web, mobile and IPTV production teams
• Won BIMA 2008 & Access-IT@Home awards for the accessibility
features of BBC iPlayer
• Product Manager of innovative, award-winning products:
• won IMS Global Learning Impact Award 2010 for MyDisplay
• won ‘Best Usability & Accessibility’ BIMA 2006 for My Web, My Way
• 3 x Bafta-nominated for rich-media eLearning projects using
breakthrough accessibility technologies for disabled children

My views come from (analysis of) years of
user-research and real-world project management…

• the full guide on how to transform your organisation to
achieve the consistent creation of web sites and apps
that are usable and accessible to all your customers,
at the most efficient cost
• with practical case-studies from leading
accessibility experts worldwide, including:
• Jennison Asuncion (Canada),
• Debra Ruh & Jeff Kline (USA),
• Andrew Arch (Australia)
• David Banes (Qatar)
• Axel Leblois (UN)
For information on the book, free access to video
case-studies, and a chance of winning the book
visit: http://hassellinclusion.com/book/

1What disabled and elderly people
need is
accessibility

No, what they want is a site to be usable…
just like everyone else…

Accessibility is just the engine…
you still need the rest of the car to work to get you there…

WCAG is useful for…
WCAG is useful for:
• websites
• developers – list of what I
have to do with the tech
(e.g. headings)
• designers – list of what I
have to do with my design
(e.g. colour contrast)
• requirements managers –
list of what I have to include
as features (e.g. subtitles)
Slight problem:
• they’re all mixed together…
Other WAI documents are useful
for:
• browser creators
• CMS/tool creators
• mobile site creators
• evaluation
• how disabled people use the
web
• how to get the best of a
browser
• how disabled people should
provide feedback to website
owners

But who codes from scratch these days?
Most sites are mash-ups…

So it’s more about how you choose the techs/components…

Should you choose to use these techs…?
And, if so, how do you make them accessible?

We need to add guidelines that understand
modern web product creation…
WCAG is useful for:
• websites
• developers – list of what I
have to do with the tech
(e.g. headings)
• designers – list of what I
have to do with my design
(e.g. colour contrast)
• requirements managers –
list of what I have to include
as features (e.g. subtitles)
Slight problem:
• they’re all mixed together…
Other WAI documents are useful
for:
• browser creators
• CMS/tool creators
• mobile site creators
• evaluation
• how disabled people use the
web
• how to get the best of a
browser
• how disabled people should
provide feedback to website
owners
BS 8878:
• less about ‘technical
accessibility’ more about the
process of how you create,
test and maintain web sites
and apps
• harmonised with inclusive
design and usability
• procurement guidelines, as
much as tech guidelines
• more emphasis on content
maintenance guidelines
• emphasis on users reaching
site’s user-goals, not tech &
design meeting checkpoints

3The best business case
for accessibility is
the law

The legal business case…
• if an organisation’s web
product is not accessible to a
disabled person, that person
might have grounds for
making a claim against the
organisation under different
countries’ laws & regulations
• e.g.
• USA: ADA, CVAA, state
disability laws
• UK: Equality Act 2010
• Canada: AODA
• Australia: DDA
Equality Act: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2010/pdf/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf

But outside the USA there’s very little case
law, so you can probably get away with it…

… with a bit of insurance against risk

And, when presented with options,
which policy do you buy…?
the
cheapest!

The ethical business case…
• Ensuring disabled people are not
excluded from the benefits of
modern digital technologies, see:
• DCMS Digital Britain report, 2009
• DCMS eAccessibility Action Plan,
2010
• UN Convention on the Rights of
Disabled People
• 153 international signatories
Digital Britain report: http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/digitalbritain/final-report/
eAccessibility Action Plan: http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/business-sectors/digital-content/e-accessibility-
forum

This rather falls apart
in a recession…

Leaving you with… the bottom line – costs & benefits

4Accessibility is cheap…
no, it’s expensive…
no, it’s cheap...

Accessibility is not cheap… unless…
You don’t include
rich interaction
You don’t
include video
You don’t include
user-testing
You don’t include user-
generated content
You don’t include
mobile

Which is most of the web these days…

Yes, thinking about it at the start does make it cheaper

But cost estimating is still difficult
as different checkpoints have wildly different costs…
Estimated unit cost

No – the real question is… is it worth it?

5We won’t get enough
Return on Investment

Who could you reach…?
10-20% of the population
45.2 million adults in the USA
Figures depend on:
• the definition of disability
“Anyone with a physical or mental impairment which has a
substantial long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry
out normal day to day activities”
Disability Discrimination Act / Equality Act 2010
• people’s willingness to disclose this information
via the survey mechanism
– improving over time: e.g. Brazil figures
14.5% in 2011; 2.7% in 1991; 1.7% in 1981
Number
(m)
%age
of popn
Year
USA 45.2 12.1% 2011
Brazil 24.6 14.5% 2011
UK 11 17.6% 2010
Hong
Kong
0.12 6% 2001

And your “future selves”…

Whose numbers are growing rapidly…

Unfortunately different checkpoints have wildly different
potential reach benefits…
Estimated benefit
7m hoh
people…
200k blind
people…

And, in practice, how many of these people do you get?
On the best ‘case-study’ site, all
the studies are at least 3 years
old 

How the SEO industry sells its benefits…
Relative value of
google rankings
Benchmark current
ranking
And don’t pay us til
we get you there
We’ll tell you how much it will
cost
Tell us where you
want to rank

cf. How accessibility advocates sell our benefits
Potential value of
disabled customers
Benchmark current
disabled usage
And don’t pay us til
we get you there
We’ll tell you how much it will
cost
Tell us where you
want to rank

Come on, who’d you give your money to…?
or

We need to start counting, like everyone else does…

Yet we’re still squeamish about it…

6If you build it
(to be accessible)
then they will come…

You build the most accessible site in the world…

What you get if you don’t market to your audiences…

How do you ‘market’ to disabled audiences…?
The ‘obvious route’ doesn’t necessarily work Social media to the rescue?

7Accessibility and
Inclusive Design
are anti-creative

Listening to your diverse audiences need’s…
identifies challenges…
but innovation often follows a challenge

How disabled and elderly people can free you from fixation…

Opportunities: mainstream inclusion vs beyond inclusion

© 2011 Centre for Business Innovation Ltd
- 51 -
Centre for Business Innovation
“Connected Communities, helping you Do more with Less” Engineering Design Centre
OXO Good Grips
• Well-known pioneer of Inclusive Design in
the USA
• Sam Farber’s wife, a keen cook, suffered
from arthritis
“Why do ordinary kitchen tools hurt your
hands?”
• First 15 products launched in 1990
• Sales growth over 35% per year from 1991 to
2002
• The line has now grown to over 500
products
• Over 100 design awards received

Don’t be afraid of beyond inclusion => reverse inclusion

Opportunity: the commercial business case
– audience diversity => creativity

Where do you think Apple got the enabling techs for this?

See my CSUN 14 Accessibility innovation
through gestural and sign-language interfaces slides

8Accessibility and
Inclusive Design
help everyone

Inclusive design is all around us…

© 2011 Centre for Business Innovation Ltd
- 58 -
Centre for Business Innovation
“Connected Communities, helping you Do more with Less” Engineering Design Centre
OXO Good Grips
• Well-known pioneer of Inclusive Design in the
USA
• Sam Farber’s wife, a keen cook, suffered from
arthritis
“Why do ordinary kitchen tools hurt your
hands?”
• First 15 products launched in 1990
• Sales growth over 35% per year from 1991 to
2002
• The line has now grown to over 500 products
• Over 100 design awards received
And its wins are impressive…

But it does have its problems
BBC iPlayer
disability focus group (2009)
• Vision impaired / dyslexic
• “I like the black – it’s cool”
• “I hate it – I find it really
tiring”
• Aging / learning difficulties
• “it was just too
overwhelming”
• “can’t there be a simpler
version?”

Comment: at 08:24am on 14 Jul 2010, thrifty
wrote:
* The secondary menu bar is a bright red -
glares "danger" in western psychology.
Perhaps you could use a darker shade of
the burgundy instead.
* The background colour is forced to white -
high contrast contributes to eye strain &
headaches. Perhaps a light grey would help
here?
Comment: at 08:05am on 14 Jul
2010, chris b wrote:
…
Awful 'UK News/World New'
panel - … Terrible contrast too
between the text and dark
background.
Comment: Ana wrote:
Your website claims to be
accessible, but it is not, at
least not 100% AA
compliant. It fails the
criteria: 1.4.3 Contrast
(Minimum): The visual
presentation of text and
images of text has a
contrast ratio of at least
4.5:1(Level AA)-
http://www.w3.org/TR/WC
AG20/
Sometimes you just can’t win…

“The fundamental requirements for website accessibility, for disabled people, have been
under discussion for years and can be summarised on a single side of A4:
1. Default display of the website to first time users that accommodates the
maximum number of people, especially with reference to fonts, font sizes, colours
and large accessibility, “buttons”. It is anticipated that this will include, at a
minimum:
a. Arial 18 point 75% dark grey type (as per current Microsoft Word definition)
force left aligned with jagged right margin on a light pastel blue background
default, with a
b. A large button, big enough for people with only 5% vision to see easily, to switch to
high contrast alternatives at the top of the screen.
c. A second large button, identical to the one above except with a high contrast boundary
and low contrast filling (on the same lines as a. above) for those who are both partially
sighted and have scotopic sensitivity.
d. A specific button for one of the most common types of colour sensitivity needs (as in
a. except 75% brown type on a dark yellow background).”
If you really want to “design for all” you get this…

“You can’t do that…” “You must do this…”

This is why personalisation is necessary…

8. Consider inclusive design and user-personalized approaches
– non-individualized/inclusive
• accessibility through guidelines, inclusive design, ATs, user-testing…
– user-personalized allows…
• users to specify their needs and then…
– finds a suitable product from a number of alternative versions, or
– adapts the web product to those needs
• often through ‘additional accessibility measures’
– circumstances where a personalised approach could be useful:
• where a ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t work for all your target audiences
• if individual relationship with audience is possible/expected
(e.g. eLearning) then a personalised approach might be expected
• for audiences with restrictions on browser, installation etc.
– user-personalized should always complement,
never replace, inclusive design approaches
And why personalisation is in BS 8878

Why have ‘design for all’…
when you can have ‘design for me’?

I have a tool that helps with this…

9Disabled people
use
assistive technologies

Actually use of Assistive Technologies is low…
6-8%of UK web users use an
Assistive Technology
(screenreader, adapted
mouse or similar)
to access the Internet
Source: EEDP (2008)

Even when Microsoft research finds their benefits should be
useful to a huge number of users…
Source: Microsoft/Forrester Research study 2003, USA
57%of USA computer users
(aged 18-64)
are likely or very likely to
benefit from the use of
Accessible Technology

Why? - current web accessibility solutions expect:
1. one site to work for all…
2. or an Assistive Technology or OS/browser setting/tool to exist to make
the site accessible
• often they don’t (e.g. text to sign language, text to ‘Easy Read’)
3. and expects web users to:
a. be aware that an Assistive Technology or OS/browser setting/tool exists
for their need
• (even with sites like BBC My Web My Way
to point the way) most are not
b. be able to afford that technology
• most are C2DE so have difficulty affording
expensive techs
c. be able to work out how to install it
• most are not technical (don’t know
what a browser is) and scared of downloads
d. be able to work out how to use it
• most are unconfident
e. be able to use it to access online content
• thus… most never get this far,
even if the site is WCAG AAA
• … and to do this for every device on which they use the web

Super-able disabled cf.
the majority disabled
Extremely impaired cf.
minor impaired

Websites
Browser
(incl.
toolbars)
OS
settings
‘My Desktop/Laptop/Netbook’Device
What’s in place on mobile…? – Apple or complexity...
Installed
ATs
‘My mobile/tablet (web)’

And different support for expectations
Oh, where did my browser settings go…?

See GPII
Solutions need to be simpler

Make it easy to use, or people won’t…

And make sure it works on all devices…

10Accessibility is just about
blind people
- now for platforms…

Motor Dysfunction, 1,562,000,
9%
Dyslexia, 1,900,000, 10%
Mild Learning Disability,
1,750,000, 10%
Severe Learning Disability,
350,000, 2%
Severely or Profoundly Deaf,
688,000, 4%
Hearing Impaired (disruptive to
lifestyle), 7,569,000, 42%
Registered Blind or Partially
Sighted, 434,000, 2%
Visually Impaired (disruptive
to lifestyle), 2,720,000, 15%
Adult (15+) with Reading Age of
under 5, 1,100,000, 6%
People in the UK affected by some form of Disability
We learnt from this: size of disabled audiences…

But it seems mobile platform creators
didn’t quite get the message… (2012)
In iOS 6 Apple are going beyond blind
(at last, but still have “blind spots”)
Google’s Android still focuses on blind
(and VI) + some captions

Thankfully, things are improving… (2014)

11Text is more accessible
than other media

9%
Dyslexia, 1,900,000, 10%
1,750,000, 10%
350,000, 2%
688,000, 4%
lifestyle), 7,569,000, 42%
Sighted, 434,000, 2%
to lifestyle), 2,720,000, 15%
under 5, 1,100,000, 6%
Back to our stats:

9%
Dyslexia, 1,900,000, 10%
1,750,000, 10%
350,000, 2%
688,000, 4%
lifestyle), 7,569,000, 42%
Sighted, 434,000, 2%
to lifestyle), 2,720,000, 15%
under 5, 1,100,000, 6%
Who prefers words… and who prefers pictures…?

Maybe all text should get an alt-video…
After all, which would you prefer?
Read how to do it…
Watch the demo video
or

12The most important
accessibility requirement
for images is alt-text

9%
Dyslexia, 1,900,000, 10%
1,750,000, 10%
350,000, 2%
688,000, 4%
lifestyle), 7,569,000, 42%
Sighted, 434,000, 2%
to lifestyle), 2,720,000, 15%
under 5, 1,100,000, 6%
As this is the case…

Then more important than your alt-text…

Is that your pictures tell the story
without words…
✔✗

13The most important
people in accessibility
are developers

To be clear…
the accessibility of your web
products is in all
these people’s hands…
Designers Writers
Project Mgrs Product Mgrs
Finance Legal Marketing Strategy
Snr Mgrs
TestersDevelopers

But, when it comes down to it, who defines the product?

14It doesn’t matter if your mobile
site/app isn’t accessible, just as
long as your desktop site is

What does research tell us…
• Older
– 47% over 65 compared to 20% of general population
• Less likely to be working
– 43% of working age compared to 74% of general population
• Heavy media consumers
– Particularly TV and radio
• Only half see themselves as ‘disabled’
– This made little difference to attitudes to the media
Sources: Experience and expectations of disabled people (ODI 2008), TGI,
Disabled for Life (DWP 2002), BBC Talking Disability Phase 3 research

cf.
It could be your mobile version
is the ‘simple version’ people are asking for

cf.
Or your mobile app as the ‘simple version’

cf.
Or you might get…
‘someone else’s version’ as ‘simple version’

15Websites have to be
accessible
from the start

We all got so scared by this…

We forgot the real world, of proofs of
concept, experiments, and versioning
Minimal viable product:
Not perfect yet…
But with enough of the
core unique selling points
to test in public while you evolve it
And accessibility may not be necessary
for v1 MVP

Lose the battle, win the war…

16BS 8878
is just for
huge companies

BS 8878 maps well to
guidelines for creating
‘effective websites’
as well as accessible
ones…

Join the discussion online…
http://www.hassellinclusion.com/2011/12/accessibility-myths-2011/

More Hassell Inclusion at CSUN-14:
7 Signs of maturing in accessibility and inclusion
• The accessibility industry is
aging and growing…
• But is it maturing…?
• how do you measure
maturity in accessibility
- in organisations,
and as an industry?
• from Tim Cook’s latest
shareholder comments
to the IAAP – here are 7
signs that we’re maturing
as we grow…

• the full guide on how to transform your organisation
to achieve the consistent creation of web sites and
apps that are usable and accessible to all your
customers, at the most efficient cost
• with practical case-studies from leading
accessibility experts worldwide, including:
• Jennison Asuncion (Canada),
• Debra Ruh & Jeff Kline (USA),
• Andrew Arch (Australia)
• David Banes (Qatar)
• Axel Leblois (UN)
For information on the book, a chance of
winning it, and free access to video case-
studies… send us your details via the form on
the next slide, or visit:
http://hassellinclusion.com/book
There are many more myths, and tips on how to research
your own myths, in my forthcoming book

Training &
support for
BS8878
Standards
Innovation
www.hassellinclusion.com
Strategy &
research

Get in touch…
e: jonathan@hassellinclusion.com
t: @jonhassell
w: www.hassellinclusion.com

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