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WebAIM issued a report last month analyzing the top one million home pages for accessibility and web designers Eric W Bailey and Ethan Marcotte each take separate, hard looks at it because it is indicating a very sad state. The report noted all kinds of problems, even including throwbacks like using tables for layout with 2,099,665 layout tables detected versus only 113,737 data tables out of 168,000,000 data points. Web designers, old and new, are largely failing in simple matters that were, or should have been, covered in Web Design 101.
Ethan includes in his summary:
Those are just a few items that stuck with me. Actually, “haunted” might be a better word: this is one of the more depressing things I’ve read in some time. Organizations like WebAIM have, alongside countless other non-profits and accessibility advocates, been showing us how we could make the web live up to its promise as a truly universal medium, one that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere, regardless of ability or need. And we failed.
I say we quite deliberately. This is on us: on you, and on me. And, look, I realize it may sting to read that. Hell, my work is constantly done under deadline, the way I work seems to change every
yearmonth, and it can feel hard to find the time to learn more about accessibility. And maybe you feel the same way. But the fact remains that we’ve created a web that’s actively excluding people, and at a vast, terrible scale. We need to meditate on that.
Eric also followed the WebAIM report closely:
Digital accessibility is a niche practice. That’s not a value judgement, it’s just the way things are. Again, it’s hard to fault someone for creating an inaccessible experience if they simply haven’t learned the concept exists.
And yet, seventy percent of websites are non-compliant. It’s a shocking statistic. What if I told you that seventy percent of all bridges were structurally unsound?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 15 2019, @12:49PM
I know, I know, and I couldn't fucking hate it more! It's been going on for years now. It was a huge part of what drove me to Fuck Beta and join this place.
It seems to me it was born out of a number of ideas: firstly the idea that people can't read or interact with densely packed content on a small screen. This is really stupid though because smart phone screens are as high resolution as most monitors now and you can just zoom in (if the crappy page or crappy gesture interface doesn't glitch out) if it's too small to see properly or to tap on.
Secondly, I think it's a dumbing down because intelligent content with depth and detail isn't hip enough for their brand. There's an intense, irrational, and loathsome phobia of walls of text and the TL;DR effect.
Thirdly, a lot of sites spread out their proper content so that they can shove as many ads as possible down the users' throats in the gaps between. Eventually it becomes a religious design principle, even on sites that have no ads, accepted by web designers without a thought as to WHY.
Which brings me onto the fourth point. It's just become a monkey see, monkey do effect where managers are obsessed with the belief that their website needs a makeover and obviously has to look and work just like all the other big corporations sites they've seen because how else will they stay relevant and trendy? They don't know or care how inaccessible, ugly or annoying they're making it--they just simply have to make it like all the other new sites. If a more thoughtful web designer tries to do something even a little bit more sensible, the power-crazed management will pick up on it as an anomaly and demand it's changed.
And as for the giant stock photos of grinning hipster families that have zilch to do with the content, gaahhhhhhhhhh! I think it's supposed to be some marketing psychology trick--look, these fuckers are happy so you have to be just like them and like our product because they're happy on our website so that means you trust our website because your subconscious social ape brain will like and trust smiling hipster ape faces, won't it?!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?