Time, Money, and Accessibility May 9, 2006
Posted by ptvGuy. Comments: , trackback
When the government mandated that buildings and other facilities should be accessible to people with disabilities, they knew that most business and property owners could never afford to do the kind of work necessary to make that happen. Therefore, they set aside large sums of money to offset some of these expenses. When the government mandated that all government websites be made accessible, they made sure that there was some funding available to do this.
…no one has set aside any money for it…
No one has mandated accessibility for public television station websites, and, unless you know something I don't, no one has set aside any money for it. You might think that station personnel would be more involved with this (or at least interested.) After all, Descriptive Video Service was created by a public television station, WGBH in Boston, and PBS aired the very first accessible television program, The French Chef (also from WGBH), in 1971 with "open" captions. Still, most stations have no understanding of why extra time (and therefore money) should be devoted to the web equivalent of this.
…we can accomplish this important task within our very limited budgets and time constraints…
Therefore, the onus of providing such accessibility to the station website rests solely on the station web developer. Why would we do this without any requirement (or extra money) in place? We do it for the same reason we provide cross-browser compatibility; we want to provide the best possible user experience for as many of our users as we can.
I won't attempt a comprehensive accessibility guide here, but there are some basics that I want to cover over the course of the next few posts. There are different aspects of accessibility that have to do with the limitations involved in the underlying disabilities themselves. Many of them have to do with sight and mobility issues while using a computer. However, the majority of web design accessibility issues have to do with basic site design and usability.
I hope you'll join me in discussing how we can accomplish this important task within our very limited budgets and time constraints. Why should your station's web presence be "site-impaired?"
Addendum: I just found a great podcast interview with Paul Boag on web accessibility over on the CreativeXpert website hosted by Alan Houser.
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