Can automatic widgets create accessible web sites?

[jesse_the_k]

Connor Gardner CatchTheseWords is a blind disability rights advocate. His recent post Do Automated Solutions like #AccessiBe Make the Web More Accessible? alerted me to an ongoing debate: do "AI-based" automatic site plugins actually provide useful access for screen reader users?

There are scores of one-step automatic accessibility plugins designed for CMSes like WordPress or SquareSpace — some free, some very expensive.

Connor Gardner is dubious. He points to Adrian Roselli -- a very experienced web dev who’s focused on accessible design since 1998. Roselli’s article accessiBe will get you sued is dubious in much greater detail.

The plugin developer in question, accessBe, asks critics to take a step back and see if "manual" solutions are even possible at this point.

https://accessibe.com/blog/trends/industry-wake-up-call-the-future-of-web-accessibility

We must acknowledge: web accessibility is a two-way street between business owners and people with disabilities.

Have we stopped for a second to consider business owners’ needs? Their wants? Their day-to-day operations? Their vendors? Their projects? Their expenses? Their priorities? Their challenges? If we want to achieve an accessible Internet we must consider what business owners are willing to do, what’s realistic for them, and what they actually need. Business owner’s nature is to care mostly about their revenue, their employees, and providing for their families. This is the nature of humans and humans run businesses.

They frame access as too expensive and too complicated: designers haven't got it right yet, so let's sell them a one-size-fits-all kit and call it done.

I’m still dubious.

ADA design guidelines are now part of US building codes -- building inspectors have become the ADA police when it comes to the built environment.

I wish the web had building codes.

ETA: updated Gardner's name and pronouns.

Comments

[pauraque]

Are they seriously asking if anyone has stopped to consider the interests of business owners? In this wildly capitalistic, profit-hungry, corporate-dominated world? Aw, those poor little business owners, being bullied by marginalized people demanding equal access...

Even in the most charitable reading possible, their statement is staggeringly cynical and apathetic. People are reluctant to do what's right unless it's to their own benefit, so why bother trying? This is not the way to combat inequality.

[jesse_the_k]

Yeah, it kinda took my breath away.

[davidgillon]

Wow, I'd say they're framing themselves as in entirely the wrong business!

ETA: Having now looked at their blog. Wow, that is some next level whining!

Someone get that man an editor, stat!

And their layout is appalling.

Would Sir like some meal with his whine?

Too right.

[jesse_the_k]

There's something about the British pronominalization of the honorific Sir that makes me squee with delight.

[luzula]

Business owner’s nature is to care mostly about their revenue, their employees, and providing for their families. This is the nature of humans [...]

Wow, I'm glad they've solved the problem of what human nature is like!

[jesse_the_k]

All tied up in a bow, delivered, and unwrapped, too.

[yourlibrarian]

I wish it did as well, and had from the first. There are very small bits of progress, such as LinkedIn asking for alt text if you upload an image. But the issue of overlays, the article makes obvious why that's not a solution. But as I navigate the web with javascript largely turned off, as well as pop-up blockers, I can say I run into problems every day with the multitude of scripts on pages. I would never see such an overlay either.

I sometimes have to launch another (unblocked) browser to see some things because many news media pages (for example) can have some 60 scripts on them, yet you'd think they'd want to be the most accessible of all! It's utterly absurd. Places like Dreamwidth or AO3 might have at best one or two attached and I think in the case of AO3 it doesn't even have to be accepted for the site to work. In the meantime I literally can't get other sites to work. I ran into one recently for a bank with my tax-forms that launched them in a separate pop up window and for several minutes I couldn't figure out why the link didn't work. And I've seen sites which have several login scripts tell me in error that my login or password don't work when what they really mean is that a key script couldn't launch so the login was blocked.

[jesse_the_k]

Great point! There are outstanding reasons to turn off Javascript.

[mdlbear]

Thank you! Looks like accessBe's plugin is worse than useless, it raises serious privacy concerns, and their marketing is sketchy at best. In other words, it's pure snake oil.

[jesse_the_k]

Hisssssssssss.

[jadelennox]

Adrian is right; those plugins have a huge number of problems.

• They're of varying quality. I've accessibility-tested sites where the plugin itself isn't reachable by keyboard, for example. Most of them have unlabelled icons instead of textual labels, which is bad enough on a general-purpose UI, but inexplicable on the accessibility plugin.
• Most of them solve the wrong set of problems. For example, very few add improved keyboard accessibility, but almost all of them add a text-to-speech tool, even though the majority of people who need a screen reader already have one. (There are exceptions, such as sites aimed at seniors, where there might be a large pool of users with deteriorating vision who haven't made the switch to using a screen reader.)
• One of the biggest problems with accessibility is cognitive friction. When I do accessibility assessments for sites, I often say something to the effect of "sure, your disabled users can technically accomplish task X. I did figure out a mechanism for it myself. But it took me 10 minutes to discover, and I am a professional getting paid to spend the time." Each one of these accessibility plugins works differently. Most of them are almost invisible on the site, and then once they've been opened, they all behave differently, and have different core functionalities.
• They can't fix some of the biggest accessibility problems that exist: no alt text, bad heading structure, no captions. Semantic structure and text alternatives, basically. (If auto-generated alt text, craptions, and detected headings were adequate, then disabled users would be happy relying on their own assistive tech to generate those things. They aren't adequate, which is the problem.)
• They can't do any better with dark mode than the platforms can -- that is, if the images assume a certain color background, they're just as broken with an AccessiBe color mode switch as they are with an OS color mode switch.
• For the most part, those plugins also don't detect when the page is just a sequence of divs with functionality added with javascript, without any aria roles or tabindex or on-keypress events. And how can they?

Meanwhile, making accessible pages is actually, for the most part, easy. Start with native HTML and go forward from there. With the exception of captions and transcripts, almost no part of accessibility would be expensive for most websites (eg. not for google sheets, but for a non-app site) if it were a first principle when you choose your platform, and not PASTED ON YAY after the fact.

If users want AT, they're happier learning their own tools. Most platforms these days allow built in screen readers, speech-to-text, dark mode, contrast changes, font sizes, etc. Teach users how to use those. And encourage browser manufacturers to improve.

1000% Rebuttal

[jesse_the_k]

What a beautiful summary of why they're crap.

I'm operating at the far edge of typical browser use (custom screen color, huge fonts) -- I may need Official Assistive Tech this year. I've never been able to get anything helpful from these add-ins.

That there's an add-in industry selling this lie is infuriating. Also selling the lie when that money could pay for fixing the site.

[davidgillon]

Oh, wow, they really don't like being criticised on Twitter:

Me (Friday):
"Have we stopped for a second to consider business owners’ needs?"
Wow, next level whining in this 3700 word blog from #Accessibe, a web accessibility tool that's come in for criticism from actual disabled users accessibe.com/blog/trends/in…
Would Sir like some meal with their whine?

Accessibe (Sunday):
"It is important to note the lack of practical tools for business owners who own these websites to make their websites accessible. We need to emphasize their needs in order to come to a reasonable conclusion for what will be easily adopted and implemented."

(Which I read as "We need to water down accessibility standards, think of the businesses!" Also, Sunday?)

Me: "There's a perfectly practical tool for making websites accessible. It's called a programmer. The needs that matter in making a website accessible are those of the users. If you can't meet those, then you can't meet the basic costs of doing business."

I didn't notice I'd also triggered the next three tweets:

Michael Hingson:
(Hingson's profile says "#InspirationalSpeaker, #Diversity, #AssistiveTechnology, #Inclusion Consultant, Blind World Trade Center Survivor, #1 NY Times #bestsellingauthor" It doesn't mention he works for Accessibe, he let that slip in his fourth tweet)

"You're right and accessiBe has such programmers. The problem is that you don't have enough programmers to make all websites usable and functional for those of us who want access NOW. AccessiBe works. Don't just say it's a bad idea. Who else has made over 100,000 websites usable?"

"Did you really read the post? Of course business owners' needs are addressed. Also, users with disabilities do find that accessiBe works. Why not try to make a partnership between tradition and new methods? #harmonyisbetterthan"

"Over 100,000 websites use accessiBe today. How many programmers do you think it would take to address individually the same number of sites? There is room for both solutions and they should work together. #accessibe knows this. Why such antagonism? #harmonyisbetterthanwar."

Me replying to the #Accessibe post as the Hingson ones scrolled off my screen before I noticed them:
"It's fascinating the way that #Accessibe are trying to recast the problem of web accessibility as a burden on business, not on disabled people. You would almost think they saw us as the problem."

Hingson in reply:
"All generalizations, no specifics. So, thoroughly research #accessibe , see what they say they can and can't do. Then find something #Accessibe says it can do and find a website using #Accessibe that doesn't work. Email me at michaelhi@accessibe.com and tweet. What will happen"

Me: "It's not the specifics of #Accessibe's function I'm interested in, it's the way that blog of Accessibe's frames the owners of inaccessible websites as the victim and disabled people's demands for access as the problem.

That's positively Medical Model."

I'll be interested to see what I get in reply.

Bear in mind all of this on a Sunday!

[jesse_the_k]

It's called a programmer.

brilliant!

Like with auto-craptioning, non-disabled people are deciding what’s “good enough” for our access.

You were tweeting with the “chief vision officer.” Yes, he features his guide dog in the company photo.

[davidgillon]

They replied with "You can start here. Let us know if you have further questions! - link to 30 minute video outline of Accessibe"

That's a classic "Oh, shit, he keeps asking awkward questions. Quick, answer a different question to the one he asked."