In Pursuit of Web Accessibility 
By John Knight & Marie Jefsioutine, User-Lab August 15th 2003 
During the summer of 2003 we ran an online questionnaire, conducted 
interviews and carried out a literature review on Web accessibility. One 
hundred and seventeen respondents participated and they included 
designers, information officers and accessibility advocates. This initial set of 
results are intended to encourage debate on the subject. 
Overcoming obstacles 
The obstacles faced by developers are less often discussed than their 
responsibilities. The survey found that eighty-six percent of respondents 
agreed that ‘Developers do not have adequate training’ in Web accessibility. 
Indeed, a ‘Lack of expertise’ was given as ‘the main barrier to developing 
accessible Web sites’. On a more positive note, forty-eight percent disagreed 
that ‘Most development lifecycles are too short to incorporate accessibility’ 
and that it ‘takes too long was the lowest ranking barrier to accessibility. The 
EC’s Diffuse project (www.diffuse.org) presents a balanced perspective on the 
difficulties faced by accessibility advocates. It states that ‘many of the 
problems and possible solutions (to accessibility) are technically difficult’. The 
recent debates about Cascading Style Sheets and Tables are testimony to the 
obstacles faced by developers; neither solution seeming to be optimal. Alan 
Herrell, on alistapart, describes the situation as ‘Browser hell’ where ‘there are 
three major visual browsers’ ‘none of which allows ‘you to use the entire range 
of accessibility tags’ As Diffuse suggests this means that ‘a technique that 
avoids a problem in one browser may cause other, perhaps more serious 
problems on other browsers. Indeed forty-one percent agreed that it is ‘It is 
impractical to design for all assistive technology devices’. 
Raising awareness 
The survey suggests a lack of awareness of accessibility among managers. 
This includes unawareness of the importance of the issue and the barriers to 
improving accessibility. This might suggest that improving accessibility 
requires facilitating organisational capability as well as high profile 
campaigning. Thus ‘Lack of awareness’ and ‘Lack of policies/management’ 
shared second place as perceived barriers to Web accessibility. Indeed, 
sixty-four percent of respondents agreed that ‘Management is unaware of the 
importance of Web accessibility’. Of those who expressed a preference, a 
majority, Thirty one percent, felt that ‘The legal case for accessibility has been 
well publicised’. Sixty one percent disagreed that ‘The case for accessibility 
would be helped by legal action’. The vast majority of respondents (ninety-four 
percent) thought that ‘Clients ask for their sites to be accessible’. Whether 
these clients represent the range of organisations with a Web presence is 
unclear. Cheryl D. Wise, of Wiserways in Houston observed that ‘Some 
clients come to us because they know that they need to comply with Section 
508 Accessibility requirements for government contracts. Others have never 
even thought about accessibility as a web site issue’. Taking responsibility 
The survey suggests that the burden of responsibility to provide solutions falls 
upon developers to provide solutions. However, sixty-seven percent of 
respondents agreed that ‘Some WAI guidelines are difficult to implement ‘ and 
indeed the difficulty of WAI guidelines was placed third in ‘barriers to 
developing accessible web sites’ Some argue that other stakeholders 
including supply and support organisations could take as greater responsibility 
for improving Web accessibility. Indeed, evaluation tool providers have been 
criticised in this respect. An Accessibility Testing Officer posted an apocryphal 
tale…‘Previously, when we planned for the cost of accessibility testing 
software, we planned to purchase one copy of Bobby. when we planned for 
the Now, Watchfire’s new policy meant that we would instead have to buy up 
to ten copies of Bobby, increasing the cost to us from $299 to $2,999—hardly 
a trivial increase. Cheryl D. Wise reports that ‘Tools are lacking or horribly 
expensive for AAA compliance’. As worrying is Diffuse’s report of ‘The 
phenomenon that many accessibility-promoting pages aren't themselves 
accessible’. Even the notion of standards is criticised by some ‘what good are 
standards when browsers change so fast by adding new features every 
month? OR, the needs or demands of the users change with the latest killer 
app’? 
Generating motivation 
A major motivation for improving accessibility is the legal case and the ‘Lack 
of legal action’ ranked as the fourth barrier ‘to developing accessible web 
sites’. Interestingly, fifty-one percent agreed that ‘Web accessibility provides a 
return on investment’ and eighty percent disagreed that ‘Accessibility inhibits 
innovation’. High-level concerns like social responsibility and liability may not 
be enough to motivate those at the coalface. Nicky Danino of Site Point, 
sums up many developers concerns, asking Kynn Bartlett ‘How would you 
undertake the enormous task of convincing designers that accessibility IS 
important, and there is a place for both extraordinary design and a high level 
of accessibility?’ This is not just an issue of keeping designers on board or of 
avoiding stigmatising users, by giving them desirable products; all members of 
development teams need to be committed to accessibility, and most 
importantly management. Nancy Perlman of Synchordia in London, reported, 
that ‘In order for the development team to be actively engaged, the will has to 
come from above, from the board room; otherwise, no matter how 
enthusiastic and dedicated the development teams, their efforts will be stifled 
by account handlers, marketing and etc. 
Improving technology 
Forty percent of respondents felt that it is practical ‘to design for all assistive 
technology devices’. However, a majority (fifty-three percent) disagreed that 
‘Web accessibility is purely a technical issue’. Some commentators see poor 
accessibility in terms of bad authoring packages, browsers, evaluators and 
assistive technology rather than nonchalant developers. To some these technologies are hindrances. Cynthia D. Waddell’s comment still resonate 
years after they were expressed ‘In fact, many current web-authoring tools on 
the market make it extremely difficult to even design an accessible web page. 
The scarcity of tools also contributes to the lack of education among 
programmers and web authors on why and how to code an accessible web 
page. More recently, Diffuse stated that ‘authoring tools…often produce 
pages that have accessibility problems, especially if they are based on 
"WYSIWYG" … techniques, since such an approach makes it much more 
difficult to separate content and structure from presentation’. For some, the 
dearth of decent technology is frustrating. A WCAG discussion included the 
contribution that ‘I should say if those guys (at) Opera, WebEyes and 
Webformator merged their products and added MSAA to it the world would 
have a perfect browser.’ In the context of CSS integration, the Decloak 
website argues that ‘It's millions of times cheaper and faster to have a single 
programmer update a popular screen reader or non-visual browser to look for 
that ID attribute… instead of having millions of web designers … …redesign 
(their websites). 
Facing contradiction 
Forty-nine percent of respondents agreed that ‘It is impossible to cater for all 
users' needs’. The trade-offs in web accessibility are reflected in a majority 
(fifty-six percent) agreeing that ‘There is a conflict between usability and 
accessibility’. Jenny Craven sums up a common attitude that ‘accessibility 
does not equal usability’. Much of the literature questions the text only 
advocates and points to the opportunities for enriching user experiences for 
everyone. Diffuse notes that ‘there are situations where different problems 
may impose conflicting requirements on accessibility’. They go on to say that 
‘Up to now, there has been little open discussion about this’ and it would 
seem that work in raising awareness and checking sites is evolving toward 
solving the practical problems. These include fundamental issues like what is 
an accessible site? Joe Clark (author of ‘Building Accessible Websites) 
contends that ‘it is impossible to declare a certain Web page “accessible” or 
“inaccessible” for the simple reason that there are too many provisos involved. 
Accessible to which groups? Under what conditions? Using which adaptive 
technology, if any? 
Improving understanding 
Sixty-six percent of respondents disagreed that ‘Text only sites are the most 
accessible’ and a majority (fifty-two percent) disagreed that ‘Web accessibility 
is purely a technical issue’ and seventy-two percent disagreed that ‘There is a 
conflict between graphic presentation and accessibility’. However, there is still 
some way to go, when PC world can discuss the rejection of an ADA lawsuit 
in November last year with a very narrow understanding of the issue. 
‘Southwest (Airlines) is "exploring some possibilities" to make "our Web site 
more user-friendly" for the blind or visually impaired. "We do everything we 
can, obviously, to make this Web site user-friendly. That's always been our 
focus for every customer," said Turneabe-Connelly. Problems with Web site accessibility aren't uncommon, and accessibility is strictly a matter of whether 
a Web site designer "programmed it for people who are blind," said Access 
Now President Edward Resnick.’ 
Such confusion is noted by accessibility advocates. Anthony Quinn (no, not 
the actor) notes that ‘Many organizations genuinely believe that if their site 
passes the Bobby test and displays the Bobby icon, it is "accessible". At a 
deeper level, some argue that the focus on Web site accessibility detracts 
from making technology work for the greater good. James Woudhuysen 
comments that ‘I learn that Tim Berners-Lee and the Royal National Institute 
for the Blind - sponsored by Standard Life - award logos for accessibility to the 
right kind of Web sites. I have no quarrel with institutions as august as these. 
But I wonder whether certificates for corporate social responsibility on the 
Web distract society from the larger tasks of speech recognition and 
synthesis’. 
Improving communication 
Fifty percent of respondents reckoned that ‘Clients specify WAI guideline 
compliance’. Accessibility champions and developers often have a less 
positive experience of the WAI. Joe Clark, notes that ‘Virtually all online 
accessibility resources are glorified rehashes of the World Wide Web 
Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines, which are opaque, very 
poorly organized, daunting, and in many cases unrealistic’. Commenting on 
Web accessibility resources, Cheryl D. Wise considers that they are ‘Uneven, 
some are reasonably good but too many have usability issues in finding the 
information your are looking for. The W3C site is a prime example of a visitor 
unfriendly site. Finding useful information that can be understood by the 
average visitor is very difficult’. Diffuse sum’s up the situation ‘The WAI 
recommendations are often regarded as difficult to understand and fulfil. 
Although they are relatively brief, they impose a large number of 
requirements, and an average author probably has great difficulties in 
understanding both the "why" and the "how" of the principles. The guidelines 
are relatively abstract, and they refer to three WCAG techniques documents. 
There is also a checklist. The organization of the documentation uses 
hypertext (links between different parts) quite a lot, which is often convenient 
in reference use but confusing to the uninitiated. 
Thanks to Justin Sawkins and Yu Zhang at User-Lab, Cheryl D. Wise at 
Wiserways and Nancy Perlman at Synchordia for their assistance in this 
research 
Thanks to The Site Point Community Forum, Jolt Public Forums, Web 
Developer Community Forums Mailer, UK-Design, UK-Usability and London 
Usability Group discussion lists for publicising the survey.
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html 
Although the accessibility policies are widely accepted by different authorities, the progress in 
actual accessibility is slow. Web page authors and their employers often lack the basic 
understanding of the importance of accessibility, despite various awareness raising 
campaigns. Moreover, many of the problems and possible solutions are technically difficult. 
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/politics/3.html 
Welcome to browser hell. There are three major visual browsers, Internet Explorer, Netscape 
Navigator, and Opera. None of these allow you to use the entire range of accessibility tags. 
Nor is the support for the usable ones consistent. Platform dependancies create rendering 
issues. Lynx is a text browser. Limited formatting and no visuals allowed here. Screen 
readers require a whole new mindset in respect to using tables for presenting content. 
http://www.jasonlefkowitz.net/blog1archive/000292.html 
I’m the accessibility testing officer for a Web development and strategy consultancy. As such, 
I’ve relied on Bobby for many years to help identify and resolve accessibility problems with 
sites. Bobby is a tool that was originally developed by the Center for Applied Special 
Technology (CAST), a non-profit dedicated to expanding opportunities for people with 
disabilities. However, last August CAST sold Bobby to Watchfire, a for-profit company, with 
promises that Watchfire’s greater resources would allow them to improve Bobby more than 
CAST could. CAST had offered two versions of Bobby, a Web-based version for a quick 
check of one page, and a desktop Java app that could check an entire site in one pass. 
Naturally, for serious use, the desktop app was the way to go, and I happily used CAST’s 
Desktop Bobby up through the last version, 4.0.1. When Watchfire sent us an e-mail this 
month announcing the release of a new, supposedly much-improved Desktop Bobby 5.0, I 
upgraded right away. (Early upgraders, like me, only paid $99; the list price of the software is 
$299.) 
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/694/2 
SP: How would you undertake the enormous task of convincing designers that accessibility 
IS important, and there is a place for both extraordinary design and a high level of 
accessibility? 
http://www.decloak.com/Products/Dreamweaver%20/NestedTemplates/TablesOrLayers.aspx 
OFF-TOPIC: What about W3C Standards and all the other stuff? 
W3C standards are totally useless. 
What good are standards when browsers change so fast by adding new features every 
month? OR, the needs or demands of the users change with the latest killer app? 
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html 
The phenomenon that many accessibility-promoting pages aren't themselves accessible is 
often caused by the site design of the organization that hosts the accessibility activity. 
http://www.aasa.dshs.wa.gov/access/waddell.htm 
I
n fact, many current web-authoring tools on the market make it extremely difficult to even 
design an accessible web page. The scarcity of tools also contributes to the lack of education 
among programmers and web authors on why and how to code an accessible web page. 
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html 
Authoring tools, i.e. Web page creation software, often produce pages that have accessibility 
problems, especially if they are based on "WYSIWYG" ("What You See Is What You Get") 
techniques, since such an approach makes it much more difficult to separate content and 
structure from presentation. 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/2002Apr/0035.html 
I 
should say if those guys of Opera, WebEyes and Webformator merged their 
products and add MSAA to it the world had a perfect browser for people with 
vision loss, including the growing group of elderly people.Problems are scrollbars, information 
that hide, bad color contrast, text images.Opera is a "better" browser for low vision people 
than Internet Explorer, but because it does not include support for MSAA it is impossible to 
read aloud pages in Opera.by disabling tables in Opera it is possible to use a large font 
without scrollbars and also images magnify in Opera.But on some pages this also results in 
nasty formatted pages with a lot of blanks and loss of information.Web Eyes never shows 
scrollbars, but has no color setting support and no image magnification.A filtering tool should 
be able to: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2002JanMar/0082.html 
"It's a very positive step in the right direction," Kirkpatrick says. "In a perfect world, a solution 
would come up that works with all the screen readers and is easy for developers. But 
unfortunately, we're not in that world." 
http://www.decloak.com/Products/Dreamweaver%20/NestedTemplates/TablesOrLayers.aspx 
I
t's millions of times cheaper and faster to have a single programmer update a popular screen 
reader or non-visual browser to look for that ID attribute in the <td> tag instead of having 
millions of web designers in the entire world do a complete redesign the entire web site. 
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:3vqRLhCcQlQJ:www.ukoln.ac.uk/webfocus/
events/conferences/www2003/jcslides.
ppt+An+accessible+Web+site+is+not+necessarily+usable%E2%80%99&hl=en&ie=UT 
F-8 
Accessibility does not equal usability. 
http://www.joeclark.org/access/webaccess/JVoluntAdmin.html 
I
t is impossible to declare a certain Web page “accessible” or “inaccessible” for the simple 
reason that there are too many provisos involved. Accessible to which groups? Under what 
conditions? Using which adaptive technology, if any? 
http://pcworld.shopping.yahoo.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,106742,00.asp 
Southwest is "exploring some possibilities" to make "our Web site more user-friendly" for the 
blind or visually impaired. 
"We do everything we can, obviously, to make this Web site user-friendly. That's always been 
our focus for every customer," said Turneabe-Connelly. 
Problems with Web site accessibility aren't uncommon, and accessibility is strictly a matter of 
whether a Web site designer "programmed it for people who are blind," said Access Now 
President Edward Resnick. 
Many companies rush to create Web sites without considering accessibility and may later balk 
at spending money to retrofit their sites. As a rule, building in accessibility during a Web site's 
design costs only a quarter of the amount needed to retrofit a site later, said Jennifer Vollmer, 
a research analyst at Meta Group in Stamford, Connecticut. 
http://tc.eserver.org/19039.html 
Many organizations genuinely believe that if their site passes the Bobby test and displays the 
Bobby icon, it is 'accessible.' In many ways, this is an understandable outlook. The "Bobby 
Approved" icon represents an achievable standard and a tangible, recognisable endorsement 
of efforts made towards web accessibility. However, it should be remembered that the Bobby 
test does not ensure true 'accessibility.' 
http://www.itweek.co.uk/Analysis/1133183 
I 
learn that Tim Berners-Lee and the Royal National Institute for the Blind - sponsored by 
Standard Life - award logos for accessibility to the right kind of Web sites. I have no quarrel 
with institutions as august as these. But I wonder whether certificates for corporate social 
responsibility on the Web distract society from the larger tasks of speech recognition and 
synthesis. 
http://www.joeclark.org/accessiblog/ab-specs.html 
Virtually all online accessibility resources are glorified rehashes of the World Wide Web 
Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines, which are opaque, very poorly 
organized, daunting, and in many cases unrealistic.