Web 2.0 Accessibility
From ITCH
Web 2.0: Opportunity and accessibility challange
The Web is evolving with several emerging trends in features provided by new sites. The rather nebulous term 'Web 2.0' is being bandied around for what is arguably just a natural development of web. As usual with technology these emerging features offer both great opportunities and potential barriers to users of assistive technology (AT).
The key features of Web 2.0 appear to be:
- Online applications with smooth interaction and online storage.
- Sharing of data and combining open services into new compound applications.
- collaborative control of data and content being given to users.
The main buzz is over a group of technologies collectively called AJAX. This enables sites to give a smoother more responsive experience closer to desktop applications. A 'traditional' web site is made up of pages that update after a delay and with a reload of the entire page. AJAX however allows individual sections of the page to be updated while the user is interacting with other sections. The classic AJAX site is Google Maps, which allows the user to drag the map around while the missing sections appear without the entire page being refreshed.
There has been a recent spate of hosted AJAX sites appearing which provide replacements for desktop applications such as word processors. The fact that these are accessed with just a web browser and that files are stored on line by the service provider greatly reduces the technology requirements for users. This offers reduced outlay, admin and support costs for users.
Services are appearing that are designed for use by other sites allowing for new and unexpected solutions to be created. For example Amazon and Google Maps are exposed as web services that allow others to access their data. So-called Mashups are appearing were sites layer information on top of Google maps. This has be used to great effect in recent natural disasters to provide vital location information on the web. Whilst most users will not want to perform the technical feats needed, sites such as Frappr are appearing that hide the technical details and allow for easy access for a particular use.
Most promising is the way that many sites are storing, aggregating and presenting data created anyone. It can be personal views, news, reviews, photos or tags stored on wikis, blogs and community sites. The point is that anyone can contribute and collaborate as equals as long as the technology itself is not a barrier.
Needless to say this introduces several issues, for examples if implemented poorly, AJAX breaks the rule that each page is uniquely addressable. This results in the back & forward history navigation being broken and causes the inability to bookmark. But more critical to accessibility, the J in AJAX indicates that JavaScript is used in the web browser to obtain updates. Users of AT are more likely to have browsers without JavaScript support so are reliant on the site degrading gracefully when it is not available.
AJAX sites also raise the spectre of incompatibility with existing AT tools, which can be unable to use their hard-won ways of interacting with desktop applications. It should be possible to ensure that AJAX sites always follow existing guidelines for content, but many, as with non-AJAX sites, tend not to be designed with Accessibility in mind but for visual and mouse interaction only. In addition the possibly complex interactions make testing much more involved.
As WEB 2.0 becomes more prevalent the efforts required to ensure that sites are fully accessible is going to become a little more complex. More sites of greater complexity means that testing will be more involved and Assistive technology may well need to evolve in parallel. As we're still spending a lot of effort on basics like ensuring that ALT text is provided for images, this is going to be a challenge. However Web 2.0 services encourage inclusive participation and so form a good media in which to spread awareness about accessibility and work on solutions.
