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Avoiding the Internet
It may seem like a bizarre concept; the head of a team delivering consultancy on website accessibility and usability avoiding using the internet, but it’s true – and it’s not because it’s too much like the day job. I avoid using the internet whenever I can because it’s often just too frustrating and cumbersome to use.
That’s not to say I don’t use the internet – I use the darned thing every single day of my life (weekends too). I use it for work and for leisure and I use it despite the frustration it exacts. I use it because it’s absolutely essential for my work, and indispensable for play. But ask me if I like using it and most of the time the answer will be a resounding “No!”.
The reason why I don’t like using the internet is because for me, as a blind surfer, the internet represents a series of accessibility pitfalls that need to be circumnavigated, and usability obstacles that need to be scaled. Ten years on from the first publication of a set of globally-adopted accessibility guidelines (recently updated to include Web2.0 technologies and practices) and still the overwhelming majority of websites out there are littered with challenges for the blind user – as well as for many others with a wide range of impairments who are similarly disenfranchised. Under such circumstances you simply can’t enjoy using the thing.
It is probably also worth stating at this point that, being what you might term a ‘power user’, my ability to meet these challenges are probably above average. Many of our testers we observe in the lab find performing many everyday tasks on an inaccessible website too difficult or frustrating, and prefer to give up (after not inconsiderable effort) than prolong the unpleasantness any further.
There are of course many relatively accessible sites that are pleasant to use (the majority of bbc.co.uk and much of what Google has to offer for example) but for every site that is usable there are ten that are painful and laborious. Thus I avoid using the internet as much as possible and, when I am obliged to use it, I adopt certain strategies to minimise the difficulties involved.
One way to avoid the internet is to use accessible desktop clients as alternatives to a website wherever they exist; such as the Twitter client ‘McTwit’ (http://mctwit.com). Despite the Twitter website (http://www.twitter.com) being relatively accessible, desktop applications are usually inherently more straightforward and efficient (and hence pleasureable) to use. Websites, with their lengthy pages of jumbled information, just aren’t as usable – and won’t be until sites really embrace the proper use of headings and landmarks to aid the navigation process and provide meaningful meta-information about each section of a page.
When searching for a piece of information, or keeping abreast of news, I’ll stick to websites that I know to be usable as much as possible. I won’t use a site’s search engine to search a site – instead I’ll use Google with the ‘site:’ prefix to limit the search to that site alone. Similarly I won’t trawl news sites for headlines, I’ll set up Google alerts to provide me with a digest of links that take me right to that news story page on a site, and thus limiting my involvement with any site that is an accessibility ‘unknown’. In a hostile online world you stick with what you know as much as you can.
I’ve subscribed to mailing lists and podcasts (and even read online blogs) to discover workarounds to some of the internets more intractable problems such as CAPTCHA. If it wasn’t for the CAPTCHA solving services of WebVisum (http://www.webvisum.com) and Solona (http://www.solona.net), for example, many blind users without assistance have little choice but to avoid using any website with such a requirement for registration.
Thus you may gather that, for a blind user at least, the internet is a challenging place. It can be very useful and even rewarding, but my goodness it can be hard work too. Each web page you visit is a new learning curve, and you never know quite what you’ll find yourself up against.
Therefore I greeted the news this week that Google are soon to launch a new operating system (Google ‘Chrome’), that appears to be entirely browser based, with some apprehension. Will I soon have to use the internet (or at least a web-based environment with all its attendant challenges) for everything I do? Until web pages, and the ‘screens’ of web applications, are as easy to use as desktop applications I’ll say “No” to Google Chrome and any other OS that takes the same approach.
The internet isn’t going away; this I know. So come on web designers and developers – please think about all your users. Build to the guidelines, test with disabled users, and then I’ll use your websites and web applications …if I have to!
Robin Christopherson
9 July 2009
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