StandardsGirl.com – Views From Within

I see articles like this one and it saddens me http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/forget-about-accessibility-in-2009/. The writer is not wrong, as I am sure the arguments he suggests are ones that are brought up in board rooms and legal departments everyday, however it saddens me to think that we need government to make people do the right things. However, I know businesses will rarely choose something only because it is the right thing, so let me tell you why it is the smart thing.

Myths of Accessibility

As an advocate of an accessible web and a person who is a subject matter expert in accessibility issues, the myths seem to persist. Accessibility is expensive. Accessibility is difficult. Accessibility is only the right thing to do, not the smart thing to do. Wrong! Accessibility is not expensive, not difficult and above all it is the smart thing, not just the right thing. So why do these myths persist and what can we do to combat them?

Myth of Expense

An accessible web can be expensive, but need not be. So how can you do an accessible design inexpensively?

Hire a Proper Front-End Developer

First, hire an outside front-end development contractor who specializes in W3C compliance and 508 / WCAG accessibility standards.

Do not hire someone who uses Dreamweaver, or codes in any WYSIWYG program. Do not hire someone with limited experience. Do not hire someone who does not understand back-end processes. Do not hire someone with only 508 experience. Do not hire a team of coders. Do not let a strictly back-end developer do your front-end code, they will not know the issues and they cannot know all the implications.

While HTML looks simple, but it is very complex on the browser side. Add accessibility compliance and you have a whole new ball of wax. Hire a front-end developer with a minimum of five years experience in W3C compliance and accessibility. Also, make sure they are up on the changes to the WCAG that are being finalized this year.

So what will you need?

You need a hard coder. One hard-coder who knows not only code, but how to hand review what comes in from the back-end and how to tell the developers to fix it. And a coder who knows the WCAG from 508 and accessibility compliance versus usability.

You will need additional people to assist with template implementation, but this is not a team process on the front-end development process. You need someone who knows the whole picture, not a team of front-end developers who only have bits and pieces. However, if you hire this person many of your costs will melt away.

Why? Because of experience. You get what you pay for in this business and hired correctly, this person can code what you need, understand how it integrates and won’t send you down a primrose path. If good at their work, this person can recode the entire front-end template system of a top 100 website within six to eight weeks. I promise you it can be done.

Just make sure when you hire this person you give them the authority to make it happen. A developer will not spend the time developing a .Net solution to the one form tag, enter key form control, for multiple submit keys on one page; unless they have to. Make it so they have to do it.

Start Your Code From Scratch

Second, realize that you will most likely have to start from scratch! Your current code would take longer to make accessible than implementing new code. This is ok. It gives you the opportunity to address other items you have wanted to for so long, maybe SEO or site navigation or maybe just a dead piece of marketing space. See this as a good thing! Have fun! Appreciate the time to revisit!

OK! So hire someone who knows what they are doing, does not rely on WYSIWYG tools and has extensive experience in the development environment. Easy right? Expensive? A little for the contractor, but overall, not so much. What benefits do I get, other than knowing I did the right thing. Well that is at the end of this article! For now, I am going to keep on with the myths.

The Accessibility Is Difficult Myth

This is my favorite myth. You hear it all the time. You know who you hear it from? People who don’t want to be troubled doing it. Why do I say this? Because if you hire the person I mentioned above, you only will need that person to exert an approximate 2-5% additional work effort to make your new site templates accessible.

Why so little? Because accessibility is a very small step forward from W3C compliance. If your site is compliant, then your experienced front-end developer has little more to do to get it to the 508 / WCAG Level 1 standard. So if you take care to hire the right person, that person will be able to easily take the time to provide you with accessible code.

Now, where does it get difficult? If you do not hire a front-end developer who knows how the back-end developers can address their accessibility issues, then this is where you can burn hours and daylight. The front-end person should know how those issues can be fixed, so they can help speed the process along. And if they don’t know, that is ok if they are experienced with back-end logic, because they are done with the front-end code which leaves them free to research the rest. However, that means you have to have someone who knows that it means to work back-end. They do not have to do it, but they have to understand it.

Ok so now you know, it can be done by one front-end coder (templates of course, the team has to implement what is given) and pretty easily if you have this experienced person on staff, so what’s next?

While Accessibility Is The Right Thing To Do, It Is Certainly Not The Smart Thing!

Wrong again! While it is most certainly the right thing to do, it is also most certainly the smart thing to do. But why? If you have to make this argument to your manager or CEO, what can you tell them to help bring them on board? Why is it smart to do this accessibility thing?

1. Clean Compliant Accessible Code = Better Sites = Better Everything!
   If you code for W3C and accessibility compliance, your code is clean. Clean code is much better for SEO*, it is better for your servers [clean code = light code = less server load], it is better for your PPC costs [Google dings sites for heavy download times and page weights], it is easier to use on mobile devices and smart phones and it just looks good! OK, I know only geeks like me look at site code for site validity, but I have used that as a deciding factor.
2. Ease of Maintenance.
   Sites that are compliant and accessible, may take a little longer on the front-end than your usual WYSIWYG Dreamweaver ones. However, the next time you want to do a major design change, or remove a page feature and replace it with something else or just do a general update you will be thankful for that little bit of extra time you spent hiring the right people and getting your site into standards mode. Why? Because changing out a CSS / XHTML controlled site layout and design is a fairly simple thing to do as long as you don’t want to rebuild the house and even then, it is much easier in CSS.If done properly, and by hiring the person I suggested it will be done properly, then your site look and feel will be controlled in your properly utilized style sheets. So while making your header purple and changing all your links to red, may not be advisable, it will be simple. Or at least much more simpler than before!
3. Better for SEO*.
   I mentioned this above, but it bears repeating. If you use compliant accessible code, your site is great spider food. Your code to text ratios are lower, your code is never going to confuse the spider and your site downloads fast etc. Don’t believe it? I know some won’t. Some major SEO people will dismiss this right off hat. I know because I have had this discussion before, but I cannot argue with what I know and what I know is the sites I code do very well with their on-site SEO before ever adding a bit of off-site and the common factor, sometimes the only factor, is their clean compliant accessible code. Again though, compliance is not the factor. The factors in compliance are what are better for SEO.
4. Avoiding Legal Issues
   “Legal schmegal! There is no law stating a website must be compliant. So why should I care?”Ah, but this is where you are wrong. Well unless you never plan to do business in the state of California, but being the 8th largest economy in the world, that seems doubtful. Last year, on August 27th 2008, Target Stores lost its appeal and Target and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) settled their lawsuit regarding the accessibility of the Target.com web site.Why does this matter? Because this is the first time enough probable cause was found for a case to go to trial when the vital service of a brick and mortar presence was not in question. IE you can make a case that the phramacy would need to be accessible, but under the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, the California Disabled Persons Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, any online company can be held to the standards that have been previously set for brick and mortar stores alone for any service or product they provide. Necessity is not a pre-requisite.

   While this was not a resounding success, as Target.com settled for only 6 million dollars and being monitored, it does open up the first legal precedent for other organizations such as the National Federation fcr the Blind to sue other companies based on the ADA requirements. So, while the local mom and pop, would not likely be affected, large sites should keep their legal ear to the ground. My guess it won’t be long before disabilities rights groups take on the next large enterprise.

So those are my thoughts on accessibility and why the myths are just myths. In the end,  you get a site that is easier to fix, maintain and is friendly to users and spiders. It is a win-win! You just have to be willing to take the jump, but I promise you. If you hire the right people, you will be so happy you did! Get out of the shallow-end and come to the deep-end. It’s much more fun!

Final Thoughts

I believe I have a rare perspective, so maybe it can start some new debate. Why? Because I don’t guess about costs, I know what they will be. I don’t assume to know the coding needs, because I have done it, I understand what they mean. I don’t pontificate about the benefits, because I know they are real.

I have worked in the development and implementation of sites for eleven years with a heavy emphasis in front-end development, UI/UX and accessibility combined with five years experience as an SEO. The items I have outlined here I know work because I have done the work. But, I know as business owners, you have to do it because it is the smart thing, not just the right thing. So I hope maybe, I gave you more for the right column today.

Thank you for reading!

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* Before I get slammed, a little disclaimer. While proper W3C and WCAG / 508 compliance do not in themselves help with on-site SEO, the things you do to make the site compliant does help you do better in SEO. It is a slight difference in how you word it, but it is a distinct difference. Anyone who doubts this can ask me privately, but I promised Jim Thatcher I would never reveal in a blog or online forum how I know this to be true!