Its Your Blog So Do What You Want
I’ll keep this post simple because it confuses some people. In my view there are two types of website - the personal one where we blog and interact AND the commercial sector, services and government environments. To me these are fundamentally different whether I’m thinking about accessibility or simply the quality of design.
Its your blog so do what you want with it. How’s that for a t-shirt slogan? If you want to do it and if your social circle dictates you can rock your socks off with pictures of vodka bottles, loud intrusive music and little flashing animated gifs in the frequency range of photosensitive epilepsy. That’s not my concern. If I go to your blog its for information and because I’m into the same world view. I am aware I will never get every drunk college student to become undrunk and not post that rubbish on the web.
In other words just as you don’t require a wheelchair ramp from your split level lounge room to your kitchen its the same with your ‘play page’. Helter Skelter your little heart out for all I care. NOTE [added later]: I said for all I care. Why? Because I can’t bash you up with a book and force your hands to be perfect web robots. And I don’t want to have a web that is so rigidly anal as to force-feed conformity across the board. Who would ever bother to communicate if we had to be perfect the day we made our first web page?
What does matter: If you are a business. If you are selling a product or providing a service or in any way financed or serving the taxpayers and citizens of your country THEN I happen to think you should be providing best quality solutions. They should be well designed and not create barriers to your users (accessibility), they should be intuitive and easily navigable by people other than yourselves (usability), and they should do so in such a way that the interface is not only aesthetically attractive but also functionally appropriate.
The caveat being - if your blog is a business blog, a service blog or a government / corporate blog of any kind then you fall into the second category. Best practice is something I would expect.
Can you see the difference between these groups? I don’t believe anyone should force your arm to conform to some form of Internet Fundamentalism in your personal space. But when it comes to buying products, sourcing official information or receiving services then its actually important we all have equal access. I think that is obvious. Just as I think it is obvious that blogs are an entirely different paradigm of interaction. We have to draw the line somewhere between Johnny’s grandmother and Jeffrey Zeldman.
Call me silly but sometimes that message doesn’t seem to get out there enough.
December 1st, 2007 at 6:14 am
As far as I can tell, a resource linked into the world wide web is more like a public space than a private household. You cannot assume that if a visitor comes “to your blog its for information and because” they’re “into the same world view”. First-time visitors are more likely to have simply followed a link. Failing to make your site fully accessible is one thing, but knowingly making it dangerous to unsuspecting visitors via flashing images that can trigger epilepsy seems morally irresponsible to me.
It’s not always practical for ordinary folk like Johnny’s grandmother to work out how to make their sites accessible (although in my experience spite towards, fear of, apathy about, and ignorance of people with disabilities are larger barriers than technophobia). But the ideal would be for web professionals and enthusiasts to create site-making software that helps ordinary folk create non-harmful, reasonably accessible sites with a minimum of effort. For example, a video upload tool could check and store flash rates; an embedded video player could warn about flash rates before allowing the end-user to play it.
December 1st, 2007 at 7:34 am
Benjamin there are always going to be MySpacers, grandmothers, year 9 FrontPagers (figuratively speaking). And to be honest if you look at the thing that made the web successful its been the ability to easily hyperlink to each others pages with ease. It is actually unrealistic to expect that most of those people will ever care about accessibility, for example. Its not their fault either - we’re the techs who’ve chosen this field of interest.
99% of my friends only use the web for email and I’d say my clients have had the same measure of web literacy.
I’ve been a hardcore standardista for a number of years and have indeed embarrassed myself, looking back, whinging about someone elses blog not having alternate text. In a perfect world where everyone was me that would actually be achievable. But its never going to be that world.
So my article is really saying that the real focus - call it the first step - is commercial business, social services and government. Why? Because that’s where change has to happen for it to filter down.
Johnny’s grandmother doesn’t need to learn how to insert alternate text or how to avoid photosensitive epilepsy. Her tools should be guiding her for one but basically we have to accept not everyone is a geek. Not everyone will ever care.
The largest barrier - and this needs to be understood by standardistas and in fact everyone who works in IT - is that everyone else isn’t into IT. Sometimes we simply associate with too many of our own kind to realise that. We attribute our own knowledge and skills.
Yes for business and government you are right - fear of and apathy about is the reason. But your average blogger, say for a knitting site or the teddy bear club, isn’t going to ever read WCAG X or understand DOCTYPES etc.
That’s actually our job even with a client. Do you see what I’m suggesting?
December 1st, 2007 at 8:04 am
I should also point out that I’m not advocating that it doesn’t matter. It does. But that its not my concern. I am not concerned as a standardista with what Johnny’s grandmother is doing in her Facebook.
Someone once in my wilder days asked me why I spent so much time trying to tread on ants (fighting nobodies) when I only needed to tread on the occasional somebody. There was a lot of wisdom in that. There will always be a zillion ants to chase.