Post-fact Ramblings
Accessibility experts
It is worth noting that in the wake of the report, the number of
accessibility experts operating in Sweden has grown somewhat. There is
hardly any official with whom I have spoken who has not had a substantial
number
of other consultants on the line.
This, naturally, is no surprise.
Traumatic reactions!
What is as a surprise is the reaction to the report, which varies from outright denial:
We have just launched a new website. The questionaire and the reviews were based on the old one. The new is fully accessible! [The exact same problems can be found on the new site -- Ed.]
through the absurd:
Why do you say our site is ugly ?! [We didn't; one of your users did -- Ed.]
to the genuinely interested:
Yes, please, send more information. All you've got - we are very interested in this topic, and want to improve.
Standards for all - not just some
I am troubled when, as was done at least once during testing, it is said that
... established requirements for these groups [the elderly and immigrants] does not exist, we were forced to develop our own ...
Personally I am an adept in the Not Invented Here school of thought. Creating new guidelines and requirements is not, per se, a bad idea. However, this would seem to illustrate a misunderstanding of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and their associated checkpoints.
The WCAG is not constructed as a set of rules on how to create websites for the disabled. Quite the contrary: it is a set of guidelines on how to make websites more accessible to everyone.
In this test, two groups of people were created - I use the word
judiciously - and singled out: immigrants and old-age pensioners. I suspect
this process was inspired by the traditional philosophy of a
target audience
.
These groups of people are not homogeneous, but consist of individuals with vastly different needs. An elderly immigrant with disabilities is not a stretch of the imagination, nor a healthy and vigorous pensioner.
The guidelines created by the Web Accessibility Initiative are, in a way,
a reverse of target audience grouping. Each checkpoint address difficulties
as experienced by individual users and methods for helping them along. It is
perhaps not a fruitful avenue of research to test a website using a set
of requirements aimed at the artificially constructed group, instead of
the checkpoints designed to overcome individual problems regardless of
target audience
membership.
As the Audit Office test does both, this can safely be regarded as a non-issue for this particular report.
Questions and Peculiarities
Upon review of the user tests, several questions have surfaced. I am, whilst writing this article, unsure as to whether bringing them to light will achieve anything at this stage.
It is, of course, important to review the process and determine whether it could be improved. On the other hand, since Greytower were part of the process it might be unseemly for us to do such a review.
It would also, at this time, raise issues of credibility which will not move the process of enhancing Swedish government agency websites forward.
