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The Good, the Bad, the Ambiguous: A Look at Technical Standards
Technical standards are everywhere these days--and it’s not hard to understand why. Standards are useful: They provide a context for development, they create a shared language that facilitates discussion, and they provide rules according to which work can be evaluated. But standards can also stifle creativity by defining an issue narrowly or become dangerous by unnecessarily limiting the ways we approach a topic.
The Good
Before Section 508 standards1 were defined developers had no common notion of what an “accessible” Web site looks like. By defining minimally acceptable standards for an accessible site, Section 508 provides developers who want to build with accessibility in mind with a starting point.
Standards create a shared language among colleagues. For example, the ongoing discussion of accessibility becomes more refined as developers can be expected to understand the concept of “text equivalents.” With two words, developers can communicate a relatively complex notion: Text is accessible to almost all users since it can be handled by screen readers, non-visual browsers, and braille readers. When non-textual information (graphics, sounds, movies, etc.) is used on a Web site, textual equivalents for that information should be provided so users who can’t see or interact with the non-textual information still get the content. Such linguistic efficiency allows developers to quickly move from exposition of the concept to implementation.
In addition to providing a starting point and facilitating discussion throughout development, standards also play a role at the end of the process. Standards are a means to measure success or failure. Providing a shared sense of the basic characteristics of accessible Web sites, Section 508 standards allow appraisal and comparison of products; standards serve as the guidelines for evaluating and correcting the work in question as well as refining the original standard if and when needed.
The Bad
But there are drawbacks to using standards. Perhaps the most insidious is that standards, particularly when used for evaluation purposes, can come to define the concept they are meant to represent.
Section 508 standards are intended to help developers deliver content to persons with varying physical and cognitive abilities. When thinking through designing an accessible Web site, developers may be tempted to use the standards not as a starting point but as an endpoint, designing not toward some abstract notion of a product that is accessible, but designing to meet the requirements of the standards tied to that abstract notion.
In such a case, Section 508 standards become not a representation of accessibility, but accessibility itself, which is not only inaccurate but can be counterproductive, giving developers a false sense of security and keeping them from truly engaging creatively to address the issue of presenting content in as accessible a way as possible. Take again, the example of text equivalents. A Web developer focused on the letter of the standard, makes sure that all images have a text equivalent presented as an alt tag in the HTML; if a chart appears on a page, she adds "a chart" as the alt tag. A Web developer committed to the spirit of the standard, knows that simply having an alt tag is not enough; she must think through the content of the alt tag, put herself in the shoes of someone visually impaired who relies on a screen reader, and write a meaningful alt tag that conveys the information contained visually in the chart: "a bar graph showing the population decline in rural Mississippi between 1950 and 2000."
The Ambiguous
Standards are useful and even necessary, but their application must be intelligent. Standardized technologies are good at processing, at computing, and at interpreting limited vocabularies and structured data. But so much of what technology makes possible isn’t as tidy as the standards.
Delivering truly accessible online content requires commitment to the ideal of accessibility. No matter how practical, standards cannot substitute for an understanding of the goal they represent. Standards may come and go, be modified year to year or week to week; we need to recognize them for what they are--a means to an end, not the end itself.
Keeping the end in mind is the responsibility of the individuals who use the standards; they should be stewards of the standards. The ambiguous nature of standards underscores the need for individuals to be attentive in order to ensure that the means don’t obscure the end. Nonprofit organizations have the opportunity to play a leadership role in the appropriate use of the standards they employ. In doing so, those organizations can further the good work they do by contributing a little bit more to the community.
1 In 1998, Congress amended Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in an effort to eliminate barriers in information technology, make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and encourage development of technologies to help achieve these goals. For more about Section 508, please see the last issue of The Sophist, available at sophist_no6.aspx, which is devoted to accessibility in information technology.
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