Why the web is getting harder for AT

I can’t believe its late November! Seriously, where did the fall go? Pretty soon I’ll be blogging about Christmas.

I’m sensing a lot more positivity in the community, and the market in general. Seems things are slowly turning around, and progress being made on a number of initiatives.

Lots of traffic on twitter this week on a number of developments, mostly regulatory. Both the US and EU are actively outlining changes to existing legislation to improve accessibility on a number of different levels. Here are two articles I’d like to call out:

US: Government wants to update ADA for cyberspace

EU: Commission outlines changes to standards, rights management laws

The US article deals a heavy hand to current issues around surfing the web, and I’m confident this will only get better. I wish everyone would build in accessibility from the get-go but, we all know things are not that simple! It also deals with movie theaters and services like 911.

The EU article looks to harmonize standards across the European Union, and in particular, address the accessibility of all public sector websites by 2015.

Why is this so important? Lets go back in history a little to find out..

Most of the web was accessible back in the 1990’s, and even early 2000’s. The technologies people were using to build sites were simple HTML for the most part, and when one looks at assistive technologies like screen readers, it was fairly easy for them to interpret basic text. Sure, we may be missing alternate text on images but, at the end of the day users were able to “get by” with a small amount of frustration, and a little patience.

Fast forward to 2010, what a difference! Technologies like flash, java, flex and RIA are at the fore-front, and most websites are now a combination of many different tools and interfaces.

As an example, lets look at Yahoo!.

Yahoo! Homepage 2000

Above is a screenshot of their homepage in 2000 – anyone remember this? I’m starting to feel a little old myself. Now go to their current homepage here and tell me what you notice?

Apples and oranges, or night and day? No matter how you put it, the differences are vast. In 2000 it was basically all text links with no interaction anywhere. Today, it’s an integrated suite of tools and information which can barely be compared to its 10yr old self. There’s embedded videos, mouseover effects which constantly change things, customizable quickviews, integration to Yahoo! services and loads of live advertising.

How can screen readers adapt? Simply put, they can’t! By the time someone hits “go” on a new release of software, there are 10 others that have since been updated or changed in some way. This is why website accessibility is so critical and vital to this growing and vocal community. If we can make the backend technologies more accessible, screen readers (and other assistive technologies) can and will keep up.