Dani Iswara .Net

Web Problem by People with Disabilities

This post provides common web problem experienced by people with disabilities.
I will put my comment on each problem.
I usually browse web pages in some restricted conditions, eg. disable images, no flashes, blocked ads and blocked scripts. So, I have almost the same problem like them.

For your information, web content accessibility (WCA) knowledge are available on:

• WCAG 1.0 (WCAG 2.0 on draft available)
• Experiences shared by people with disabilities
• Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web for people with disabilities and for mobile devices

It’s all about web standards and accessibility, not search engine optimization (SEO) or Google PageRank™. But it could have a great relationship with those.

Based on people with disabilities context

Quote section followed by my comments.

Interaction and navigation requires mouse.

They have difficulty to use a mouse. WCAG provides keyboard accessibility guidelines.

Information conveyed using color (for example, “required material is shown in red”) with no redundancy.

Be aware to this problem. Color blind people will lost some information on the web. WCAG has color uses and color contrast guidelines.

Large page or large images.

I gues they have to use search, archives, or categories section as navigation help or use sitemap.

Multimedia with no captions.

People with deaf or hearing problem can’t hear well. Better if we provides caption section or descriptive text-based information for each audio files.

Audio-only prompts (beeps, buzzes) for important information (warnings, errors).

Pop up warnings / errors maybe useful.

Free-text entry (for example, alphabetical characters allowed in numeric fields).

For some people with difficulties of using keyboard, maybe in the next we have a better voice recognition to input the text.

Embedded non-text objects (images, sound, video) with no text alternative.

Another text-based as descriptive information is needed. In the future of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) 5, we will have audio and video as new media tags.

Important information in non-text content (images, multimedia, CSS effects).

Off course, we need to put alt tag attribute in image code. I guess the same point as above.

Long words, long and complex sentences, jargon.

Simple and short sentences, listing mode, hierarchical method (h1, h2, h3, etc) and a clear idea on each paragraphs for fast reading on the web interface.

Content formatted using tables or CSS, and reading order not correct when linearized (for example when CSS or tables not rendered).

I don’t know how.. Validating table and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code?

Scripting required to operate or generate content.

Selective use of scripts and javascripts.

Special plugin required.

More selective on plugin installed.

Invalid or unsupported markup.

Don’t forget to validate X/HTML markup, choose DOCTYPE properly, and use mimetype correctly.

Content spawns new windows without warning user.

Do not use target="_blank". Put a warning if links will open in new window.

Information conveyed only using CSS (visual formatting).

Try to view our web pages without CSS, images, and scripts.

Content blinks, moves, scrolls or auto-updates.

The future (recommendation) of X/HTML said that blink and marquee are deprecated.

Long page title, with generic information first and differentiating information last.

Recent page / post title first, blog title last. Google search engine love it.

Focus (tab) order does not match logical document content sequence.

No idea for this section. Related to accessibility feature, I guess..
Or should we put navigation section on the head section?

Link text not descriptive.

Use title="..." or descriptive information around the link text / anchor text.

If you use Firefox, try this, add accessibility tools on web developer.

Some of web standard rules are benefit for SEO practices. For further reading, please read Belajar SEO, Web Standards and Usability-based Techniques.