A-TAG’15 took place on 25 September 2015. Organised by accessible media since 2006, it has become the pivotal event in the German-speaking world in the field of accessible internet (Accessibility).
It is a particular honour for me to write my first article on this blog about this event. Firstly, because this was my first event as a team member of Zensations, and secondly, because I have been part of the history of accessible media and thus the A-TAG events since their early days.
accessible media and A-TAG
accessible media is an association of organisations, companies, and individuals that sees itself as an advocacy group for the “accessible media” activity and business sector, and organises the A-TAG annually. This organisation has contributed significantly to the fact that we now have a legal framework for the accessible internet in Austria. With A-TAG, the aim is to ensure that this topic gains further dissemination and networking, and that professionalisation is advanced. At A-TAG’15, attention was drawn to the 10th anniversary of accessible media with a brief retrospective, and thanks were extended to all individuals, organisations, cooperation partners, and loyal sponsors who have supported accessible media in its challenging foundational work over these years.
All Accessibility
This year’s event was held under the simple motto “All Accessibility”. This aimed to express the thematic diversity of the programme, which took place in such a broad scope for the first time. As diverse as the topic itself, so too are the developments and products that already exist. This fact was duly considered.
Particularly striking this time was, on the one hand, the increasing breadth of accessible applications and uses – from apps, web projects, frameworks for assistive technologies, to special video solutions in sign language. On the other hand, it also became clear that there are many isolated solutions, which call for a new perspective and greater understanding, so that the potential of accessibility can be more widely grasped. This was evident, among other things, in Kerstin Probiesch’s talk, which practically demonstrated that, for example, essential information on e-commerce websites cannot be perceived by certain users, thereby preventing a positive business transaction under these circumstances.
Extended Dimensions of Accessibility
Anyone who engages with the topic of accessible web will sooner or later inevitably encounter the guidelines of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. In practical implementation, these are largely understood as a checklist, without being aware of their true dimensions. Since Austrian law defines the international standard as automatically legally binding, understanding WCAG 2.0 is a prerequisite. However, it makes sense to be aware that these only ensure a minimum standard, but do not automatically guarantee practical functionality or even innovation. This means, for example, that a digital product in the form of a website may be technically accessible, but still fails to reach its users, even though certain offers exist, they are barely known to users. To illustrate this, I addressed this topic in the concluding Closing Note, which I will explain further below.
Evaluation and W3C
As the 10-year transition period for accessibility in Austria ends on 31 December 2015, and a new legal reality comes into force on 1 January 2016, the question of evaluating existing sites will be a particular challenge that has already become noticeable this year. Mikael Snaprud (European Internet Inclusion Initiative) and Wolfram Huber (Webtech) addressed this topic for large websites in their presentation. Because these often consist of thousands of pages in the eGovernment sector, it makes perfect sense to use automated evaluation tools for better capture or monitoring; however, this does not replace manual testing of a few exemplary pages. Particularly interesting was the fact that, in a European comparison, the Netherlands generally performs best regarding the accessibility of public sector websites.
Eric Eggert from the W3C, the organisation that defines worldwide web standards (including WCAG 2.0), presented an overview of current developments. Among other things, the new ATAG 2.0 guidelines were published one day before A-TAG’15. This new standard aims to ensure the accessibility of authoring tools, for example, to make editing web content more accessible. Practical resource collections were also presented, such as the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List (http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/) and Web Accessibility Tutorials (http://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/).
Status Quo
In my concluding talk (Closing Note), I tried to discuss my views on the current situation or state of the accessible internet.
LANGUAGE AS A SHOWSTOPPER
A first point was the fact that we need a rethink in how accessibility is communicated through language. Above all, the term “barrier-reduced” should no longer be used. This leads to negligence, a loss of quality, and a restricted view of accessibility. Therefore, one should no longer argue from a medical perspective, and thus no longer unilaterally focus on possible disabilities of individuals, as this limits the actual core of accessibility. The potential is much greater when the topic is viewed from a social perspective.
“TARGET GROUP THINKING” VS. PERCEPTUAL DIVERSITY
This brings us to the second point concerning target group orientation. Here, I wanted to show how traditional target group thinking affects accessibility. Here too, a rethink is needed to move from a medical perspective to a social one. People tend too much to view individuals with disabilities as a homogenous group, which in reality does not truly exist. In truth, we are dealing with social networks that have different perceptual preferences yet interact with each other (perceptual diversity).
ACCESSIBILITY IS NOT AN ADD-ON OR AFTERTHOUGHT
In the next point, I tried to highlight the importance of accessibility in workflows. Unfortunately, it is still predominantly the rule that accessibility is treated as a secondary issue (afterthought) and as an additional extension (add-on) implemented retrospectively. It looks different if accessibility is integrated from the outset, ideally from the idea and conception phase. This saves a lot of time and costs and better utilises the potential of this topic. A prerequisite, of course, is knowing the scope of possibilities for accessibility and being aware of its breadth.
REDUCING IT TO TECHNICAL ACCESS DOES NOT ENABLE INCLUSION
This led me to the next statement, that reducing accessibility to technical access does not enable inclusion. To illustrate this, I recounted my experience of wanting to visit a current art exhibition with a multimedia guide in sign language. To find out what current offerings were available, the first port of call was the search engine. I knew there were offerings, but not which current ones. To my surprise, I found no useful information via the search engine, only hints that such a guide existed at the museum. Intrigued by this fact, I tried the museum websites directly, and even there it was not easy to obtain relevant information, if often only cumbersome. It was only a then-current APA-OTS press release that accidentally drew my attention to a current offer at the Kunstforum der Bank Austria, which I immediately visited on the same day. I wanted to highlight, solely because of this fact, the missed opportunities here, even though there were further ‘aha moments’ at the time.
ACCESSIBILITY AS AN ECOSYSTEM
Based on these experiences, I arrived at the next statement, namely understanding accessibility as an ecosystem. With this, I want to emphasise that accessibility only becomes alive through an interplay of interfaces, processes, content, information, real experiences, etc. With this, I wanted to show that it is fundamentally about an experience. What I ultimately wanted to clarify was that accessibility should be thought of as a user experience (UX). To stay in professional jargon, I formulated this in English as “Balanced UX – shared experience of the different”. By no means does this imply that it should replace accessibility, but rather that it should be further developed in this sense.
Come together
The closing of every A-TAG is always the ‘come together’; I cannot stress enough what wonderful conversations take place here. The diversity of people who interact here is also reflected in the diversity of topics. Even if some people are deaf, conversations are made possible by the presence of sign language interpreters (who also translate the entire A-TAG into Austrian Sign Language), which can be quite enriching for others, and vice-versa. I am already looking forward to the next A-TAG’16 – perhaps with you too!
All A-TAG presentations will soon be available for download on the A-TAG’15 website.
Links: http://atag.accessiblemedia.at http://www.accessiblemedia.at
Jo Spelbrink is currently the chairman of accessible media and, as a developer specialising in frontend and accessibility, is a new addition to Zensations. He will also oversee the new website with his critical eye.
