Axxlog

Busy week or two.

1. French-language sites in Quebec (“and Canada”) flunk accessibility specs. What a surprise!

2. 89% of 408 California municipal Web sites surveyed flunked Priority 1 (in automated testing). 75 were manually tested, also with poor results, though the report goes into no detail at all on that point. (In fact, it’s only mentioned on the blog [other entry].) And the actual report is, of course, in a PDF (tagged, with three minor access errors).

3. Why the ‘statistics defence’ doesn’t stand up:

   The case against accommodating Netscape 4 users is invariably backed up with statistics about how few people now use this admittedly-flawed browser. I’ve heard “the statistics defence”… so often over the years that this latest evocation prompted me to think about why I don’t agree with this approach. [...]

   We can’t argue that we won’t accommodate disabled students because they only make up a small percentage of the student population. Equally we shouldn’t argue that we won’t accommodate users with particular browsers because they are part of a minority. In relation to the particular case of Netscape 4, it is legitimate to ask users to upgrade so that they get both the content and the good design – but not legitimate to argue that they won’t get the content if they don’t upgrade.

   This is a non-starter, really. Disabled people can’t stop being disabled (save for rare cases); anyone using Netscape 4 can upgrade. That browser is hideously broken and outdated and is a thing; we can shun it if we want. We can’t do that to people.

   Besides, any competent standards-compliant designer knows you can use @import to hide stylesheets from Netscape 4 so that a page works adequately in that cœlecanth of a browser and very well elsewhere.

4. MC May Techno Dance Remix:

   Netscape 2.0 introduced both frames, added in HTML 4.0, and JavaScript, which for the first time allowed client-side forms validation, and later meant the death of us all. CSS, introduced in Internet Explorer 3 and refined over the next seven years, allowed pixel-level control over the display, causing unreadable documents to become the norm, and further blurring the line between Web page and application.

5. A few surprising facts from an accessibility presentation (edited):

   Users who listen

   1. 2 hours each, typical usability testing scenarios,
   2. Took about twice as long as usual usability tests, which seems typical

   Skipping the navigation

   1. All wanted to skip the navigation
   2. Discovered that they often did not know how to do that with their software
   3. Two jumped to the bottom and read from bottom to top
   4. All sites had a skip navigation link
   5. Most did not know about the link
      1. “skip navigation” is jargon
      2. “skip to content” Jaws mispronounces
      3. “skip to main content” seems best

   Listening only to links

   1. Everybody knew how to listen to links
   2. Jaws can bring up a window with just the links
   3. Example: Looking for “diabetes” when the word “diabetes” is in a sublist of “Diseases and Conditions”
   4. One problem is many blind are poor spellers because they have little practice
   5. Screen readers also pronounce words even if they are incorrectly spelled
   6. Can set Jaws to spell the letters out as you enter them

   Content for users who listen

   1. Do not understand words when the software mispronounces words with more than one pronunciation – content
   2. Web words – homepage
   3. Unususal words – preparedness
   4. Made up words – MedlinePlus, LiveHelp
   5. Acronyms – FY (fiscal year) pronounced “fi”
   6. Get confused if the alt [text] and the words on the page differ
   7. What it said on page was “print answer” but alt [text] on printer graphic said “Printer friendly version”. When wanted to find that location searched for “Printer” which was not found (not in text)

   About forms

   1. Can’t find form if it’s buried on the page or way on the right
   2. Jaws has a command to go to the form, but nobody knew it existed
   3. Do not know there is a form on the page until you encounter it
   4. Users want to stay in Edit mode so you can tab from field to field
   5. Can’t use the form if the field labels aren’t “well behaved”
   6. Need to move from hearing mode to entry mode and back again
   7. Many users had mode problems, hard to do

   We are doing it backwards

   1. Hard to provide guidelines for people who magnify
   2. Today, assistive technologies go on last, on top of regular sites
   3. First build site for most people
   4. Then fix so site works with “special software”
   5. Reverse it
   6. Flexibility
      1. Let people set up personal profiles
      2. One column is very helpful for some people
      3. Some people can handle dense information,
      4. others go into cognitive overload
      5. Wheelchairs are composed of components
      6. Can swap in different components as your body and needs change

File a lawsuit, settle, and have the losing side pay your court costs, that’s how.

This week, the proposed settlement in the case of Ball et al. vs AMC et al. was ratified by a judge. A dozen movie screens in metropolitan Washington, D.C. will be equipped with WGBH MoPix systems.

• “Movie theaters to show captions for the deaf”
• “Deaf moviegoers in D.C. win, will get theater captions”

Great, right?

Yes, in principle. But both sides paid for their stubbornness – deaf captioning viewers pressing and intervening in the case and the movie houses.

1. Kevin Ball, a deaf person, was the primary plaintiff. He pressed for Rear Window® captioning.
2. AMC and Loews, the movie chains, resisted and lost. The settlement agreement, which is not the same as a finding against these defendants in court, nonetheless requires the chains to install at least 12 MoPix systems and pay the plaintiffs’ court costs, a cool $260,000.
3. The Coalition for Movie Captioning intervened in the case, arguing, among many other points, that the correct accessibility method is open captioning. Jurisprudence on the Americans with Disabilities Act is utterly consistent: Open captioning cannot be required under the ADA. We don’t have to like it, but that’s the reality.
4. Other intervenors raised largely irrelevant or inaccurate objections.

Now, far be it from me to sound like I disapprove of the outcome. I’m in favour of more captioning and more description. I’ve put in more time watching Rear Window captioning than anybody else. (Maybe in a year or so my record will have been eclipsed. Nonetheless, 130 hours are a hell of a lot of hours.) I am uniquely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. It has many strengths for the majority of viewers.

But here we go again with deaf people acting like whatever they need is the maximum everyone needs. If you’re gonna launch a class-action suit, why not broaden the class? Instead of pushing for captioning, push for accessibility. Exactly as I stated before, here we have a group of deaf persons essentially saying “Give us what we need and stop there.” Captioning is what deaf people need, and once they get that, they act like the problem’s solved.

What happened to all the blind people? Wouldn’t a class-action suit that comprised deaf/hard-of-hearing and blind/visually-impaired moviegoers have been a better idea?

All’s well that ends well, you might say. According to WGBH reports, AMC and Loews are simply installing full MoPix systems, with captioning and description both. Well, that’s grand, and we shouldn’t begrudge a desirable outcome. However, the methods stank.

Interestingly, I give reasonably good odds that, had the lawsuit been launched by blind persons, they would have included captioning in their demands. But the odds I give are only reasonably good. If they’re willing to lobby for description, but not captioning, of “a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sadomasochistic community,” I put little past them. (Making any kind of movie accessible to some people but not others is my complaint. Some of my best friends are gay Christian sadomasochists; they certainly go to the same bars I do. Nonetheless, it’s an unusual movie to go to the wall on, don’t you think?)

Money

The theatre owners also played their cards poorly. (But in my experience, that’s what they do.) The writing was on the wall from the start. Since they’re now on hook for lawyers’ fees equal to approximately twenty additional MoPix installations, won’t it be interesting when some other deaf person or group lobbies those two chains for further accessible screens? Essentially, D.C. captioning viewers now will enjoy 12 accessible screens for the price of 32. Good job!

And while we’re discussing money, let’s look at a gem from a brief filed in the case that summarizes testimony by Larry Goldberg, Director of Media Access at WGBH Educational Foundation. (Emphasis added.)

Mr. Goldberg testified that increased implementation of RWC will provide funding for WGBH, a non-profit organization, to improve RWC and address the concerns that have been raised regarding its use…. Mr. Goldberg was clear that proceeds from the sale of RWC are devoted to the improvement of the system, meaning that the RWC to be installed under the [proposed settlement] will improve over time. Thus, the viewer screen, gooseneck, and data wall may all be improved with additional use and funds…. Mr. Goldberg’s testimony [was] that nothing will improve the technology of RWC or increase its ease of use as much as the funding provided by more installations.

Hence, one reason WGBH supported the installation of Rear Window captioning in this case was because it would financially benefit. It was certainly very interesting to read an affidavit by Goldberg that discussed the competing DTS-CSS captioning system, though the affidavit could not be considered critical or disparaging. Nonetheless, in the affidavit, WGBH testified about a competitor.

(However, in another wrinkle, every MoPix installation requires a DTS controller. DTS also sells the DTS-CSS system. Hence they’re not really competitors, and DTS would receive a dozen new sales no matter which technology had been chosen. Sweet, huh?)

Of course, the cost of a MoPix installation is largely consumed by the hardware, chiefly the DTS playback box; the LED datawall; emitter for the infrared audio description (or transmitter if using an FM system); and finally the reflectors and headsets. WGBH does not really benefit from theatres’ expenditure on that equipment. However, DTS definitely does: Its controller boxes are at the heart of the MoPix and its own DTS-CSS systems. Everyone’s gotta make a living in this business (including me); I just want everyone to be aware of who’s making the money.

The proceeds from these dozen installations will improve Rear Window captioning, we are told. But in an early affidavit in this case by Goldberg (undated in my electronic copy, but metadata show it as having been created 2003.11.13), he states that “there is a license fee of $2,000 that must be paid to WGBH as the patent holder of the technology.” We can view this statement as an estimate of the funds WGBH will directly receive from each installation.

So here’s the punchline: If all it takes to improve Rear Window captioning is a sum of money so small it’s a joke ($24,000), then why have we been made to wait? Why force two companies to pay ten times that amount in compensating the other side’s legal fees in a lawsuit? Why not increase the captioning and description service fee by a grand and wait for two dozen movies to flow through the shop?

Lessons

The writing’s on the wall, folks: You can’t run a movie chain without accessible screens. And for the entire industry, it’s cheap. Your legal costs in fighting a case will dwarf your expenditures to simply make your theatres accessible. Don’t fight a battle you’re going to lose – and for which you’ll end up paying the other side’s costs.

Throughout the entire topic of cinema accessibility, we’re always talking about trivial sums of money – rarely more than $25,000 to do anything. Even small independent films, to the extent that such exist anymore, can afford costs that small. It is extremely inexpensive to make movie theatres and movies accessible. Quit nickel-and-diming us here.

Relevant documents

Purely for convenience, I assembled and converted several documents relevant to the settling of the case. I converted the PDFs to tagged accessible format and did text-only conversions which won’t be perfect. Don’t consider any of these documents official if they come from my server; they’re for reading ease only.

Interestingly, the only documents I have are from the plaintiffs, but since this is a settlement and not an imposed ruling, I assume they adequately represent the views of the defendants. If not, defendants’ counsel can simply provide me with files and I’ll add them here.

The settlement itself

1. Official PDF
2. My PDF
3. My plain text

Affidavit by Larry Goldberg

1. Microsoft Word (edited to single-spacing and uniform font)
2. My PDF
3. My plain text

Plaintiffs’ Response to Comments (that is, response to objections filed by intervenors)

1. PDF
2. Plain text

Objections by Coalition for Movie Captioning

1. Official PDF and homepage
2. My PDF
3. My plain text

Plaintiffs’ Post-Fairness-Hearing Brief (making the case that the settlement is fair and reasonable)

1. PDF
2. Plain text

I was surprised and delighted to read last week that the Web Accessibility Initiative commissioned a usability study of its Web site. Done pro bono by the American Institutes for Research, the study demonstrated what we knew already – and then some.

It was commendable for WAI, which is behind the times in Web development in so many other ways, to use state-of-the-art evaluation methods to assess its site. As I’ve argued for ages, WAI will not be taken seriously by designers until WAI takes design seriously.

We can now dare to dream of a future in which the WAI portion of the W3C site actually looks professionally designed, with proper information architecture, multiple selectable styles available, and full WCAG compliance. (Curiously, the WAI site itself only claims to comply with Priority 2. It seems impossible for an entire site to comply with Priority 3 if the authors of the spec cannot do it.)

The AIR study isn’t available in a convenient single page yet, though I assembled a single HTML file and single PDF (at a svelte 98 pages) if anyone needs something to print.

Highlights

Participants

[W]e recruited a total of eight persons involved in Web development to serve as usability evaluation participants. One of the participants was a Web development professional who is blind. That participant kindly brought a personal laptop to our lab space in order to facilitate exploration of the WAI site using a Jaws setup customized to her needs. Another participant had a hearing disability. In addition, one of our participants self-reported as colourblind.

Tasks

Subjects were asked to carry out a selection of plausible tasks that was quite well-considered. Some included:

• Your team at work is developing a Web site and you have some concerns about how accessible the Web site might be to people with disabilities. Using this Web site, determine whether or not it contains information about the basic things Web developers need to know about Web accessibility.

• A few of your colleagues are interested in finding out how to be a part of WAI’s effort to develop guidelines for Web accessibility. Using this Web site, determine whether or not opportunities exist for becoming involved in WAI Web Content guideline development.

• You have just been handed a report, generated by a Web accessibility evaluation tool, which informs you that your company Web site contains complex information graphs that do not meet “Checkpoint 1.1.” Using this Web site determine how you would meet Checkpoint 1.1 and make the graphs accessible.

• Your company is revising the online forms on its Web site. Find specific information on how to make the online forms accessible.

Task success

It’s hard to fare worse than this: “Participants were largely unable to complete these tasks. With the exception of the WAI mission task, no more than five of eight participants were able to complete any task without assistance from the test administrator.”

Too much information

A common complaint (even voiced on Slashdot) holds that there’s just too dang much to read on WAI pages. It’s true.

Perhaps the most significant finding of the WAI Web site usability test was the observation that the Web site users consistently stated that they were overwhelmed by the information available to them.

They stated that the WAI developers “had not parsed” the information for users, hadn’t provided adequate “information and technique summaries” and asserted that using the WAI Web site was like “walking into a firehose.” They repeatedly suggested that the information they were receiving could be “summarized” into “manageable chunks” for easy, or quick use.

Participants uniformly stated that the WAI Web site information that was most relevant to their work was always “hidden.” They described the process of using “a W3C site” as: “you go to the page, scroll down, scroll down, scroll down, about four or five screens, past all the useless stuff, and then you get to the good stuff. Which is great. But it’s always in the middle part of a really, really, really long page.” [...]

They uniformly suggested that the WAI development team consider ways to parse the Web site’s information rather than giving it to them “all at once.”

Graphic design

Participants were asked to rate various factors on a scale of 1 (“Disagree strongly”) to 7 (“Agree strongly”). Graphic design fared poorly:

• “The homepage is attractive”: 4.0
• “The overall site is attractive”: 3.4
• “The site’s graphics are pleasing”: 3.3
• “The site has a good balance of graphics vs. text”: 3.2
• “The colours used throughout the site are attractive”: 4.6
• “The typography is attractive” [!]: 5.6

Complaints to address

The study quotes some free-form complaints by participants. My suggestion to WAI is to work to counter every single one of these, plus each of the later comments and “words or characteristics” participants used to describe the site.

• There should be a category for myths about accessibility so designers know they don’t have to sacrifice style.
• There should be examples of pages that are accessible.
• It would contain a set of guidelines for developing Web sites. It should have test tools, information about troubleshooting….
• There should be hot topics to be aware of, industry specific issues. It should provide recommendations or experiences other people have.

A great place to start

WAI still has a desperate need for participants. There’s too much work for too few people, and some of us simply aren’t experts in important areas.

Still, the AIR study amounts to a galvanized, wheelchair-accessible nail in the coffin of WAI’s history of being ignored by professional developers. WAI now has a full catalogue of documented issues it can fix, along with ways to do the fixing. Based, in addition, on further information I have, I expect that the WAI site at the time of release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 will be a total shock to anyone used to trudging through what we’re stuck with now.

As they say in the Maritimes, good on yez. Now don’t blow it!