Accessibility :: Mainstream Benefits

Up to now, not many people have given serious consideration to website accessibility. Mainly it is difficult enough building a site, let alone worrying about the small part of the population who may have trouble accessing it because of their disabilities. This argument is not put forward in words, mainly because it is very politically incorrect, but is clearly put forward in action. This clearly needs to change.

Proponents of this are clear in blogs (mezzoblue.com, stopdesign.com, alistart.com) and in the groups supporting the community. The solution is educate, educate, educate and this is a major uphill battle. But I have another idea.

It started when I downloaded a free screen reader (http://www.econointl.com/) to see what the fuss was about. Then I went over to nytimes.com, a well respected newspaper to see how it worked. The result: absolute shock! Is this what people with disabilities have to go through? How sad. Maybe there are better screen readers, but still, looking at nytimes.com I couldn’t even read a story. I had to navigate to the story I wanted with my mouse and then go to the printer friendly version, to which was difficult to get through as it stopped all the time, because of the awkward organization of the site.

I could go on, but rather I would give a solution: Corporate world pay attention to the market you are missing. No, not the market of the people with disabilities, rather the millions and millions of people who would like to listen to news at work. How many people have stations like npr on in the background while they work? In most of my jobs the radio has been on, or headphones.

So what does this mean, well if people could listen to the nytimes articles, not npr style, but if browsers had a screen reader extension. This would revolutionize the industry. It is much easier to advertise to a passive audience than an active one. If they are listening and the first thing they here is a little jingle in the style of old radio I don’t think people would mind if they could then listen to the articles. Also, the site gets great publicity (free advertising) for doing a good dead. It is w-w (win-win).

So develop better free readers (Microsoft listen up) then code using css, it is a winning combo.