[governance] Where are we going?

[Norbert Bollow]

David Goldstein <goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Having worked for an agency that deals with people who are blind and
> vision impaired, the main problem I encountered with the people
> dealing with internet etc was ensuring people who designed websites
> made them accessible.

Yes.  That is precisely the problem which the certification labels
proposal addresses.

> There's often little interest from most web designers, both those
> designing for websites intended for large and small numbers of
> users.

Yes.  They won't put in the extra effort to learn about accessibility
and then apply this knowlegde unless their boss or customer tells them
"it must be accessibile" and in addition they know that accessiblity
experts of the certification organization will check whether they got
it right.

> A label won't help much for someone with a disability if the website
> is not accessible in the first place!

More than about anything else, the certification process is about
making the website accessible!

Here's how it works (leaving out supporting activities like contracts
getting signed, the accessibility experts getting paid for their work,
etc):

Step 1: The people behind the certification initiative influence
organizations to make the decision to make their sites accessible
and get them certified.  This influencing can happen for example
through the legislative process (e.g. since a few years, all sites of
the Swiss federal government are required by law to be accessible),
or in other ways.  For example, one of the major Swiss banks said
"yes" to making their e-banking application accessible and getting it
certified when it was approached by the accessibility certification
advocates.  I don't know to what extent the decision was influenced by
the fact that doing this is simply morally right, and to what extent
it was influenced by the fact that doing this is probably a good
business strategy for them from a public relations perspective, but
the fact remains that without the work of the accessibility
certification advocates, this wouldn't have happened.

Step 2: The technical people tasked with creating or improving the
website are informed of the requirement that it must be accessible,
and they are provided with information on how that can be achieved.

Step 3: They try to make the site accessible.

Step 4: Accessibility experts (some of whom, in the Swiss example
at least, are themselves people with disabilities) review what has
been done and point out the deficiencies and how to fix them.

Step 5: The problems get fixed.

Step 6: The site is re-checked by the accessibility experts and
hopefully found to be ok now.

Step 7: Periodically and after major changes the site needs to be
re-checked in order to ensure continued compliance with accessibility
requirements.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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