Here's a Hand

Many readers will remember my involvement in Social Innovation Camp last year, where we won an award for our project “Share Care Club” – an innovative service that helped people arrange help for someone needing a bit of a hand – e.g. an elderly or disabled friend, relative or neighbour. It transforms the process of asking for and offering help by connecting the people you already know and trust via email, SMS and social media.

I’m delighted that the project has gone from strength to strength – picking up a new name and enough funding to reach a full pilot phase. Here’s a Hand is now looking for people who live in Edinburgh and are over 65, or who care for or support an older person living in Edinburgh, to help us test our service.

Head over to www.heresahand.org.uk to find out more and to sign up for the pilot. Even if you don’t qualify for the pilot, you can register your interest and we’ll let you know when the service expands.

BADD 2012

This post has been written as part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012.

When I first contributed to Blogging Against Disablism Day back in 2009, I attempted to define the term disablism in relation to web professionals. I drew some fairly strong conclusions:

Like it or not, every single person who makes the choice not to spend the 20 seconds giving that image a suitable description, or thinks that aesthetics beats usability, or who assumes blind people wouldn’t be interested in their site anyway – these people are the embodiment of disablism, because they have relegated the needs of those users (for whatever reason) and, by that action, cast them as inferior.

Defining Disablism, May 2009

My post was picked up by disability and new media researcher Sarah Lewthwaite, who added a new dimension by applying the term aversive disablism to what I had written.

Aversive disablists recognize disablism is bad but do not recognize that they themselves are prejudiced. Likewise, aversive disablism, like aversive racism, is often unintentional.

Taken from Mark Deal’s paper ‘Aversive Disablism, subtle prejudice towards disabled people’

This time, I’ve decided to expand on this theme by looking at a related behaviour I’ve observed – something that I’ll call complicit disablism.

Complicit disablism

As a web professional, I’m constantly asked to post information to the web, to develop new online services, and to design new interfaces. Part of my role is to ensure all of these things are done correctly – to not only comply with all relevant laws and legislation, but to also deliver the best user experience, for all users.

Often, the topic of accessibility will come up. Unavoidably, this often goes hand in hand with needing to explain why something isn’t possible, or requires more work (videos need transcripts, PDFs need to be tagged, images need meaningful descriptions, colours must be changed to offer sufficient contrast). Of course, when you explain why, most people wouldn’t dream of arguing.

But life is not always that simple. Maybe resources are limited, or the person paying the bill is insisting on something inaccessible. I know of several web developers who have reported being instructed to do something that will directly create accessibility barriers, and their protests have gone ignored, dismissed or overruled.

Enter the risk of complicit disablism – an ethical occupational hazard being faced every day by web folk. Do you risk everything and stick to your guns, or do you relinquish and sacrifice accessibility for a quiet life, effectively being complicit in the discrimination this might cause?

I was struck by some advice given by law site Out-Law.com, which suggests:

If clients insist on such designs, you should address this in the development contract. Seek an indemnity to protect you in the event of litigation over the website’s failure to comply with the accessibility legislation.

Out-law.com – disabled access to websites

I was fascinated by this idea – that a developer should go so far to protect themselves from the fall-out of a bad design. It seems sensible, though, and might even serve to set the alarm bells ringing in the ears of your client, perhaps enough to shock them into some sense.

Being reasonable

But before the conversation reaches this litigious extreme, I’d like to recommend that people try one last tact – a plea to reason, or more specifically, to reasonable adjustment.

In the UK, the Equality Act talks about a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to make their services accessible. Out-Law.com has this to say on that subject:

In considering what constitutes a reasonable adjustment, the Code suggests that factors which might be taken into account include: the service provider’s financial and other resources; the amount of resources already spent on making adjustments; and the extent of any disruption which taking the steps would cause the service provider.

Out-law.com – disabled access to websites

Talking about reasonable adjustments, specific to your client’s circumstances, may suddenly change the conversation from “we must do all of this, now” to “let’s start here, and aim for there”. This can be a very powerful tool for the accessibility champion, giving them enough flexibility to work with their client and find a reasonable compromise. After all, accessibility is not binary – not simply black or white, accessible or not. It’s also not a one off job. By getting approval for small, reasonable steps towards better accessibility, you may make far more progress than starting off by saying “we either do all of this, or we do nothing”.

In this way, hopefully people will find themselves no longer being complicit disablists, but rather enablers for real, reasonable change.

Do you agree that focusing on reasonable adjustments is good enough? Have you found other ways to get your clients to accept your accessibility measures? If your client still disagrees, do you agree that you’re complicit? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts.

Reducing the impact of changing your website

Major changes to a website can confuse and disorient users – especially those with certain disabilities. Makayla Lewis has some useful advice for anyone planning to make changes to their website, to help reduce this.

Kimberly Tew blogs about Makayla’s 5 step plan to managing the change, and you can also watch Makayla presenting her advice at #allyLDNmeetup below. For more on Makayla’s research. visit makaylalewis.co.uk.

Designing mobile apps for inclusion and assistance

Mobile apps offer huge potential to improve and enhance accessibility for certain users, but can equally introduce new barriers. A new report by Dan Jellinek and Peter Abrahams outlines the key issues relating to mobile apps for older and disabled users.

Martin Sloan, from Scottish law firm Brodies, posted a useful piece in response, looking at where UK app developers stand in relation to accessibility and the Equality Act.

Accessibility Advocacy survey

The deadline for responses to the eAccess+ Survey of Accessibility Advocacy is Monday 30 April:

The purpose of this survey is to gain insight into the depth and breadth of work currently being undertaken by professionals involved in the creation and promotion of Accessible ICT, in order to better understand the challenges faced, where improvements are required and how best to facilitate and support these improvements.

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012 – May 1st

BADD 2012

Finally, a reminder that Tuesday is the 7th annual Blogging Against Disablism Day:

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Tip: if you’re short on time, skip to the end of this article which lists the key findings.

A monster accessibility problem?

Any reader of this blog who works with the web in Europe will probably be aware of the EU’s Privacy and Communications Directive which came into force last May, and which proved such a challenge to implement that organisations were given a whole year to work out how to comply.

The law requires that website owners obtain informed consent from visitors before any “not strictly necessary” cookies are stored or retrieved.

Critics of the law have focused on the difficulty in implementing a satisfactory, but not too intrusive, system to gather the informed consent; as well as the potential vicious circle where a user refuses consent, meaning the website can’t place a cookie to retain that preference, and is therefore forced to ask the same question every time.

As a result, thousands of organisations are still labouring to find the best solution, and the clock is ticking, counting down to 26th May 2012, when the ICO plans to start investigating and fining:

Any website found guilty of using technologies to track a user’s browsing behaviour without their consent or sending unwanted marketing emails to consumers could face a fine of up to £500,000.

The new monetary penalty is part of raft of new powers granted to the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) to regulate breaches of privacy regulations.

Source: Which? News

Whilst I don’t intend to comment upon the good or bad points of the law itself, I am interested in what implementation of the law may mean for the accessibility and usability of any websites striving to comply, and whether the threat of a fine may be seeing hasty, inaccessible solutions.

Accessibility and usability concerns

A number of organisations have now implemented a variety of solutions, with fairly mixed results. Importantly, some people have started to raise concerns about potential accessibility and usability issues.

After an initial investigation, here are a few examples. I’m focusing on UK government websites as that’s my field, although the findings apply to any site. I want to make it clear that it’s great that people are trying to take a lead in this by coming out with their own early solutions, and I’m sure they’ll be continuing to iterate and improve, so the below comments are intended to be constructive feedback.

Information Commissioner’s Office

ICO's cookie banner

The ICO’s own solution is a functional but perhaps uninspiring effort, and could easily be ignored or even missed due to banner blindness. The explanation of what the cookie does is vague (“help us make the website better”) although the privacy notice does go into much more detail. However, the privacy notice opens in a new window, without explicit warning (just a mention in the link’s title attribute, although WAI guidance calls for such a warning in the link text itself).

It’s also persistent – there’s no option to say “no” and have the banner go away. This would normally be seen as a usability fail, potentially forcing people to accept just to get rid of it, which might challenge the legitimacy of the “consent” gained.

But accessibility issues make things worse. The bar is not easily accessible by keyboard users. It appears towards the end of the source code and is the last set of links in the tabbing order, meaning you have to tab through dozens of links to get to it. It’ll also be the last thing a screen-reader user hears, and it’s highly unlikely that a user would get to that point in the page.

A final major problem is that the message appears over the top of the “skip to” links and render them completely useless to sighted keyboard users. This is a serious example of not only the opt-in box being inaccessible, but also of it messing up existing, site-wide accessibility features.

Torridge District Council

Torridge District Council offers the following yellow bar at the top of their website:

Torridge's cookie banner

The message here is fairly simple, and refers directly to what the cookie does. The options are simple – yes or no – and there’s a link to more info. All good so far.

However, just as with the ICO, the box comes last in the tabbing order for keyboard users, and it’s highly unlikely that anyone will wade through the dozens of links to state their preference.

Civic UK’s Cookie Control

Cookie Control pop-up

The Scottish Government recently posted guidance for all of its official websites, recommending the use of Civic UK’s Cookie Control. This takes a different approach to the two previous examples, bringing up an arguably intrusive, bright “pop-up” box .

This time, the tabbing order appears to be correct, taking you first to a control that toggles the pop-up on and off, then into the pop-up itself. It’s still not perfect for sighted keyboard-users – there’s no change of state on focus, meaning the appearance of the buttons doesn’t change when you tab to them (as they do if you hover a mouse cursor over them).

But a new problem presents itself after a few seconds – in Civic’s own demo the pop-up box disappears. This might make sense at first – getting it out of the way of users who aren’t interested in making a selection (although the pop-up comes right back when you move to another page).

However, what about users who need longer than the 10 seconds or so that you’re given to read the information and make your selection?

Guideline 2.2 of WCAG 2.0 requires that for any time limited action, you provide the ability to turn off, adjust or extend the time given. These options are not evident in this solution, so would probably result in any website using this as-is failing WCAG 2.0 at the most basic level of conformance (level A – the mandatory minimum for UK government websites).

It’s worth noting that the website owner can customise the timing of this solution to stay visible for a longer period, which may help, although WCAG 2.0 would require you to specify at least 72,000 seconds (20 hours).

UPDATE – see the comments below for a response from Civik UK.

Fife Direct

Fife's cookie pop-up

Fife Direct’s recent implementation is certainly one of the better looking ones. Using an unobtrusive dark bar at the top, which correctly comes first in the tabbing order, it overcomes all of the problems described so far. It also provides a link to “more info” which expands the box to give more details and options, including a very useful option to “allow just one cookie to hide the cookie bar”.

However, all of this content actually appears in the source code, and is hidden or revealed using Javascript and styles. If you disable the page’s CSS, you’ll see why this could be a problem – 465 words before you even get to the actual page content.

Why is this an actual problem? Try printing the page (or, to save paper, just click on “Print Version” at the top).  Over a page of text about cookies before you actually get to what you intended to print. By which time, the person may well have hit the printer’s “cancel” button thinking they’d done something wrong.

And to make things even worse, the text remains in the source code even after you’ve accepted cookies. That’s going to mean a lot of wasted paper.

Key findings

Based on these observations, I recommend that anyone working on a method for gaining cookie consent take note of the following:

• Ensure the solution can be easily tabbed to by a keyboard user, and that all of the controls are accessible by keyboard
• Ensure that the solution does not affect existing navigation or accessibility features
• Keep the text short and link to more information on a single, separate page (probably your privacy page), ensuring the link is accessible too
• Avoid intrusive pop-ups which may confuse the user or block other key functions or content
• Don’t put a time limit on any controls, or, if you do, ensure the limit can easily be deactivated or changed

I’m sure we’ll see more issues cropping up, and I’d love to hear from anyone with details of any others. Equally, if I’m wrong about any of the above, do please get in touch!

It’s a work in progress and I welcome all feedback. I’m working to ensure the theme is as accessible as possible so if you find any issues, do get in touch.

About this theme

This theme was adapted from the freely availble “Spectacular” theme, commissioned by Smashing Magazine, designed by Maleika Esther Attawel and released under General Public License. I’ve made several major customisations and design changes, and am also working to improve the accessibility of the theme. Anyone thinking of using the Spectacular theme may be interested in the following fixes I’ve implemented:

Accessibility fixes so far…

• Descriptive titles added to “read more” links – still to be added to “previous” and “next” links
• Several contrast issues fixed – more to be addressed
• Focus states added to most links and controls – just a few more to fix
• Focus outline put back in (removed by the default theme)
• Label added to search form – still to fix the contact form
• Headings order fixed
• More to come…

A self organised unconference for people who work in and around government in islands, wherever they may be (including the big one with Cardiff, Edinburgh, and London on it); and for anyone with connections to islands, however tenuous. Also, an opportunity for visitors to Orkney to see puffins!

Whether you’re able to attend or not, we’d love to hear your suggestions for topics to be discussed over the weekend. There will also be plenty of options for remotely following, and contributing to, the event so head over to islandgovcamp.blogspot.co.uk, submit your ideas at islandgovcamp2012.ideascale.com or simply follow the hashtag #islandgovcamp.

This will be a great chance for journalists, local bloggers, comms professionals, students, or anyone else with an interest in news and information gathering and delivery, to gather together and discuss what works and what doesn’t.

Edinburgh’s event will take place at Illegal Jack’s on Lothian Road, and kicks off at 6pm.

If you’re interested, sign up for the event here.

Our Tweeting activity in neighbourhoods seemed to spark people’s interest, as did our plans to empower our schools to make use of social media. It seemed that people understood the relevance of localised activity and engagement far more than big corporate broadcast channels.

These sorts of meetups are excellent for people to informally chat and share their knowledge and I’m keen to see more of them throughout the city. I’d also love to see a return of free social media surgeries (like Edinbuzz which took place across the city last year).

People of Edinburgh, how do we make that happen?

Better Connected 2012 - a focus on user journeys

Last week, the Society of IT Managers (SOCITM) released the findings of their annual report on all UK Council websites – Better Connected 2012: a snapshot of all local authority websites.

I was pleased that my organisation retained its maximum 4-star rating for a second year running (one of only 2 Councils to do so). I may blog more about that soon.

But one thing caught my eye in the report which I thought was worthy of a quick post now. It was a recommendation relating to accessibility:

Websites must be accessible for disabled people. Priority should be given to ensuring that the tasks that people with disabilities are most likely to use are fully accessible.

SOCITM: Better Connected 2012

It’s great that SOCITM clearly take accessibility seriously, and that it features prominently in their report. However, I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with this specific advice, and think it could be quite damaging.

How can we be sure which tasks are “most likely to be used” by that audience? This could lead to some pretty dangerous assumptions. I remember someone on an online forum once asking “why would a disabled person be interested in a website about playing sport”? I doubt I need to say why that was a pretty daft question, but it’s sadly not uncommon. Any assumption about what people with disabilities may, or may not, be interested in will be flawed and most likely wrong.

And who are we talking about anyway? “People with disabilities” describes an awful lot of people, with a huge range of needs, interests and motivations (there are over 10 million disabled people in Britain).

Should we forget the lesser-used tasks? The whole point of prioritising is that you spend more time on some things, and less on others. Inherent in this advice, then, is that there will be certain tasks which you do not make fully accessible. The law requires you to make all of your website accessible, not just the bits that you think your users are most interested in.

Also, what do we mean by “fully accessible”? I assume this means that any user can access the content without any barriers. As stated above, that’s a requirement of all content on all local authority websites anyway.

I’d argue that it’s far more meaningful to consider the concept of enhanced accessibility – pages which not only meet the minimum standards of accessibility, but which go an extra step to make the content even easier to use for certain users. Examples of this might include BSL videos, audio widgets, Easy Read content, visual aids…

Some of these can be really time-intensive and costly to produce (as my own experiences of producing BSL videos proved). In this case, I can see a benefit in identifying key content for which there would be a high likelihood that the user would especially benefit from enhanced accessibility. Again, though, this is very different to simply ensuring that all content meets basic accessibility standards.

Finally, is it really best to prioritise by content? W3C have some good practical advice for people wanting to improve the accessibility of their website, including a section on prioritisation:

[An] effective approach in most cases is to do all of the high impact and easy repairs while you are working on a page, template, style sheet, etc. Then address harder problems later. This approach has several advantages: it usually takes less time overall, and you get lots of changes done quickly. This helps demonstrate your commitment to improving the accessibility of your website as soon as is feasible.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): Improving the Accessibility of Your Website

This is arguably a better approach, and one which will have an impact across your site, rather than to specific pages only.

So by all means prioritise – just make sure you’re getting those priorities right.

Tartan Tweetmeet

In the spirit of Twitter’s conciseness, I’m keeping this below 500 words.

Last night’s Tartan Tweetmeet was, by all accounts, a great success.

The national event, which took place in 6 cities across Scotland, allowed public sector tweeps to get together and talk social media. Attendees were encouraged to tweet using the #tartantm hashtag, to help cross-fertilise the conversations, and the general public were also invited to tweet their questions to add to the mix.

I helped arrange the Edinburgh event with @LockhartL and it was wonderful to see so many keen folk turning up to meet new people, share their knowledge and learn new things.

My Tweetmeet badge

I tried to “live-tweet” but that’s pretty tricky in the midst of deep and meaningful conversations. We did monitor the tweets coming in, though, and fed many of the questions into the chat.

The following are just a few nuggets from my conversations:

You can get some intriguing insights by looking at your followers and who else they are following. One organisation spotted that most of their followers also followed the local bus company, suggesting most of them are bus users. This could inform new ways of reaching that audience – for example, ads on buses.

It’s tricky to balance the potential scope of a large, diverse organisation’s Twitter account vs the specific, individual interests of followers. One idea I discussed was using something like Yahoo Pipes to filter relevant tweets by keyword, pumping out the resulting content via RSS. I’m preparing a separate blog post on that so watch this space.

What’s worse: too many tweets from a Council or not enough? This great question, posted by @ruthiehooch and picked up for discussion in Edinburgh, sums up the previous issue faced by large organisations. One common response was “quality over quantity” and I broadly agree with that. However, Twitter is a fast, transient medium with a short attention span. You can easily get lost in the streams and you do have to feed it sufficiently to be noticed.

It’s crucial to have support and buy-in from senior management. No matter how enthusiastic staff are, it is essential that the culture of the organisation is ready for social media. I heard from a few people whose efforts were perhaps being frustrated by a lack of joined-up thinking or a misunderstanding of the potential of social media. Without that receptive setting, any efforts to innovate are likely to flounder.

Social media is a solution, but we should be concentrating on identifying the problems and designing for them. If you walk around with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. As I’ve recently blogged, Facebook isn’t always the solution and it’s crucial to spend time working out the problems before you get too distracted by possible solutions.

That’s all for now. Plenty more discussions to be had and a future event already being discussed for March 28th. Follow the blog at http://tartantweeple.wordpress.com and I’ll see some of you next time.

I’ll leave you with a short timelapse video I captured on the night…