Levels of Accessibility
We’ve all heard it before, probably on one or more of those web development forums, where one person says to another: “That site’s not accessible.” The respondent in this example is simply answering one’s request for a site review. So the requester replies with a question asking why said site isn’t accessible. The respondent posts again with a simple and short declaration of what the site needs to be accessible. Usually the respondent will point out one or two things, suggesting of course that if those things are taken care of, the site will be good to go.
This sort of thing makes us wonder a bit and ask: Is a site’s accessibility really that black and white? Can a site’s accessibility be answered by a simple yes or no? Are there no gray areas? Are there no levels of accessibility? We don’t believe one can speak of a site’s accessibility in such simplistic terms, not through a developer’s eyes anyway.
To the individual user the answer is quite simply yes or no. The site is or isn’t accessible to that user. Black or white. If it isn’t accessible it simply cannot be accessed. If it is accessible, then it will have some level of accessibility to that user. We fully acknowledge this. But in the context of this article we speak in broader terms. We consider a website as a medium (or media in some cases) delivering information to a wide range of users. We are not viewing a site’s accessibility through a single set of eyes in a single set of conditions for the purposes of this article. Thus we speak of no absolutes in that way. A highly accessible website can be inaccessible to someone. This is fact. Defining it all becomes a matter of labels, a matter of semantics.
We could go off half-cocked in this direction. When it comes to a web site’s accessibility we could rationalize that if a site is viewable and usable in any one browser the site is “accessible.” We could make such a literal translation and being armed with such a simplistic definition we would be right. Just like a user is right when he or she declares a site is “accessible” solely because it works in their copy of Internet Explorer. But we won’t. That’d be nuts. We don’t want to use this powerful word in such a loose way. We don’t want you, dear reader, to get the wrong idea. Web accessibility is a rather serious subject and we don’t want to degrade that importance or its meaning by using the wrong words and relying on weak definitions. Not only would it be doing you a disservice, but it might additionally blacken the eye of accessibility as a whole.
Instead of rationalization, we’ll instead first embrace the fact that there are indeed levels of accessibility. Do you doubt this or contest the notion? Well, check out the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as defined by the W3C. They are provided as three levels of accessibility. Thus, using this example, a site which reaches as high as Priority One is deemed accessible, but to a degree. After all, it failed to meet the Priority Two and Three levels. But this doesn’t mean it failed altogether. Again, though, we will acknowledge that a Priority One, Two, or Three website could be completely inaccessible to any single user.
Maybe you’re still doubting the validity of such a thing and insist on saying a site is either accessible or it is not (only as an individual user do you have this right). Okay, let’s try out an analogy: Let’s say you live on a country road and regularly people throw their trash out their car windows. This is an environmental concern and an eyesore at the very least. Now let’s say that even though you live on this road you often throw your own trash out of your car window, but, due to your conscience bugging you, you’ve decide to stop this activity and dispose of your litter properly. Now here are the questions: Does the road have less litter at its shoulders now that you stopped your littering? Is there an improvement however slight it may be? Does it make the road cleaner? We say, quite emphatically, yes to all of these questions. It’s cleaner. We cannot say it’s clean, though, but that’s a bad question when thinking broadly. Unanswerable in fact. It all depends on how one defines clean. What level of clean is clean? Does it need to be a germ-free road to be a clean road?
The moral of this story is simple. There is a black-ish end of accessibility and a white-ish end, with rivers of gray running in between. Your site, our site, all sites lie somewhere in this gray area. We’ve yet to see a site that is 100% accessible (we’re saying this thinking in broad- and individual user-terms this time), and it seems even the worst sites are accessible to some degree — conversely, it’s just like some of the best site being inaccessible. Thus the question shouldn’t be if a site is accessible (again, it’s a bad question), but rather how accessible it is. It’s a goal one doesn’t simply reach or not reach, it’s more a matter of how many barriers are removed and what considerations are made [Read as: How much you care and how much effort you put forth]. What’s its level of accessibility? Just like our litter-bug analogy suggests, it’s there, somewhere, in the gray. But remember that every little bit helps. And we feel credit earned is credit due when developers make an effort.
Here at Accessites we applaud developers who go to great lengths to ensure their sites’ level of accessibility is as high as it can be. They may not have done it perfectly, it may not be germ-free, but, as said, every little bit helps. In the end, what we all hope and strive for is a reduced number of individuals who can say definitively, as only individual users can, that a site fails to grant them access.
