Are the accessibility standards cast in stone?

I stumbled upon an article entitled Improving accessibility for motor impaired users. This article really got me thinking. It appears as if following the accessibility standards to the letter is not necessarily always the way to go. This is particularly true if you have motor impaired visitors to your site. These folks have limited, or even no ability to use a mouse.

photo credit: Nikita Kashner

To overcome this problem this article suggests that the largest possible area has to be provided for links. I have decided to implement this suggestion. If you look at the links on the sidebar to the left you will notice that the links are now click-able over the entire width of the sidebar.

The article also suggests that the hover state of the links be used to clearly show which link has the focus. This suggestion I have also implemented on this site. Play around with the tab key and you will see what I mean. The link with the focus now shows up in red.

Historically most accessible sites have had ’skip navigation’ links. These links are normally hidden as they are normally only needed by users with screen readers. In a screen reader these links become visible. This article suggests that these links are also very handy for those that are motor impaired. The article suggests that the link should become visible when it is tabbed to. I also implemented this suggestion but I made the link permanently visible. The ’skip navigation’ link is in the header of this site.

The mentioned article also contains many other interesting points. The one that I found the most interesting is that the author suggests that access keys should not be used. The reason for this suggestion is that there’s no convention so the few sites that use them do so in whichever way they choose. Site visitors are unlikely to spend the time getting accustomed to your web-site’s particular access keys. It is also mentioned that access keys can also override keyboard shortcuts for screen readers.

I spent quite a time considering this last fact but eventuallly I decided to remove the access keys that were defined on this site. This also meant that I could remove the accessibility statement on the site because the primary purpose behind this page was to inform the user about the access keys defined on the site.

It would appear that the standards should not be considered as cast in stone, one should be prepared to stray from the standards if strict adherence could actually do more harm than good. It will be interesting to see what the next set of standards will include, if and when they appear.

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