Is Accessibility Hard?

The 20 Second survey

I recently sent out a survey to the PSUWeb community asking them a simple question - "Is accessibility hard?" I added a second question - "Why is it hard?"
, and gave them some broad answers to select from:

• lack some of the required skills
• lack management support to devote the time
• too much work to do
• don't have the tools to work effienciently
• not a priority

Respondents could select more than one answer. Respondents were webmasters, designers, developers, writers and media content authors, system administrators, and other specialties that fall into the Web worker category.

This survey has flaws. It's was not designed with rigor in mind, but to take a simple snapshot of community opinion.

2/3 say accessibility is hard

A little under two thirds (63%) of the respondents said that accessibility was hard. Several followed up with more elaboration of their opinions.

For all the reasons

There was a broad range of reasons why people think accessibility it hard. All the reasons listed above were chosen by 37% to 55% of the respondents.

                                                                    

answer		# responses	% respondents
lack some of the required skills		21	55%
lack management support to devote the time		20	53%
too much work to do		21	55%
don't have the tools to work efficiently		14	37%
not a priority		15	39%

People could select more than one checkbox, so percentages won't work out to a clean 100%.

Summary

I have been claiming for years that accessible design and content  is not rocket science. I still stick by that assertion. True, routine production of transcripts for audio and captions for video is strictly an organizational and budget, rather than technical, problem. It continues to vex us, although the recent announcement of automated video captions may be a tipping point in the debate.

But clearly others disagree, and I have to respect that. But we as an institution have a problem called compliance. We operate in some part with public funds, and as such we have obligations to have accessible Web sites and applications. So, onward we march, reluctant soldiers.

We have to transform accessibility from an afterthought to part of the process, at a cost in money and people-talent we can sustain.

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Some related posts:

iPhone 3GS Accessibility Features
(http://www.cjohansen.org/2009/10/iphone-3gs-accessibility-features.html)

New Roles for Accessible Web Publishing
(http://www.cjohansen.org/2009/08/new-roles-for-accessible-web-publishing.htm)

Open Source is Good for the Web (Accessibility)
(http://www.cjohansen.org/2009/10/open-source-is-good-for-web.html)