I’m looking at what parts of WCAG 2.0 that I think are appropriate to set as a minimum standard for public sector sites in the UK. Personally, I think there are three key points that need to be considered.

• Public sector organisations come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and aren’t just Local Authorities and central government departments. Is it appropriate to demand that all public sector sites should have the same level of compliance?
• We need to ensure that all public sector sites achieve a level of accessibility that is achievable and where it is not unreasonable to apply sanctions (of whatever type) if an organisation fails to meet the required level. Currently, too many sites fail to achieve the required standard: is this a problem with the sites, or is it a problem with the standard against which they are measured?
• We need to ensure that public sector sites are not discriminating against people with disabilities: all sites should be required to have at least a basic level of accessibility.

Comparison against WCAG 1.0?

So, taking these three points as my starting criteria, and looking at WCAG 2.0, and comparing it to the previous mandated standard — WCAG 1.0 at the Double-A level — what do I notice?

Firstly, I notice that there are a different number of criteria. To achieve WCAG 1.0 at the most basic level, we need to pass 16 criteria. To achieve the same against WCAG 2.0, we must pass twenty-five. Does this mean WCAG 2.0 is more stringent, and tougher to pass? Well, that’s something we need to consider — although the Double-A level of WCAG 2.0 only has 13 criteria compared to 30 for WCAG 1.0. Could we argue that with 46 tests on one site and 38 on the other, the two are roughly equivalent?

Well no, not really. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. WCAG 2.0 represents such a significant culture shift from WCAG 1.0 that in attempting to determine a suitable conformance level it does not make any practical sense to include WCAG 1.0 as a comparison. Instead, we’ve just got to look at WCAG 2.0 and see what we think is appropriate.

Accessibility Supported

The idea of what is an accessibility supported technology could be one of the most problematic features of WCAG 2.0, but — if you’ll indulge me for a moment first — I hope to be able to come up with a relatively simple answer. First, it’s important to remember that you must only rely on accessibility supported technologies:

Accessibility Supported

Using a technology in a way that is accessibility supported means that it works with assistive technologies (AT) and the accessibility features of operating systems, browsers, and other user agents. Technology features can only be relied upon to conform to WCAG 2.0 success criteria if they are used in a way that is “accessibility supported”. Technology features can be used in ways that are not accessibility supported (do not work with assistive technologies, etc.) as long as they are not relied upon to conform to any success criterion

WCAG 2.0

Right. That’s the “quick and simple” definition. Of course, you’ll be wondering what the full explanation looks like, if that’s the quick and simple one. So here is the more complicated bit — how do we determine whether or not a technology counts as accessibility-supported.

To qualify as an accessibility-supported use of a Web content technology (or feature of a technology), both 1 and 2 must be satisfied for a Web content technology (or feature):

1. The way that the Web content technology is used must be supported by users’ assistive technology (AT). This means that the way that the technology is used has been tested for interoperability with users’ assistive technology in the human language(s) of the content, AND
2. The Web content technology must have accessibility-supported user agents that are available to users. This means that at least one of the following four statements is true:
   1. The technology is supported natively in widely-distributed user agents that are also accessibility supported (such as HTML and CSS); OR
   2. The technology is supported in a widely-distributed plug-in that is also accessibility supported; OR
   3. The content is available in a closed environment, such as a university or corporate network, where the user agent required by the technology and used by the organization is also accessibility supported; OR
   4. The user agent(s) that support the technology are accessibility supported and are available for download or purchase in a way that:
      • does not cost a person with a disability any more than a person without a disability and
      • is as easy to find and obtain for a person with a disability as it is for a person without disabilities

Note 1: The WCAG Working group and the W3C do not specify which or how much support by assistive technologies there must be for a particular use of a Web technology in order for it to be classified as accessibility supported

WCAG 2.0: Accessibility Supported

Right-ho. This bit looks complicated, but let’s break it down. To qualify as an accessibility-supported technology, the technology must be freely available, and either free or the accessibility-supported agents don’t cost more than the standard ones, and that particular use of technology has been tested for accessibility support.

Note also the note: the W3C aren’t going to tell us which technologies count as accessibility supported, this is something we’re going to have to work out on our own. And it will change over time.

So where start? HTML and CSS, obviously. Javascript? We’ll come back to that one. Flash and PDFs? Well, I’d say so: assistive technology can handle these pretty well, just so long as they have been put together in an accessible manner. You can’t just slap it on the web and assume it’s fine. But if you build it properly, it should be.

So that’s HTML, CSS, Flash and PDF I’d allow. What the COI need to do is to state which technologies are appropriate for public sector sites. Someone needs to take on this responsibility for UK public sector sites, and I think the COI is yer man.

Is Javascript Accessibility Supported?

Well, some bits are. And some bits aren’t.

And now I’ll look at Javascript. For Javascript, I’d allow use of particular pieces of javascript, where that particular script/command has been checked and documented as being accessible. For this, I think it would be useful for someone (the COI again?) to keep a list of javascript commands and techniques which have been found to work with assistive technologies: if someone wants to do the testing for an additional bit, and make their documentation available to the COI, then it gets added.

I think the time has come to accept that Javascript does not necessarily make a site inaccessible, and that sites can rely on javascript and still meet accessibility requirements — provided that script has been tested as being accessible. The most obvious example of this for me is that javascript which is ubiquitous within .NET sites — the javascript postback.

When working for a Local Authority, I ended up in a discussion with Microsoft about this who seemed quite content that this technology was accessible (and my test case, which I got screen reader users to look at, seemed to confirm this), but that obviously Local Authorities couldn’t use it, because under the current rules they were not allowed to rely on javascript — despite this javascript being tested and accessible.

This is obviously nonsense. Which is why I think we need to take a more complex view with javascript: let’s record accessible uses of javascript, and then people can use these. If they want to use something not already recorded, they have to carry out the testing and prove that it’s accessible.

Conformance Claims

…are optional, but if you do want to include them, they need to be made in a very specific way. This is not a case of sticking one of those accessibility badges on your site. You’ve got to provide much more information than this. Indeed, if you do venture to stick an accessibility badge on your page then this is deemed a conformance claim, and it must be accompanied by all the other necessary information.

So I’d suggest that public sector organisations are discouraged from including conformance claims. If they want to include some sort of information, a description of what testing they have carried out (and who with) may be may appropriate, but I tend to think this sort of thing is of no benefit — it’s self congratulatory backslapping only: describing what you’ve done does not in itself make the site more accessible, and you ought to be doing it because it’s right, not because you want to claim some credit for it and feel smug or superior.

Success Criteria: Perceivable

Criteria in this section:

• Provide an equivalent text alternative for non-text content (Level A)
• Provide an alternative for pre-recorded audio or video except where the media is a media alternative to text. If the media is time-based, the time information must be associated with it.(Level A)
• Provide captions for pre-recorded audio, except where the audio is a media alternative to text (Level A)
• An alternative for time-based media or audio description of prerecorded video is provided for synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is labeled as such (Level A)
• Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined (use headers, lists and so on properly) (Level A)
• When the sequence in which content is presented affects its meaning, a correct reading sequence can be programmatically determined (Level A)
• Instructions provided for understanding and operating content do not rely solely on sensory characteristics (don’t say “fill in the fields with a circle next to them”, “put your answer in the box to the left only”) (Level A)
• Colour is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element. (Level A)
• If any audio on a Web page plays automatically for more than 3 seconds, either a mechanism is available to pause or stop the audio, or a mechanism is available to control audio volume independently from the overall system volume level. (Level A)
• Captions are provided for all live audio content (Level AA)
• Audio description is provided for all prerecorded video content in synchronized media (Level AA)
• The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (except logos, decoration etc) (Level AA)
• Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality (Level AA)
• If text can be used to supply the visual presentation of the information, text is used to supply the information, unless it’s essential to be presented in a particular way (e.g. a logo) or the image can be customised by the user (Level AA)

All perfectly reasonable (bar maybe one, but I’ll come to that). I’m also delighted to see that you can’t have constant jangling background audio (not that you tend to find that in the public sector, but it’s a personal bugbear of mine).

This “media alternative” is a key thing in this. Initially, these success criteria seem a little onerous: thou must providest captions and so on, but that isn’t really the case at all. The media alternative specifies that where the media provides no more information than is available in a standard text equivalent (transcript or so on), then that text equivalent is fine. So in many cases, you don’t need captions, audio descriptions or so on, provided that you have supplied a good enough text alternative to the media.

As regards level AA, I tend to think that if you’re sophisticated enough to have live streaming audio content, you ought to be sophisticated enough to put captions on it. This does however mean that you need to be careful when you’re considering putting video conferencing, or live council debates on your website — you have to have someone sticking captions on it.

The potential fly in the ointment is the second Double-A one: success criterion 1.2.5. This requires that any public sector organisation must provide audio description of video content even if all of the information that can be obtained from that video is also supplied in a text alternative.

I have to be totally honest here and accept that while having the information in text format is probably not quite as good as an audio equivalent, I feel that this puts an overly onerous burden on public sector sites to little practical benefit: the early success criterion demands that the text alternative contain all of the information in the video, and I would have thought that this should be sufficient.

For me, the accessibility standard ought to be set at a level where someone with a disability can carry out all of the tasks, and access all of the information on a site, but not at a level that requires public sector organisations to undertake specifically complex work for little benefit. The standard ought to be achievable and it ought to be reasonable. And for that reason, I would recommend that the COI do not include success criterion 1.2.5 as part of a level that is mandatory for public sector sites.

Other than this, I think the rest of the perceivability success criteria are perfectly reasonable and appropriate.

Success Criteria: Operable

And the operability criteria:

• All functionality of the content is operable through a keyboard interface (Level A)
• If keyboard focus can be moved to a component of the page using a keyboard interface, then focus can be moved away from that component using only a keyboard interface (no keyboard trap) (Level A)
• For each time limit that is set by the content, it is either adjustable, extendable, switch-offable, essential to the activity, over 20 hours, or related to a real-time event (Level A)
• Moving, blinking, or auto-updating information that starts automatically can be stopped, paused, or otherwise adjusted (Level A)
• Pages do not contain anything that flashes more than three times in any one second, or flash below the general flash and red flash threshold (Level A)
• Provide a mechanism to skip navigation and similar repeated blocks (Level A)
• Use meaningful page titles (Level A)
• Focus order follows in a meaningful manner (Level A)
• The purpose of each link can be determined from the link plus surrounding context except where the purpose of the link is intended to be ambiguous to users in general. Like this one. (Level A)
• More than one way is available to locate a page except where it is the result of, or a step in, a process (i.e. provide navigation, search, site maps etc) (Level AA)
• Headings and labels describe topic or purpose (Level AA)
• Make the keyboard focus indicator is visible (in other words, use :active and :focus pseudoclasses as well as :hover) (Level AA)

“Public sector websites shouldn’t cause seizures” seems perfectly reasonable to me, as do the other criteria. I can’t see any reason why any public sector site should not be expected to achieve all of these things. Most of them are done anyway, and the ones which are not already standard across the public sector ought to be standard across the public sector.

The whole lot of these ought to be mandatory. None of them are difficult to achieve, all of them will impact on people with disabilities, there’s simply no excuse for non-compliance with this lot.

Success Criteria: Understandable

And the success criteria here…

• The default human language of each page can be programmatically determined. (Level A)
• When any component receives focus, it does not initiate a change of context. (Level A)
• Changing the setting of any user interface component does not automatically cause a change of context unless the user has been advised of the behavior before using the component (Level A)
• If an input error is automatically detected, the item that is in error is identified and the error is described to the user in text. (Level A)
• Labels or instructions are provided when content requires user input. (Level A)
• The human language of each passage or phrase in the content can be programmatically determined except for proper names, technical terms, words of indeterminate language, and words or phrases that have become part of the vernacular (Level AA)
• Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated (Level AA)
• Components that have the same functionality within a set of pages are identified consistently (Level AA)
• If an input error is automatically detected and suggestions for correction are known, then the suggestions are provided to the user, unless it would jeopardize the security or purpose of the content. (Level AA)
• For Web pages that cause legal commitments or financial transactions for the user to occur, that modify or delete user-controllable data in data storage systems, or that submit user test responses, at least one of the following is true: (Level AA)
  • Submissions are reversible
  • Data entered by the user is checked for input errors and the user is provided an opportunity to correct them
  • A mechanism is available for reviewing, confirming, and correcting information before finalizing the submission

There are a couple of things here which are worthy of note: I’ll skip over language as that’s easy enough to apply using the lang attribute or xml:lang depending on what and where you’re doing it, so instead I’ll stop at change of context. By this, it means that you shouldn’t change the on-screen content or send someone off to a new page unless they click a link or button or you’ve already told them this will happen.

A common example of this is drop-down lists which, upon selecting an option, immediately take you off to that selected option. The obvious problem with this is that if you’re using a screenreader, you may not know this is going to happen. For example, on the Redbridge i council site, if you change the drop-down selection in ‘view events of type’, it will automatically change the selection of events viewed underneath. This is done in a keyboard-accessible manner (it does change as you scroll through the list, which is a good start!) but obviously there is no on-screen warning that this will happen.

Again, it’s an easy enough fix: either provide specific instruction on what will happen, or add a submit type button.

Beyond this, the requirements are again fairly simple: provide meaningful error messages, give as much detail about the error as possible, and there’s also the key bit about submitting a page which performs some sort of update action. This is likely to be majorly beneficial to most users — it gives you a bit more confidence if you can double-check your details before you submit them — and is really not that difficult to achieve.

Again, there’s no real excuse for any public sector organisation not being able to hit these checkpoints. They don’t require anything special to achieve; they’ll benefit a wide variety of users and they should be considered good practice anyway.

Success Criteria: Robust

This is almost a little rump section: there’s not a great deal to it, as there are only two success criteria here…

• Markup parses successfully: elements have complete start and end tags, elements are nested according to their specifications, elements do not contain duplicate attributes, and any IDs are unique (Level A)
• For all user interface components the name and role can be programmatically determined; states, properties, and values that can be set by the user can be programmatically set; and notification of changes to these items is available to user agents, including assistive technologies. (Level A). This success criterion is primarily for authors who script their own components. Standard HTML controls already meet this success criterion when used according to specification.

As regards the second one, if you’re using HTML controls in the standard manner, you’re fine already. As regards the first, parsing isn’t exactly the same as validation — but anything which is valid HTML must parse ok. And as public sector organisations were previously expected to have valid code, successfully parsing code should already be in place.

Again, there’s no reason why any public sector sites shouldn’t be able to comply with these without any problem.

Success Criteria: Triple-A

So far, we’ve just looked at Single-A and Double-A success criteria, but are there also any Triple-A success criteria which we should expect to be mandatory for public sector sites?

No. There are a lot of different success criteria at the AAA level which would be useful to certain groups of people with disabilities, but these will generally only impact on smaller groups of users, will only be relevant in certain circumstances, or will add additional accessibility beyond the basic requirement.

For these reasons, I’d suggest that public sector organisations are encouraged to comply with as many of the AAA success criteria as is feasible for them to do so, but that these should not be mandatory.

However, there are certain things that I would particularly recommend, which I think are fairly easy to achieve and will generate real, practical benefit:

• Do not justify text
• Provide information about the users location within a set of pages (menus, breadcrumbs etc)
• Use section headings to organise the content
• Provide mechanisms for identifying unusual words, jargon, acronyms or abbreviations
• Use simple, plain English

In Summary, Then…

Other than 1.2.5 (provide audio description, irrespective of whether or not text equivalent is available), there are no success criteria at either level A or level AA which appear to be particularly difficult or unreasonable to expect them to be achieved. On this basis, I don’t feel that there is any need for different ‘levels’ of requirement depending upon the size of, or the resources available to, a specific public sector organisation.

I would therefore recommend that the COI set the required conformance level for WCAG 2.0 to be at the WCAG 2.0 Double-A level with the sole exception of 1.2.5, which I think may be unreasonable for some public sector organisations to achieve (this would still require equivalent text to be available with all of the information contained in the video, but it wouldn’t require a separate video with audio descriptions added). I think this would be a very reasonable, practical level of accessibility to expect, one which ought to be achievable for all public sector organisations, and one which should ensure that anyone who is disabled still has access to all of the information and functions provided.

I would be worried that any standard which required conformance against 1.2.5 would either see public sector sites ignoring the accessibility standard, or would see public sector sites simply choosing not to use video and multimedia, which is why I believe this, and this alone, needs to be removed from the requirement before we can set the rest of WCAG 2.0 at the Double-A level to be mandatory for the public sector.

I’d also recommend that the COI encourage compliance with Triple-A level success criteria, and in particular the ones I have listed above which I feel will provide the most benefit with the least effort, but let’s keep it simple, and just make these advisory only.

Having quite a bit of knowledge of accessible web design and in testing against it (feel free to contact me if you want a quote for a site audit, with recommendations for fixes, by the way!), I understand how difficult it is to achieve the triple-A level of accessibility conformance level for WCAG using either version 1.0 (1999) or version 2.0 (2008). I also know that “out-of-the-box” accessibility is impossible: you simply cannot achieve it unless your content editors also know and understand accessibility requirements.

Which was why I was more than a little surprised to see this tweet:

Redbridge AAA-rated for accessibility at the moment, built into the CMS. Immediacy, used by BBC for their Intranet. #digieng@72prufocks

My first reactions were “triple-A? bet it isn’t” and “built into the CMS? now I’m really convinced they don’t understand accessibility”. So, given that Redbridge i seems to be frequently lauded as an example of what local government should be doing, I thought I’d better take a look to see if it is accessible, or if it is likely to present any significant barriers to disabled users.

Whilst not proving the site inaccessible, the fact that the home page failed to validate was probably not a good start for a site which was allegedly claiming triple-A compliance, as it knocks that out of the water straight away…

And the short answer is that it isn’t accessible. Never mind the triple-A level of compliance, it fails to meet the single-A level of compliance for either WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0. And of course if you’re not achieving even the single-A level of conformance:

A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document.WCAG 1.0: Priorities

I wouldn’t normally be quite so public about this criticism, but for the fact that Redbridge i appear to be claiming a conformance level they come nowhere near achieving, and for the fact it appears to be frequently held up as an exemplar of what public sector sites should be doing when it is in fact failing the disabled, and it is failing them badly.

It wasn’t even that I had to look far to find problems with Redbridge i. I managed to find enough failures on the home page alone to demonstrate that it does not achieve any WCAG conformance levels. Rather than go through every checkpoint and success criterion though, and the site in great detail (I’m not being paid to do that), I will instead walk you through how Redbridge fails different groups of users — and the checkpoint references appropriate, if you’d like to read on, Macduff…

Redbridge Fails: Visually Impaired Users

Firstly, there are visually impaired users. Now Redbridge does offer some useful things here: the accessibility page offers the user the chance to change the text size across (most of) the site, and to change the screen colours. This is a good thing, and it is something that is certainly not offered as standard across Local Authorities. Redbridge deserve credit for this.

But good intentions only go so far if they are not carried out well. For a start, Redbridge i is very script-heavy. I haven’t gone to the trouble to check whether every single piece of javascript works with every piece of assistive technology, which would mean that practically, and as far as WCAG 2.0 is concerned, this is okay. But if Redbridge want to claim conformance against WCAG 1.0, they need to ensure all functions (or equivalent functions) also work without javascript. And this is not the case.

Here’s an example of the Redbridge Jobs section, surely one of the most important parts of any Local Authority site. Assuming you have javascript enabled, you need simply change the value in the drop-down box, and it will pick up the jobs of this type automatically. Fantastic, eh?

Er, well, no actually. Here we’ve got a failure against WCAG 2.0, at level A — the most basic conformance level — on the homepage itself. Now, being an accessibility sort of a person, finding a level-A failure on the homepage of a site which apparently claims triple-A is not what I would call a good sign.

3.2.2 On Input: Changing the setting of any user interface component does not automatically cause a change of context unless the user has been advised of the behavior before using the component. (Level A) WCAG 2.0: On Input

If you go around changing the content on the page without warning the user that you are going to do so when they don’t do something where they would expect a change of content (button-click or following a link), this is likely to cause problems. So there’s a level A failure at WCAG 2.0 on the home page.

Aha, but what if they aren’t measuring against WCAG 2.0, I hear you ask. Surely as the COI have just recently announced the public sector can now use WCAG 2.0 as a yardstick, the conformance was probably measured against WCAG 1.0?

Don’t worry: it fails that as well. If you don’t have javascript, the little jobs section provides no mechanism by which you can filter jobs by category. Which is obviously in breach of the Priority 1 checkpoint 6.3:

Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 6.3

Without javascript, you cannot use this dropdown box to filter by category. It is useless. And to me, this demonstrates a great lack of awareness about what is actually required for accessibility. There is one simple thing that could be used to fix both the WCAG 1.0 problem and the WCAG 2.0 problem. And that is to use a submit button to update the data. It’s hardly rocket science. And, they could possibly drop some of the “browser does not support script” messages which appear all over the site while they’re on.

So there we have it: one simple problem that highlights the fact that Redbridge does not properly get accessibility, and fails both WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 at the most basic priority levels. But of course that’s not all…

There’s data tables not marked up properly:

This is actually quite a common error: people realise that the top row of a data table contains header information, so they mark this up accordingly using <th> cells. But they forget that generally at least one item in each row is the header for that row also.

Take the sixth <td> cell in the table. It contains the value “full-time”, which is associated with the header “hours”. Unfortunately, this is not actually associated with any other value, when in practice it would be more useful if the data value in the first column “accountant” was marked up as a header for that row, because then someone would actually be able to ascertain which jobs were full-time…

This fails WCAG 1.0 at the single-A level — and let’s face it, the checkpoint does specifically mention row headers:

5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers. [Priority 1] WCAG 1.0: Table Headers

…and similarly it fails WCAG 2.0 at the first priority level…

1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text. (Level A) WCAG 2.0: Info and Relationships

Oh, and don’t get me on to poor use of alt text. Decorative images with pointless alt text all over the shop. #FailFailFail.

Redbridge Fails: Mobility Impaired Users

Frequently, people with upper limb disability (or some other problem, such as Parkinsons) will struggle to use a mouse. So they will navigate through a site using the keyboard only. So one of the useful things brought in by WCAG 2.0 (but in place before that at sites where people properly “get” accessibility) is keyboard focus.

2.4.7 Focus Visible: Any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible. (Level AA)WCAG 2.0 Focus Visible

Basically, if you hover the mouse over a link on Redbridge i, the link will change in some way (the navigation gets a little blue glow behind it; the underline on some links disappear and so on). If you repeat with the TAB key to move to the same place using the keyboard, you will find, at best, a very faint focus indicator put in by your browser because those designing the site have not thought to include equivalent :focus or :active pseudoclasses in the styling.

WCAG 1.0 fails to address keyboard only users as effectively, so there’s no outright failure of WCAG 1.0 here, but in terms of practical accessibility and also WCAG 2.0, this is a problem.

Redbridge Fails: Hearing Disability

Let’s take checkpoint 1.4 from WCAG 1.0:

For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives (e.g., captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation. [Priority 1]WCAG 1.0: Synchronize Equivalents

For a movie, captions must be synchronised with the presentation. Okay? And that’s Priority 1 in WCAG 1.0, and er… let’s see … exactly the same in WCAG 2.0:

1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded): Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. (Level A)WCAG 2.0: Captions (Prerecorded)

So if there’s a video with meaningful audio (as opposed to some background music), then it should have captions for either WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0 for even the most basic conformance claim. But if you look at the Redbridge Trading Standards Video, it doesn’t have captions, so that’s a conformance fail for WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0.

When I first started looking at this, I thought this was just a technical fail: that it would fail to meet the conformance criteria, but not actually fail people in terms of practical accessibility, because they have produced a transcript of the video. And, had that actually been the case, I would have given them credit for doing more than most Local Authorities actually do.

Only they’ve demonstrated a critical lack of accessibility awareness by missing out help for anyone with hearing impairments. For anyone with vision impairments, the “transcript” is fine: it contains a text equivalents of the images of text which appear on the screen. For anyone with hearing impairments however, it is useless — it contains the text showing the details they will have already been able to see, but there is no way of accessing the information that they have been unable to hear.

May I therefore suggest that as well as remembering that accessibility isn’t just about the blind, the people behind Redbridge actually look up the definition of the word transcript, because all the ones I could find specifically mention that it is a text equivalent of recorded speech, which seems to be the rather important bit they have missed out of theirs…

Redbridge: Built Into the CMS Fail

You cannot have a Content Management System that produces accessible output automatically. The best that it is possible to manage is a system that is capable of producing accessible output, providing your content editors use it correctly. And in order to achieve that, your content editors must have at least a basic understanding of accessibility (or at least that they have to use the CMS in a particular way).

If they don’t, you get #Fail.

For example, in order to achieve WCAG 1.0 at level AA or above, any direct quotation must be marked up with quotation markup — <blockquote> or <q>. Whether or not I think this is actually necessary is another matter: if you say you conform, you need to do it:

Your content editors must therefore know that any direct quotation must be marked up. And the CMS you are using must have the facility to allow them to do this. Otherwise you can’t reach WCAG 1.0 at the Double-A level. (Redbridge failed this on the You Can Make a Difference news page).

Then you’ve got the PDF minutes of council meetings in breach of WCAG 1.0 checkpoint 11.1, which tells you to use W3C technologies if they are appropriate for a task (and there’s certainly nothing in those plain-text minutes which required them to be PDF rather than HTML).

You also need to ensure that anyone adding a list of items knows not only that they need to be marked up as a list, but how to achieve that, and similarly that headers should be marked up appropriately rather than just being deemed headers by the fact the font is put in bold. I have to say actually that Redbridge i did achieve these last two things pretty well so far as I can tell (given an hour to scan the site) but this does not detract from the point that this is not CMS-out-of-the-box, this is content editors who know what they are doing.

Redbridge Terms and Conditions

On a slight aside, I did attempt to read Redbridge’s Terms and Conditions before using the site, only to discover that they didn’t actually seem to make sense.

By using or accessing any part of the Council’s website you agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions:

• By using Redbridge i you agree to be legally bound by these terms, which shall take effect immediately on your first use of Redbridge i. If you do not agree to be legally bound by all the following terms please do not access and/or use Redbridge i.
• The Council may change these terms at any time by posting changes online. Please review these terms regularly to ensure you are aware of any changes made by the Council. Your continued use of Redbridge i after changes are posted means you agree to be legally bound by these terms as updated and/or amended.
• If any of the following terms and conditions is illegal, invalid or unenforceable this will not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining terms and conditions
• The relationship between you and the London Borough of Redbridge will be governed by English law. You agree to submit all disputes to the jurisdiction of the English courts.

Redbridge Terms and Conditions

In other words, the terms and conditions are that I must obey the terms and conditions, in so far as they are valid in English law. Seems a bit, well… circular to me….

Redbridge: A Model for the future

I am not trying to imply that Redbridge i is crap: it isn’t. In terms of interactivity it is indeed leading the way in showing councils what they should be doing. I do not wish to imply that Redbridge is not something sites should not strive towards in terms of allowing user customisation — allowing users to have the site displaying the information they want, rather than what the council is telling ‘em they want.

That’s all good stuff.

But it does have accessibility issues, and these need to be mentioned for a few reasons.

• If people are holding this site up as an example of what councils should do, they ought to know where the site doesn’t do so well, so they know how they can improve on it
• So Redbridge i can improve on it themselves and truly make their site a shining example of council sites
• If people are thinking that they have achieved WCAG-AAA compliance, or that level of compliance can be achieved ‘out-of-the-box’ with any software, they need to be educated otherwise.
• Those claiming particularly high levels of accessibility conformance need to be held up to scrutiny: otherwise people will follow them and may unwittingly copy bad practice.

So to all those at Redbridge i who’ve read this, and feel like I’ve given them a kicking, I’m sorry. Yes, I know my site isn’t perfect either (but I don’t claim to be, and I don’t have your resources). But rather than give me a kicking, find out who it was who claimed that your site was Triple-A accessible, and shout at them. They are the ones who put you up there to be challenged and knocked down.

But rather than get grumpy about it, why not look to fix the problems, and truly turn Redbridge i into that shining star?

*Ahem*. Now comes the blatant plug bit. if anyone would like me to advise them on what they can do to improve their site — public sector or otherwise — get in touch, let me know what you’re after and I’ll sort you out with a quote.

Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding has for the first time talked of a ‘European Disability Act’ that could compel EU nations to adopt web accessibility rules together so that all of Europe’s websites become accessible at the same rate.Out-Law.com: European Commission floats idea of web accessibility legislation

As indicated by the headline, we shouldn’t take this to mean that some pan-European accessibility legislation is going to be brought in imminently, but rather that the EU is taking seriously the problems of web accessibility faced by disabled users and is looking to shift to have a more consistent and coherent approach across the EU in order to prevent sites discriminating against, and in some cases effectively locking out those with disabilities.

The UK already has the Disability Discrimination Act which relates to this sort of thing (which I’ve covered before) which impacts both the public and private sectors; the EU already have the 2006 Riga Declaration on e-inclusion which basically states that public sector websites must achieve an appropriate level of conformance, and now we’ve got the potential of something else.

It’s also noteworthy that specific mention is made of the new accessibility guidelines, showing that there is an understanding that the new guidelines (published December 2008) are significantly better than WCAG 1.0 which dates back to 1999. This, together with the COI‘s acceptance of WCAG 2.0 as a standard for the UK public sector shows that the time has come for WCAG 2.0: it’s no longer something we should just be thinking about, we should be using it now.

We should in my view encourage the European-wide adoption of the global web accessibility standard, the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We should do it together and in step so that the online services industry can reap economies of scale and the users get a decent and reliable framework. I believe the way we should do this is to develop together with stakeholders a European Disability Act.Viviane Reding speech

It’s really a shame that there needs to be such an accessibility stick with which to beat people to force them to make their sites accessible to disabled users. If you don’t care whether or not your site is accessible to people with disabilities, then in my eyes, you’re a bit of a poor excuse for a human being. And if you’re a web designer who doesn’t include accessibility as standard in web design, then you shouldn’t claim that you’re a professional.

After all, this is supposed to be the 21st Century, and it’s not even as if accessibility is hard to achieve when properly built into a site in the first place (and even if it needs to be shoe-horned into a site once developed, it’s generally possible to make quite significant improvements without too much pain). But the idea that any individual, company, or organisation can be allowed to get away with producing websites which do not satisfy basic accessibility requirements is disgraceful.

It is discriminating against groups in society for no good reason. It’s the equivalent of sticking a sign on the front of your site saying “no blacks”. If you think that sort of overt discrimination on the grounds of race is wrong, then it’s time to stop tolerating it on the grounds of disability.

Designing Your Implementation

There is then some more technical detail on how specifically to design your implementation, based upon whether the controls you are using are provided by the framework — in which case use the framework’s guidelines to make them accessible — or whether they aren’t, in which case you must develop a native solution for them.

The obvious solution for developers therefore is to use controls provided by the framework wherever possible — not only will you be using controls where the accessibility implementations of them has already been tested, but you’ll be saving yourself quite a bit of development work!

Testing and Delivery

Next we come to how to test whether your non-web application is going to be accessible. For me, this is the really important bit. Again, there are significant similarities to web accessibility testing…

[testing] can be done through a combination of software test tools, manual testing, and user scenario testing with assistive technology (AT) devices [...] Programmatic access and keyboard access are two critical requirements for accessibility. Without them, many different users of AT (such as screen reader and on-screen keyboard users) would be affected and would not be able to use your product at all.Engineering for Accessibility

There are manual tools which can be used to quickly check the UI’s structure and properties, and see what would be exposed to assistive technology. This is where you get to Microsoft’s toolkit which allows you to inspect objects for accessibility. The first thing you want to do is get yourself a copy of the Active Accessibility 2.0 SDK Tools

There are three tools here that you want: Accessible Event Watcher, Accessible Explorer, and Inspect. Inspect works as a little popup window on your screen which gives you all sorts of information about the currently selected control — name, value, description, state, keyboard shortcut and so on. This is ideal as a quick reference alongside any form of windows application to ensure that the correct details are being exposed to assistive technologies.

Microsoft make a point of, er… pointing out that no single tool can verify something is completely accessible, you need to use a combination of tools and testing in order to make sure your applications are accessible. They also suggest you look at UIA Verify which enables you to:

…quickly find and select any UI element anywhere on the desktop. Based on the specific control type and the supported control patterns, UIA Verify provides the built-in test scenarios prioritized for the particular UI element. Developers can add additional test scenarios by adding the code to the UIA Test Library. The tool can output the test results or the summary in various forms.UIA Verify documentation

Of course, the thing to remember for all these sorts of testing tools — and obviously Microsoft don’t fall into this trap — is that while they can highlight potential problems, that does not mean something is definitely a problem, and they are also capable of missing potential problems, so they need to be used as part of an overall testing strategy.

7 Steps to a Better Computing World

Microsoft finish up by raising seven steps for incorporating accessibility into system design. I’m going to amend these slightly to give you all the benefit of my personal opinions instead…

1. Decide if accessibility is an important aspect to your software It is. Move on.
2. Use standard controls as much as possible
3. Design a logical hierarchy
4. Design basic accessibility into your product (keyboard navigation, high contrast testing)
5. Implement your design using the Microsoft Accessibility Developer Center and any other relevant resources
6. Test
7. Deliver your solution and document the accessibility bits

But for those of you who are a little put off by its somewhat weighty nature (102 pages and close to 25,000 words), I have done my usual thing of having had a little read through to bring you a summary of some of what I believe is the key information.

Introduction

It starts off with a little background information, an introduction to accessibility if you will, but then throws in a statistic that may well startle many:

A 2003–2004 study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Forrester Research found that over half—57 percent—of computer users in the United States between the ages of 18 and 64 could benefit from accessible technology. Most of these users did not identify themselves as having a disability or impaired but expressed certain task-related difficulties or impairments when using a computer. Engineering for Accessibility

It then goes on to talk about impairment types, what the effects of these impairments are, and what AT solutions are available. This contains nothing new to people who already have a good understanding of accessibility, but some of the issues and solutions — mobility impairments and the head-tracking mouse — may be new to some.

One important point raised is that many software applications already include things which are of benefit to some types of cognitive disability — many calendar applications allow users to set reminders, which can be a critical aid to anyone with memory issues.

Like most computer tech books, the authors feel that their is a need to throw in a lot of jargon and TLAs: whether or not you already know that a UI is a user interface, and UIA is user interface automation is somewhat beside the point: it’s possible to explain the same point using much plainer English and it’s a shame that so many techies (and here I’m not just pointing at Microsoft) feel the need to dress things up in fancy language.

The book describes its two key considerations as programmatic access and keyboard access. Basically, if the features and details of your application are exposed programmatically, AT such as screenreaders can pick up on it; if you can access the program using a keyboard, you are not dependent on a mouse. Two very simple principles which underpin an awful lot of accessibility.

What Microsoft do very well with this book is back it up with further information which is available online: they provide a list of resource links organised by chapter, such as guidelines for keyboard user interface design.

Again, there’s nothing in here that’s rocket science: keyboard interface design can be summed up as:

• Provide keyboard access to all features (and document it)
• Keep keyboard navigation quick, easy, and consistent
• Do not require multiple keys to be pressed simultaneously (except for CTRL, SHIFT and ALT, which can be done using the Windows StickyKeys accessibility feature
• Ensure tab order is correct

It is important to consider also that just because you’ve learned how to make stuff accessible on t’interwebs, and because you’re aware of assistive technology that works on the web, does not mean that you necessarily know how it works elsewhere. While the focus of the book is very much on the Microsoft Windows platform, principles relating to it can potentially be transferred to other platforms. For example, if you have designed an application with default colours, you should check that the colours you have used are still properly differentiated if you view the application in one of the ‘high-contrast’ windows modes.

The documentation references colour contrast and suggests that you should ensure the contrast between text and background is at least 5:1 (3:1 for larger font sizes). This is pretty much the same as the AA level success criterion 1.4.3 in WCAG 2.0 (albeit a smidge stronger). You’re also advised, pretty much again backing up the Web equivalents, not to use colour as the primary way of presenting some information.

The UI Automation Environment

Intended for interoperable implementations by other companies, Microsoft’s UI Automation (UIA) Community Promise is a specification that provides information about Microsoft’s accessibility frameworks, including Active Accessibility (MSAA), UI Automation (UIA), and its shared implementations. Engineering for Accessibiity

In other words, what Microsoft does to expose the details of controls and applications to assistive technology. For the most part, I don’t really believe it’s that necessary to understand the technical details of how the UIA stuff works, just so long as you are using it correctly so that it does. Therefore for the most part I am going to skip this bit as not only is it not the bit that I am specifically interested in, but it is also not the sort of thing which is easy to summarise. I will however note that if you are developing your own controls, you need to ensure that they adhere to the appropriate specifications.

Designing the Logical Hierarchy

For anyone who has previously designed an application, there’s a procedure you go through. You know what functions the users want the system to contain (if you’re lucky). The question is ‘how do you get them from system startup to access those features?’. And that is precisely what we’re looking at here.

It’s about making the logical structure a visible structure that is exposed and accessible to the users. In other words, make it look the same way it behaves. Again, ’tis neither rocket science nor brain surgery, it’s just one of those design principles which has embedded itself into my head as “the way we do things” without having any high-falutin’ technical terminology attached to it.

Although, for anyone who is an inveterate tinkerer with applications (whether .NET, Microsoft Access, or whatever), there is a key piece of information:

Identify the controls to create the UI. Use framework controls whenever possible and not custom controls. When using framework controls, use them as they were intended. Any irregular or nonstandard use of a control often leads to bad usability and accessibility.Engineering for Accessibility

Again: use the stuff for what it is usually used for. That way the users won’t have to re-learn a different control set for your non-standard application.

And then we come to the stuff which ought to be patently obvious, but in my experience is not always so. Names. Nearly every developer I have known, and certainly every development environment I have worked in, seems to think the most important part of any standard is a naming convention. People can indeed get quite worked up as to whether every combo box in your application should be prefixed com_ combo_, or something else, and indeed whether every variable used anywhere should have an int_, lng_, txt_ or similar prefix to let you know what they are about.

And then, it has also been my experience that people don’t actually bother to adhere to the naming conventions, despite putting so much energy into bickering about what they should be. And in many cases, they are missing the point.

If the name of the control is made available to assistive technology, the important thing is not that the name has some sort of code which would enable a developer to best understand how it is deployed within the program: the important thing is that a user who sees the name would understand what the control is for.

AT programs and their users depend on the Name Property of an element, so be sure to include an accessible name with each element that you map. Consistent naming practices are very important. An accessible name should be consistent with the UI text on-screen, for example.Engineering for Accessibiity

It is very easy when creating an application which uses a lot of form controls simply to accept the names they are automatically given by the system, particularly when visually it looks okay, because you’ve added a text label alongside it. But it’s not just controls which are positioned nearby which are important for assistive technology: it’s the settings of the control itself you’re looking for.

As you can see, in the example above, the purpose of the highlighted control is to hold the field Title, and the name of the control is set appropriately for this purpose.

It then goes into some detail about how you can draw this sort of mapping, if you’re working in one of those development environments where people actually take documentation seriously, instead of just stating that they take documentation seriously…

There is then a very useful little table which lists all of the Control types supported in UI Automation. Again, this is primarily set out from a .NET point of view, but it is incredibly useful for people to see the sort of thing which is exposed to the assistive tech.

Then, again demonstrating that accessibility has exactly the same principles whether on or off the web, they look at the difference between decorative and contextual graphic elements. For example, with .NET, non-control and non-content elements can be filtered out by setting the appropriate properties (IsContentElement and IsControlElement) to false.

The second part of this feature will follow tomorrow…

Secondly, there’s an implication that her husband will be allowed to travel with her to the Swiss clinic Dignitas, help her get there, in other words assist her to commit suicide and then will not be subject to prosecution on his return. This is not necessarily the case. What has happened is that the Law Lords have decided it is unfair to leave people in suspense — there needs to be clear guidance on whether or not people will be prosecuted, and in what circumstances, for helping a partner to commit suicide.

Five Law Lords ruled the Director of Public Prosecutions must specify when a person might face prosecution. [...] The Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said he would publish an interim policy on when prosecutions could occur by September before putting the issue out to public consultation. Permanent policy will be published next spring.BBC News: MS woman wins right to die fight

This is certainly not the same as saying that assisting a suicide will not face prosecution. It’s simply saying that there will be clear guidance, so that you’ll have a fair idea whether or not you’re likely to face prosecution…

Personally, I’m a firm believer that people, on the whole, have a right to decide what to do with their own life. It gets a lot trickier if they have any dependents, as obviously these need to be taken into account, but if you’re not responsible for anyone else, then I think it’s pretty much up to you: although you need to consider the impact your decision will have on others. And quite often, unless you’ve got a terminal condition or it’s easy for others to understand that your quality of life is permanently and critically impaired, any decision of this nature will cause a tremendous amount of pain for those left behind, and I don’t think it is fair to inflict suffering on others in this way.

But the idea of an MS sufferer deciding that her life is not worth living hasn’t necessarily gone down well with other MS sufferers and disability groups. There’s a post on the BBC Ouch! messageboard which strikes rather to what I see as the crux of the problem:

It’s a slippery slope where this gets legalized. First it’s all the people with MS who want to end their lives get “assisted”, then it’s, “Gee, Mom, you’ve got MS and it’s getting a little troublesome to take care of you as your disease progresses. When can I “assist” you?” [...] we don’t want that “right to die” to turn into the “responsibility to die,” not necessarily by the law, but from family/cultural expectations. This is where we have to be careful, I think.Ouch! Talk: Assisted Suicide Court Review Due

That is, as far as I can see it, precisely the issue. I think people should have the right to decide what they want to do with their lives — but equally you wouldn’t want people bringing that life to a premature conclusion because they felt they were being a “burden” on others. I’m not claiming that it’s something easy. But if it means that someone who is suffering can die with a bit more dignity, and a bit more control, then I can’t really bring myself to be against it.

This is partly due to personal circumstance: my grandfather eventually starved to death as his mobility was severely limited after a stroke and the only control he could exert was that he was able to pull the feeding tube out of his arm. Having watched a loved one suffer like that, but choosing to die on his terms, rather than continuing a life which he no longer wanted, was an awful thing to see. He was able to take that control, but it would have been better had he not had to wait to starve but had had yet more control.

But some people can be against it, and can present quite powerful arguments:

Phyllis Bowman, executive officer of lobby group Right to Life, claimed the law lords had exceeded their powers and threatened to take further legal action. “They have changed primary legislation without any reference to parliament,” she said. “They have declared that it is lawful for somebody to help a person to commit suicide abroad — but not at home. We will be consulting with our lawyers to see what possible action can be taken.”

She added that disability rights groups across the country opposed any change to the laws on assisted suicide and euthanasia, on the basis that it would undermine the right to life of vulnerable people.

Guardian: Pro-life group plots legal action

I disagree with Phyllis on the first point: I don’t think anyone has changed legislation: they’ve simply said that you’ve got to offer guidance on when — and whether — particular pieces of legislation are to be enforced. The status quo is that they already aren’t being enforced, only there are no guarantees this will remain the case. Providing guidance and treating each case equally seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The other point — opening up the possibility of assisted suicide abroad, but not in this country — is a much trickier one for me. If you are to allow people to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, are you not saying that the right to die with dignity at a time of your choosing is only open to those with the required level of financial resources, and that if you can’t afford it, these rights don’t apply to you?

And that is something I can’t stand for. Either we allow — through a clear non-prosecution stance — people to assist the suicide of others under certain controlled conditions, or we don’t. We cannot allow a situation where the laws are different for the rich and the poor. If we’re going to allow it, it needs to be allowed in this country.

I’m not saying that we should, or we shouldn’t. I’m currently in favour of it, but I can certainly see arguments against also. What we need is a grown up rational debate about it, if such a thing is possible in the arena of politics…

There is an international symbol of accessibility, which is basically a stylised white wheelchair on a blue background. This has various advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, it’s very clear. Everyone who sees it will recognise a wheelchair, they will know it’s something to do with disability. The fact that it is symbolic means of course that there’s no language issue either.

But … and there’s always a but, isn’t there … it does carry implications of wheelchairiness. Plenty of people are disabled who don’t use a wheelchair. There are people who are blind, who are deaf (or Deaf, as you prefer), and a whole pile of other conditions and impairments which don’t necessarily mean someone will use a wheelchair. Is the wheelchair symbol therefore less suitable for use on the web, where wheelchairiness doesn’t really impact at all on web use, particularly when compared to those who need a screen reader, are colour blind, can’t use a mouse and so on…

Joe Clark has written an article on symbolizing accessibility which covers a lot of these issues — on and off the web — and where he specifically goes to look at computer accessibility where he indicates his preference for the recommends the use of Apple’s stick-man-in-a-circle figure as used on Apple’s Accessibility Page.

While this may be more universal (indeed Joe suggest it best represents ‘Universal Access’), it’s — I’d guess — less obviously recognisable as something which relates to disability/accessibility (although it may be well known amongst the Macheads). Also I don’t know whether or not the image is free for anyone to use, or whether it’s “owned” by Apple — although I’m hopeful someone will tell me!

Phil Teare (of Textic and Talklets) proposed some ‘helping hands’ logos on Accessify Forum, which he has released into the public domain, so they are free to use. There are two versions; a helping hand logo with the standard four-fingers-plus-thumb, and a three finger variant.

Again, these carry with them no indications of specific disability; but again they will come up against the problem of not being as recognisable as relating to disability, and there is potentially a third issue. Would some people see the idea of a ‘helping hand’ as an implication that disabled people are inferior, or that they must rely on the help (connotation: charity) of “normal” people?

I don’t know. But it’s one of those issues which isn’t particularly easy. How do you come up with a symbol that will universally represent disability as a whole, without relating more to one disability than another, and also make it obvious, and make it so that it is not going to be thought of as offensive by anyone?

If you know someone who might have an opinion on this, or be able to offer some advice, or an assessment of what people will tend to think — particularly anything backed up by research/polling — then answers on a postcard please to the usual address… (or you could just stick it in the comments, if that’s easier)

Blogging against Disablism Day for me isn’t just about writing your own post, it’s also about reading what other people have to say, accepting I won’t necessarily agree with all of it, I won’t necessarily like the writing in some of it, but still an interest in what other people think and experience. From previous years, I know there will be some gems to be found in there, and if you don’t go looking for them, you will never know what you’ve been missing.

So to make it easier for those of you who aren’t prepared to go reading through the official Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009 post in order to find out what everyone else has to say (or maybe you just like reading the ‘review’ posts), I’m going to offer you up a selection of the ones I liked the best. Although at the rate I’m finding them, this is liable to be about half of the posts…

The first BADD post I read was a personal account from Bad Cripple which still makes me smile: someone standing up for themselves is always a good thing, although the point is they shouldn’t have to — not everyone would have the courage to do this.

There’s Linguanaut, who found the RNIB unhelpful as he has one ‘good’ eye, and points out that speaking more loudly to him does not, no matter how often people try it, improve his eyesight. He also (and not surprisingly, given the name of the blog) has a small look at language, which always interests me. However, on the down side, he includes Order-Order and Ian Dale’s diary in his blogroll…

There’s a personal journey from SpeEd Change which highlights the way that homogenised treatment and expectations can actually single out disabled people. Similarly, something which was obviously intensely personal produced this; sad but beautiful in its simplicity:

There’s a word for that kind of thing … when a newborn is treated as another pending, tragic statistic because her genetic diagnosis arrives before she does

What Sorts of People…

There’s The Iron Chicken who describe ‘A Convenient Myth’ — if everything is inaccessible, disabled people can’t go anywhere, so people don’t see as many disabled people, so it’s assumed that not many people are disabled, so there’s no need for accessibility. This is also illustrated by another post from Radio Clare which highlights how some people want people with disabilities to be hidden away from the rest of us, just so nobody gets offended (and also references “political correctness gone mad!”, hurrah!), and who also demonstrates that not only is she non-disablist, she’s managed to overcome her own prejudices and is also now non-beardist, and non-glassesist.

Wheelchair Dancer tells us to piss on pity, a phrase which I must alliteratively describe as pithy. The Goldfish extends this, describing a personal journey that everyone is different in a variety of respects and she no more needs to feel obliged to explain her impairments or her thoughts around disability to society at large than anyone else should feel obliged to explain why they are gay, or straight, or have chosen to dye their hair.

This actually reminds me of one of the few things I learned from an equalities course once. We all know to treat people with respect (or we should); what people might not consider is that if they are the “one” of type x, then they will feel singled out if people keep asking them questions about it, irrespective of whether the questions are sensible and reasonable. If you have one Muslim and thirty nine non-Muslims interested in finding out more, each asking their own questions, that person might feel quite harrassed and picked on, without anyone being overtly offensive. And that takes me back to Radio Clare again…

The incurable hippie also picks up (as I did) on disabled Martin Ryan being allowed to starve to death whilst in hospital, something so shocking I was surprised hadn’t received bigger media coverage.

In a strange land talks about language, and in particularly the way disability terms are used as insults — “lame”, “spaz” and so on — which implies a lack of worth in people with those disabilities. And you can lump the Moylesian “gay = not very good” terminology into this category too.

Batsgirl offers us a take — not so much on language, but more with perception — with well meaning insults — and in particular one insult which I had already read on her blog, which I suggested had handed her the BADD topic on a plate. I had said then that I looked forward to reading her post: it didn’t disappoint.

I’m always impressed when someone makes me consider something that had not previously occurred to me, and Kethry made me consider whether it is disablist to commend a deaf person on his or her speech. I still don’t have a firm personal opinion on that one: I’ve got as far as “it depends”. Which I find is generally an accurate, if unhelpful, answer to most questions.

On a similar note, what happens to disabled refugees or in a war zone? It’s probably no surprise, but it is persons with disabilities that are first to die. I also liked this post for the typo, suggesting that the blog behind BADD was “Dairy Of A Goldfish”, wondering where I can get a pint of goldfish milk…

Bitch Queen Emily (hey, her phrase, not mine!) talks honestly about a relationship with a disabled person and trying very hard not to be ableist — which isn’t always that easy. From a personal relationship to a spiritual one: Sophia’s Call gives a perspective from a Catholic hospital chaplain which, I know some people might be inclined to dismiss because of the source, although I would rather hope not: after all surely the point here is to fight against judging people? Besides which, you’d miss a really interesting post, and one not about strictly physical issues for a change…

Then there’s another one which looks at people’s perceptions towards those with autism, and cautions, not so much about making initial assumptions, but in not seeing past these assumptions later:

And the thing is, I honestly can’t blame people for making these initial assumptions; it’s an easy trap to fall into. I do, however, think that sticking to these assumptions even in spite of evidence is very much worth criticism.

Normal Is Overrated

One of the things I like about BADD is it gives me the opportunity to read a whole pile of blogs that I wouldn’t normally read. If I particularly enjoy them, I might come back and visit later; I might read some of their other stuff. I’ve found quite a few blogs like this today. It’s particularly pleasant when within two paragraphs I’m thinking “what a lovely turn of phrase, I’ll be coming back here again”.

…my haphazard attempts with the petrol lawnmower, which under my visually impaired and fibromyalgic direction becomes more of a ploughing device than a cutting device. It looks like shite before I mow and looks like hammered shite afterwardsA Load of Old Squit

After one thing that made me laugh comes another, this time from Ham.Blog with their Invisible Illness Bingo.

Attila the Mom has a story to which she simply remarks WTF? As I’m less refined then her, I’ve also provided the expansion of the anagram in case there was anyone who didn’t realise that the “F” in it was for “fuck”. Those of you with a nervous disposition should have looked away some time ago. However, she’s spot on with her sentiment. Read the story to find out why.

Hello to you out there in Normal Land
You may not comprehend my tale or understand

Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Spasticus Autisticus

And, like all variety numbers, it’s appropriate to finish on a song. Particularly a song which is by one of my favourite singers/bands: the late and very great Ian Dury. For this reason I implore you to take a look at Marmite Boy’s post No, I’m Spasticus!

Finally, apologies to anyone not included in this run-down. I have still read your post (or at least those added before 20:30 “Goldfish time”); I too value your contribution; it’s just that I’ve not included it here. However, I probably did like it very much, as my initial run-through of this post was listing the majority of the posts on BADD, rather than simply offering a selection. Also, there’s only a certain amount of writing I can do in one evening without my wife and kids demanding a little more of my time, so if you’ll excuse me pinching a disability metaphor for something else, I’ve run out of writing spoons for the time being…

I’m not disabled. I do however have a dodgy knee, which seems quite likely to cause me more difficulties as it gets older, so it is entirely possible that I will become disabled at some point. In fact, were I to live long enough, I suspect it becomes almost certain that I will be disabled at some point.

If I were to live as long as Harry Patch for example, and assuming I was still capable of blogging on the run up to my 111th birthday, I suspect I would be classed as disabled. It is something that will come to us all, providing we live long enough. But we (us “normal”, “normies”, “disability-challenged”, non-disabled folk) don’t generally think of the elderly when we think of the disabled. We tend to think of people who are disabled by something other than the aging process.

Language Lip: Disability Models and Disability Words

Of course, the social model of disability tells us that they are disabled by society: that while they might have very poor hearing, for example, this could certainly be considered an impairment, but it would not in itself be disabling, were it not for the fact society does not generally adapt enough to their needs. The medical model of disability would say that the people are disabled by the fact that they have very poor hearing. My personal belief is that both models are appropriate, depending upon the circumstances: for example, the social model deals most effectively with disability discrimination (and preventing it); the medical model is better used by the medical profession when looking at the condition in question…

This leads to different terms being preferred. Some people use “with a disability” (this is more ‘medical model’); some people use “disabled” (more ‘social model’). Some people use ‘the disabled’ (which some people don’t like as it lumps everyone into a group as diverse as ‘the left-handed’). I will no doubt end up using what is perceived as the wrong term from time to time. Fortunately, there are people around to politely remind me:

@ThePickards I *am* disabled. I *have* impairments. I do NOT “have a disability”. Social model, dearest.@ladybracknell

Which is also an excellent summation of the social model: a disabled person has impairments, but they are disabled by society…

My argument is that while people should know and understand the reasons behind the terms (and the fact that many official governmental sources don’t seem to know which one they are supposed to use) this is not as important as the way you actually deal with people. It’s still important to get the terms right (and certainly not to use particularly offensive or patronising ones) but to someone (*ahem*) with a disability it’s generally more important how they are actually treated then whether or not someone (particularly someone not expected to be ‘in the know’) uses the right term.

I also think it’s important that people don’t take needless offence, or to look for insulting language when it is not being used. For example, one disability blogger wrote this about a piece they had read elsewhere:

…is a blog with an ethos of promoting equality for women, for homosexuals, for black people, brown people and one suspects even green people from the planet Zog. So to read an article on such a platform which casually refers to ‘brain drain mongers’ both sickens and disappoints me. Some groups really are more equal than others, even amongst self describing liberals.

I’ve not provided a citation, because the person has made simply misunderstood something — which we’ve all done from time to time — and I don’t wish to single someone out for that: in this case confusing “mongers” (a term meaning basically meaning ‘trader’, as in fishmonger, cheesemonger, ironmonger, costermonger and so on) with “mongers” as an insulting slang term implying “having mongoloid characteristics” which is of course the offensive way we should no longer refer to people with Down’s syndrome.

If the term had been used in this out-of-date offensive disablist context, then I would have thought the writer would have been perfectly justified in this attack. However, I felt that it was unfair to infer that the writer of the original piece had intended to use disablist language when the more common — and non-insulting — version of the word would have suited the piece better.

In the original context, I believe the meaning as mongers of “traders in a particular idea” is even clearer:

But let’s suppose lots of rich people really do leave the country – what are we losing? The Brain Drain mongers would have us believe we are losing not just a chunk of the wealthiest 1%, but a chunk of the best…

Importantly, what became clear from the whole debate (in the comments) was that the original author obviously had meant to use it in the “trader” sense (and was initially appalled at the idea they had accidentally said something offensive before explaining the actual meaning in which it was used); that the person who had initially taken offense accepted this, and neither had any objection to the other. See, they’re both good people, capable of behaving like mature adults!

However, although I have some sympathy for some of the commenters who felt the offense was unjustified, the one who thought it “retarded” (and others with similar sentiments) did manage to demonstrate the disablism that wasn’t present in the initial article. [Update: however, that blogger has gone on to explain why her personal experiences would have lead her to assume the word was being used in an offensive manner]

[note: as there have been some anonymous commenters, I think it wise to be explicit that I have not posted on either article]

There’s three key points here.

The first is that where an offensive term is used, it may be through ignorance that the term is offensive: it is better to explain why a term is offensive. This is demonstrated by the delectable Lady B, who has a rather excellent blog, if one which she doesn’t update nearly often enough.

Secondly, disabled people (or people with a different skin colour, or religion, or culture) should not assume someone has automatically used a term in an offensive context, when a more appropriate reading could be found. If they do this, it may appear to some that this blogger has gone with the intention of finding something to take offense at (but having read other posts on the blog, and having read various comments, it is clear this was not the case here), and the anger/indignation at the perceived disablist term is exactly the sort of propaganda that the “political correctness gone mad!” lobby love to have land in their laps.

• You can’t say “it’s a black day for such-and-such anymore”. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t wear crosses any more for fear of offending someone’s religious sensibilities. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• They don’t even call it Christmas now any more, they call it Winterval. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• What do you mean blind people need to be able to use the internet? They’ll be asking to drive cars next! It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t use the word monger anymore! It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t even beat up a nigger anymore! It’s political correctness gone mad!

I for one feel that political correctness is a good thing. I think it’s great that we don’t find racist, sexist, religionist (?), disablist, homo- and xenophobic language to be acceptable. So I’d ask others that think similarly not to give any succour or encouragement to the “political correctness gone mad” erm… mongers… because I suspect that in some cases the latter sentiment is only slightly beneath the surface (although possibly with a hint more Islamophobia), so I would ask people to choose their battles carefully, ‘lest ye provide the anti-PC brigade with ammunition.

And finally, a genuine slip of the tongue (as opposed to deliberate choice of that word) is not in itself disablism. I mentioned this last February with bloopers aren’t disablism, brutality is, and I’m returning to the subject again today, when I look at two examples what I perceive is lip-service equality for the disabled — giving the impression you care without actually bothering to understand the real issues…

Hospital Lip Service

It is very easy for the disabled to receive ill-treatment. It is very easy for those who find it difficult to ‘kick up a fuss’ to fail to get the service they (and indeed everyone else) has a right to expect. But we as society ought to be making sure that these voices are being heard. In fact, for our public bodies, it is actually legislated in terms of the Disability Equality Duty.

But frighteneningly, a lot of big organisations seem to be more concerned about getting the terminology and ticky-boxes right than actually ensuring they don’t discriminate. This is paying lip-service to disability discrimination. And this is harmful. And, as you may have guessed, is the subject of the rest of this post…

Would any NHS Hospital taking the rights of the disabled seriously have allowed a man with learning disabilities to starve to death over 26 days, because he had difficulty in communicating.

It is easier for people to produce the documents, to tick off the check boxes than it actually is to ensure they aren’t discriminating against people. Kingston Hospital (where Martin Ryan starved to death in agony) published their Disability Equality Scheme in 2006.

How does the Trust’s own Disability Equality Scheme think they should do things?

Referrals from GP’s and/or other hospitals to include information relating to the patient’s impairment and any access needs. For example [...] Learning Difficulties

[...]Staff will be aware in advance of people’s needs and act on these accordingly to provide a positive experience for the patient.

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust: Disability Equality Scheme (PDF)

I somehow don’t feel that starving to death was a positive experience for the patient. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The hospital’s Disability Equality Scheme was published in December 2006. They produced an action plan as part of this scheme, which had 55 action points.

As at April 2009, guess how many are marked as completed. Go on, guess…

Five.

This tells me one of two things. Either the NHS trust haven’t bothered updating the action plan, because they don’t see how they deal with people with disabilities as particularly important (which is a little surprising, given that when someone with learning disabilities starves to death in their care you’d think the negative publicity would make them consider it a little), or because they simply haven’t done it. Because it has all been about the ticky-box exercise.

“We are required to publish a Disability Equality Scheme by December 2006, this is the bit the Government will check up on, this is the bit we’ll do.”

Oh wait, perhaps I am being unjustly cynical…

A report on the implementation of the Scheme will be published annually

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust: Disability Equality Scheme (PDF)

…er… where is it, then? They’ve not done it. They’ve ticked the initial box, and they’ve not followed through. Lip-service equality. That’s why people die. Of course, I would happily have suggested that it’s more important to ensure that they were treating people correctly than producing a follow-up to the scheme, but the fact they hadn’t indicates that they think equality is something you do once, produce your glossy self-congratulatory brochure, and then it’s complete.

Which, as we all know, is bollocks.

Website lip service

It’s the same with web accessibility. Depending on where you are — and my experience in the area relates to UK Local Authorities — you’ll know different things about web accessibility. For one thing, UK Local Authority sites are pretty much the most accessible sites in the world, period. They are generally better than central government, they are generally better than business, and more importantly…

…most local government web developers I have spoken to have actually taken the time and trouble to understand why doing something in a particular way is accessible or inaccessible. They understand a bit about the assistive technology (screenreaders, text-to-speech software and so on) that make it easier for disabled people to use the web. They understand that some people can’t use the mouse.

And, for the most part, they generally do a pretty good job at making sites fairly accessible. They aren’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but the sites they produce are more accessible than any other sector.

Yet all of the press releases don’t deal with whether or not disabled people can actually use the site. They deal with whether or not the sites comply with a set of guidelines. This is missing the point somewhat.

The guidelines which are frequently referenced are WCAG 1.0. These are out of date, having been produced 10 years ago, and were superceded by WCAG 2.0 last year. They were also designed as tips which could be used to help people make their sites more accessible to disabled people. They were not an end in themselves. They were a means to that end.

And yet they are not treated as such by the PR people, by the people putting out the press releases. For them, it’s easier to put out a headline related to something more measurable — how many checkpoints someone has passed or failed, as opposed to something actually more useful — whether or not people with disabilities can actually use the site.

But Better Connected 2009 shows that little, if anything, has been done to address the problem. Almost exactly the same number of councils surveyed (36) [out of 464] achieved a Level A rating, and for the second year running, none have achieved Level AA or Level AAA — the highest rating possible [...]

[...]the original consultation process for ‘Delivering inclusive websites’ in 2007 had suggested that government sites should have their rights to use the ‘.gov.uk’ web domain withdrawn unless they met Level AA by December 2008, a recommendation which, luckily for the public sector, was eventually watered down.

E-Access Bulletin

Never let what is important get in the way of a good story. Firstly, the implication is that councils are lucky that the recommendation was watered down. Of course, what E-Access Bulletin don’t point out is that neither they (on that specific page) nor SOCITM (who produced the report) fail to live up to the AA standard themselves.

It’s easy to put the boot in, it’s harder to actually match the standard yourself. Not to mention that withdrawing the ‘gov.uk’ domain was a stupid idea anyway (the cost to the council of publicising every new email address, a new site etc? Who would that help?) and despite many gov.uk domains breaching the guidance for gov.uk domains, none of them have ever been removed before.

But SOCITM have chosen the guidelines as the thing which is important, not “whether or not the sites are actually accessible to real people”, ‘cos that’s a little trickier to produce ranking tables of. It was left to the RNIB (who carried out the testing) to actually produce the voice of reason (even if sadly, this didn’t make it to the headlines)…

The RNIB was also largely positive about the report’s findings, claiming that the figures do not necessarily represent a widespread lack of accessibility. “In fact, we noticed a significant improvement in the real accessibility of most of the websites we assessed. Unfortunately that doesn’t always show in a strict conformance check,” said Bim Egan

E-Access Bulletin

Understanding accessibility and making sites accessible to disabled users — that is fighting for equality. That is the local government web monkeys. Ignoring the practicalities of accessibility in order to provide a headline — that’s not only simply paying lip-service to equality, it’s a fist in the face to those doing most to produce accessible websites. That is SOCITM; that is the media. That form of lip-service equality does not help anyone.

Yes, it’s important to highlight where websites are going wrong. It’s important to provide advice for people wanting to develop more accessible websites (see Accessify Forum), but when organisations think getting a headline is more important than actually reflecting the state of play, it shows that they are, at best, paying lip-service to disability.

What to do?

So for all you out there reading this, I’ve got a challenge for you, for now until BADD 2010. Every time you see someone, or some organisation talking about equality, don’t just take their word for it. At least scratch the surface and see whether it is something they are actively doing, or if they are just paying it lip-service.

And where you find it’s just lip service, publicly upbraid them for it. As public as you like. You don’t have to restrict it to disablism, if you like, but let’s ensure that people who tell us all that they are campaigning for equality actually are doing it, instead of just picking up the acclaim without the effort…

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the Goldfish turns BADD.

If that makes absolutely no sense at all, then I’ll explain. The Goldfish is a fellow blogger who organises Blogging Against Disablism Day.

The premise is quite simple: basically, you blog about disability, disability issues, disability politics, or something or other related to disability, and the idea of the whole event is to reduce discrimination against disabled people. This post should touch upon the notion of discrimination — disablism in some way shape or form. It should also show that this discrimination is a bad thing. The post should also be a new thing; it’s not supposed to be a collection of stale old rehashes…

That’s why it’s called Blogging Against Disablism Day. Well, that may be one reason, but I there may be a hint of backronym in there too as ‘BADD’ is just, well, to hip to the jive to have fallen out accidentally.

If yo want to take part, but aren’t sure what to write, poke around the archives for 2006, 2007 and 2008 to see if anything jumps out at you.