Comments on: The Usefulness of Accessibility Audits http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200609/the-usefulness-of-accessibility-audits/ standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:35:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 By: Dave Sloan http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200609/the-usefulness-of-accessibility-audits/#comment-136 Dave Sloan Sun, 10 Sep 2006 20:49:00 +0000 http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200609/the-usefulness-of-accessibility-audits/#comment-136 Thanks for that extremely in-depth review, Jack! I think you correctly and fairly point out the research's strengths and limitations - this was very much a descriptive study of real world audits (i.e. "let's see what we can find out from what we've got" rather than a detailed but potentially artificial experiment to gather data in order to prove a hypothesis). I agree that it is frustrating that there is some very useful research out there (and some not so good stuff) which is hidden from the real world by being published in expensive journals or obscure conference proceedings. The problem of course is that publishing in journals (which might take a year or more to put the paper into print) gets us many more brownie points than having something discussed in a public forum like Accessifyforum (which is likely to have much more practical influence). Speaking of which, if anyone reads Jack's review and <em>still</em> wants to look at the original, the <a href="http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/dsloan/phd.htm" rel="nofollow">PhD summary is online.</a> You'll find my contact details here if you want a copy of the whole thing. It's true that unfortunately the format of the thesis is prescribed - Dundee University's style (I assume common with most UK universities) is for double spaced justified text (plenty of space for your examiners to make notes between lines and in the margins...). This is a relic of the traditional concept of a hard-bound paper thesis that will sit on a library shelf, but obviously not ideal for accessibility purposes... In the UK at least, there seems at the moment to be no requirement to publish, say, a 500 word HTML synopsis of the thesis along with the hard bound versions. I'd have thought this would be a reasonable first step to make more research available to more people these days? Thanks for that extremely in-depth review, Jack! I think you correctly and fairly point out the research’s strengths and limitations - this was very much a descriptive study of real world audits (i.e. “let’s see what we can find out from what we’ve got” rather than a detailed but potentially artificial experiment to gather data in order to prove a hypothesis).

I agree that it is frustrating that there is some very useful research out there (and some not so good stuff) which is hidden from the real world by being published in expensive journals or obscure conference proceedings. The problem of course is that publishing in journals (which might take a year or more to put the paper into print) gets us many more brownie points than having something discussed in a public forum like Accessifyforum (which is likely to have much more practical influence).

Speaking of which, if anyone reads Jack’s review and still wants to look at the original, the PhD summary is online. You’ll find my contact details here if you want a copy of the whole thing.

It’s true that unfortunately the format of the thesis is prescribed - Dundee University’s style (I assume common with most UK universities) is for double spaced justified text (plenty of space for your examiners to make notes between lines and in the margins…). This is a relic of the traditional concept of a hard-bound paper thesis that will sit on a library shelf, but obviously not ideal for accessibility purposes…

In the UK at least, there seems at the moment to be no requirement to publish, say, a 500 word HTML synopsis of the thesis along with the hard bound versions. I’d have thought this would be a reasonable first step to make more research available to more people these days?

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