Accessibility…who does it REALLY help?
Whenever the topic of accessibility comes up amongst web designers, there’s always a few who insist on seeing some numbers. The argument usually consists of ‘why should I do X to accomodate the small insignificant group Y’. Of course, this fails to take into consideration the fact that accessibility isn’t specifically about accomodating some minority groups, but, rather, accomodating a large range of users.
Yet, people like numbers. And it’s something I honestly haven’t ever gotten around to digging up. I recently came across a few websites that do offer some numerical insights.
The first is the US Census Bureau’s web site, and, specifically, an article on the Anniversary of The ADA act. The key bit of info is the first paragraph, which I’ll quote here:
49.7 million
Number of people age 5 and over in the civilian noninstitutionalized population with at least one disability, according to Census 2000; this is a ratio of nearly 1-in-5 U.S. residents, or 19 percent. These individuals fit at least one of the following descriptions: 1) they are 5 years old or older and have a sensory, physical, mental or self-care disability; 2) they are 16 years old or older and have difficulty going outside the home; or 3) they are 16-to-64 years old and have an employment disability.
This is a great bit of info. Why should one worry about accessibility? Well, in just the US, we have about 50 million potential customers that would benefit directly from accessibility awareness built into your web site. That’s no to mention the many other customers who may simply prefer to access your site via alternative means (like via their PDA, for instance).
And, to add to that nice bit of statistical information is the American Foundation for the Blind’s Disability Statistics Resources page which is a nice list of all sorts of statistical accessibility information related web sites, list-servs, studies and organizations.
5 Comments
Raw disability statistics are not meaningful in discussing Web accessibility. We don’t have really reliable statistics on disabled Web users.
Completely understood, Joe. But I also realize sometimes numbers are necessary for the argument from a political standpoint.
I’m also trying not to equate accessibility as being solely a disabled user issue, as it proper accessibility considerations benefit all.
on a related from Accessibility is Effective Search Engine Optimizaition:
“The goal of accessibility is to make web content accessible to as many people as possible, including those who experience that content under technical, physical, or other constraints. It may be useful to think of search engines as users with substantial constraints: they can’t read text in images, can’t interpret JavaScript or applets, and can’t “view†many other kinds of multimedia content.”
You talk allot about accessibility and how it relates to the Web, but the first thing I notice about your own site is the fixed pixel font sizing. I can barely read the articles in IE and I have no way of increasing the font. At least in Firefox I can resize the text to fit my needs. You might want to change your font-sizing to em and remove the tiny defaults in favor of 1.0em. At the very least you should provide an ID on the HTML element that would allow me to restyle the site as necessary.
Michael:
I’ll look into that. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.