When I talk to teams about web accessibility, often someone will ask how many people with disabilities use their site(s), or some variation of that question. It’s complicated, and other questions can be more helpful.

My standard answer usually includes that we can’t measure assistive technology usage for (good) privacy reasons, that our analytics won’t show customers that went to a more accessible competitor and that accessibility benefits everyone.

Accessibility ROI irrelevant (says… Apple!)

One other aspect though, let’s go into that straight away, is that looking for this data hints at trying to find return on investment. A counter question could be: what will we do with that data? Let’s say we get the number and deem it a very small percentage… whatever that is… equal access is still the right thing to aim for, it is still a human right and it is still required by law in most places. So, basically, our organisation has three good reasons to prioritise accessibility that exist regardless of a number of users with disabilities.

Or, as Apple CEO Tim Cook once told a shareholder:

When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI. If that’s a hard line for you, then you should get out of the stock.

(From: Apple’s Tim Cook gets feisty, funny and fiery at shareholders meeting, Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2014)

This makes sense for the web too. The web is all about accessibility, both of information and for end users.

Privacy trumps metrics

A web user’s need for privacy trumps our need for analytics. This is especially the case for people with disabilities, who rightly don’t want their disability to be one of your metrics. Standards organisations are careful not to add features to the Web Platform that allow such tracking, because it would invade individual user needs too much.

Your analytics don’t show market potential

Even if we could accurately measure how many people with disabilities used our site, it isn’t a very meaningful number. If our site is inaccessible to people who use voice control, chances are those people are shopping with our competitor instead. The reason they don’t show up in our numbers might be just that.

For the potential, we could look at the World Health Organisation’s Report on Disability, published in 2011. In a comprehensive chapter on demographics, they conclude 15-20% of the world’s population has a disability. These numbers aren’t exact, as countries have different methods of counting, but they give a reasonable estimate that we can work with.

Accessibility benefits everyone

Accessibility features on our site won’t benefit everyone all the time, that would be an exaggeration, but they often benefit many more people than just specific groups of people with disabilities. Dark mode is a feature some users need to avoid headaches or to read content, but many others still apply such settings, for a wide variety of reasons.

And it doesn’t just benefit a large parts of our user base, accessibility can also inspire innovation in our organisations. When an Italian inventor created the first typewriter for his blind friend, he invented a thing that is at the centre of what all of us do all day. Voice controlled software, audiobooks… the examples of things that were initially designed for people with disabilities but used by many more, are countless.

Conclusion

We probably don’t need to know how many people with disabilities use our sites, as regardless of what that number would be, we should want to build accessible sites, for many ethical, legal and business reasons.

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When I talk to teams about web accessibility, often someone will ask how many people with disabilities use their site(s), or some variation of that question. It’s complicated, and other questions can be more helpful.

My standard answer usually includes that we can’t measure assistive technology usage for (good) privacy reasons, that our analytics won’t show customers that went to a more accessible competitor and that accessibility benefits everyone.

Accessibility ROI irrelevant (says… Apple!)

One other aspect though, let’s go into that straight away, is that looking for this data hints at trying to find return on investment. A counter question could be: what will we do with that data? Let’s say we get the number and deem it a very small percentage… whatever that is… equal access is still the right thing to aim for, it is still a human right and it is still required by law in most places. So, basically, our organisation has three good reasons to prioritise accessibility that exist regardless of a number of users with disabilities.

Or, as Apple CEO Tim Cook once told a shareholder:

When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI. If that’s a hard line for you, then you should get out of the stock.

(From: Apple’s Tim Cook gets feisty, funny and fiery at shareholders meeting, Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2014)

This makes sense for the web too. The web is all about accessibility, both of information and for end users.

Privacy trumps metrics

A web user’s need for privacy trumps our need for analytics. This is especially the case for people with disabilities, who rightly don’t want their disability to be one of your metrics. Standards organisations are careful not to add features to the Web Platform that allow such tracking, because it would invade individual user needs too much.

Your analytics don’t show market potential

Even if we could accurately measure how many people with disabilities used our site, it isn’t a very meaningful number. If our site is inaccessible to people who use voice control, chances are those people are shopping with our competitor instead. The reason they don’t show up in our numbers might be just that.

For the potential, we could look at the World Health Organisation’s Report on Disability, published in 2011. In a comprehensive chapter on demographics, they conclude 15-20% of the world’s population has a disability. These numbers aren’t exact, as countries have different methods of counting, but they give a reasonable estimate that we can work with.

Accessibility benefits everyone

Accessibility features on our site won’t benefit everyone all the time, that would be an exaggeration, but they often benefit many more people than just specific groups of people with disabilities. Dark mode is a feature some users need to avoid headaches or to read content, but many others still apply such settings, for a wide variety of reasons.

And it doesn’t just benefit a large parts of our user base, accessibility can also inspire innovation in our organisations. When an Italian inventor created the first typewriter for his blind friend, he invented a thing that is at the centre of what all of us do all day. Voice controlled software, audiobooks… the examples of things that were initially designed for people with disabilities but used by many more, are countless.

Conclusion

We probably don’t need to know how many people with disabilities use our sites, as regardless of what that number would be, we should want to build accessible sites, for many ethical, legal and business reasons.

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Originally posted as How many people with disabilities use our site? on Hidde's blog.

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In a Dutch podcast, I heard a prominent tech journalist praise Mark Zuckerberg’s recent Metaverse PR event: finally, the company had presented a grand vision and it looked so cool! In my own tech bubble on Twitter, I saw mostly memes to poke fun at the concept, the presentation and the presenter, and lots of insightful scrutiny.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated the move of work to digital spaces rather than physical ones. Metaverse-enthusiasts often claim that more Metaverse-tech can give us a much better version of digital life. I’m not sure about that.

Though it was refreshing, I will say I was disappointed by the tech journalist’s enthusiasm. Not because Mark Zuckerberg deserves the laughs, or because it somehow scratches an itch ito criticise people who are genuinely trying to make exciting new tech. I mean, maybe… but really, it is because Facebook’s actions prove time over time they require scrutiny. This corporation makes decisions that put their profit above the safety of both people and the societies they live in, and it plays innocent through a clever PR apparatus (see my post on An Ugly Truth). The US Congress and European Commission aren’t looking into their practices because they felt bored. It is because they capitalise on surveillance, hate and misinformation, all of which threaten the basic structures of democracy.

If Facebook (or Meta) claims they will prioritise security, interoperability and improving human relationships, as Zuckerberg did in interviews, such claims need scrutiny. Scrutiny from journalists, from software engineers, from activists and from trend watchers. This company has demonstrated on many occasions to be capable of mostly the opposite of security, the opposite of interoperability and the opposite of improving the quality of human relationships. What would Rohinga muslims or the White House staff think when they hear Zuckerberg say security matters to him? What about web developers who try to build interoperable web apps, only to find Facebook’s staff working on the React framework work around more than with web standards? What about the many societies that are driven apart by an effective machinery for medical and political misinformation? Will they feel their human to human relationships have improved?

As someone with family, friends and colleagues abroad, I have seen struggles with current digital spaces. They could improve by means of technology and better priorities. But should this be lead by the company whose technology and priorities worsened digital spaces so much?

And are more advanced digital environments the answer or does a better world already exist, as in, the real world? Mixing digital and real, as some Metaverse tech does, is super beneficial for corporations that see the web as a place to extract profit from. A Mixed Reality overlay adds not just fun or useful interactions, it adds another thing to measure. More data, for corporations like Facebook, means more profits.

Maybe I would be less sceptical if Zuckerberg had outlined in more detail how this would benefit the world first, or even demonstrate ways to guarantee the Metaverse won’t be just another layer of his data extraction machine. Of course, it is a free world and corporations can profit however they want. Including by building a data extraction machine and getting rich off that. Profit is fine, my company aims for profits too. It’s really Zuckerberg’s failure to address what could go wrong, given so much in his current enterprise has gone wrong, that tires me. It’s the combinaton of that data extraction machine for profit and the undesired impacts of it on society.

For a corporation wanting to extract data for profit, augmented reality is better than reality. For end users, reality itself, I mean, unaugmented reality, might be the better version of the mostly digitial lockdown life that many of us desire. First of all, it’s real, I mean, did you have a chance to experience life music after lockdowns? It’s nice, right? Secondly, it doesn’t require scary filming glasses or uncomfortable and nausea-inducing headsets. Thirdly, you have to worry less about whether your privacy is invaded. And if Facebook or Meta run things, you can be quite sure of that. I won’t be applying to one of the 50,000 ‘Metaverse jobs’ they said they’ll open in Europe.

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The post The better version of digital life is real life, not ‘the metaverse’ was first posted on hiddedevries.nl blog | Reply via email

In a Dutch podcast, I heard a prominent tech journalist praise Mark Zuckerberg’s recent Metaverse PR event: finally, the company had presented a grand vision and it looked so cool! In my own tech bubble on Twitter, I saw mostly memes to poke fun at the concept, the presentation and the presenter, and lots of insightful scrutiny.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated the move of work to digital spaces rather than physical ones. Metaverse-enthusiasts often claim that more Metaverse-tech can give us a much better version of digital life. I’m not sure about that.

Though it was refreshing, I will say I was disappointed by the tech journalist’s enthusiasm. Not because Mark Zuckerberg deserves the laughs, or because it somehow scratches an itch ito criticise people who are genuinely trying to make exciting new tech. I mean, maybe… but really, it is because Facebook’s actions prove time over time they require scrutiny. This corporation makes decisions that put their profit above the safety of both people and the societies they live in, and it plays innocent through a clever PR apparatus (see my post on An Ugly Truth). The US Congress and European Commission aren’t looking into their practices because they felt bored. It is because they capitalise on surveillance, hate and misinformation, all of which threaten the basic structures of democracy.

If Facebook (or Meta) claims they will prioritise security, interoperability and improving human relationships, as Zuckerberg did in interviews, such claims need scrutiny. Scrutiny from journalists, from software engineers, from activists and from trend watchers. This company has demonstrated on many occasions to be capable of mostly the opposite of security, the opposite of interoperability and the opposite of improving the quality of human relationships. What would Rohinga muslims or the White House staff think when they hear Zuckerberg say security matters to him? What about web developers who try to build interoperable web apps, only to find Facebook’s staff working on the React framework work around more than with web standards? What about the many societies that are driven apart by an effective machinery for medical and political misinformation? Will they feel their human to human relationships have improved?

As someone with family, friends and colleagues abroad, I have seen struggles with current digital spaces. They could improve by means of technology and better priorities. But should this be lead by the company whose technology and priorities worsened digital spaces so much?

And are more advanced digital environments the answer or does a better world already exist, as in, the real world? Mixing digital and real, as some Metaverse tech does, is super beneficial for corporations that see the web as a place to extract profit from. A Mixed Reality overlay adds not just fun or useful interactions, it adds another thing to measure. More data, for corporations like Facebook, means more profits.

Maybe I would be less sceptical if Zuckerberg had outlined in more detail how this would benefit the world first, or even demonstrate ways to guarantee the Metaverse won’t be just another layer of his data extraction machine. Of course, it is a free world and corporations can profit however they want. Including by building a data extraction machine and getting rich off that. Profit is fine, my company aims for profits too. It’s really Zuckerberg’s failure to address what could go wrong, given so much in his current enterprise has gone wrong, that tires me. It’s the combinaton of that data extraction machine for profit and the undesired impacts of it on society.

For a corporation wanting to extract data for profit, augmented reality is better than reality. For end users, reality itself, I mean, unaugmented reality, might be the better version of the mostly digitial lockdown life that many of us desire. First of all, it’s real, I mean, did you have a chance to experience life music after lockdowns? It’s nice, right? Secondly, it doesn’t require scary filming glasses or uncomfortable and nausea-inducing headsets. Thirdly, you have to worry less about whether your privacy is invaded. And if Facebook or Meta run things, you can be quite sure of that. I won’t be applying to one of the 50,000 ‘Metaverse jobs’ they said they’ll open in Europe.

---

Originally posted as The better version of digital life is real life, not ‘the metaverse’ on Hidde's blog.

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With prefers-reduced-motion, developers can create UIs that don’t move when users opt out. Could this feature be a way of meeting WCAG 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide?

Rian recently asked this question in Fronteers Slack and I thought I would write up some thoughts around this for later reference. I will go into three things: what’s 2.2.2 about, how could using prefers-reduced-motion be a way to meet it and is that desirable?

What is 2.2.2 about?

Moving, blinking and scrolling content can be a barrier to:

• people who cannot read text fast or track moving objects
• people who use screen readers, this kind of content can cause trouble there
• people who have attention deficit disorders

Success Criterion 2.2.2 says that for such content, there should be a “mechanism for the user to pause, stop, or hide it”. The exception is content that is considered “essential”, like when removing it would radically change the content or if this UI is really the only way to display the functionality. If this content auto-updates, a mechanism to set how often updates happen is also fine.

All of this is about content that moves regardless of user interaction. For content that moves when people “interact” (eg scroll or zoom), think parallax effects, this could badly effect people with vestibular disorders. 2.3.3 Animation from Interactions (Level AAA) is specifically about this interaction-triggered motion.

Is prefers-reduced-motion sufficient for 2.2.2 conformance?

What and how

These days, most operating systems let users indicate whether they want to see less motion.

On macOS, the setting is under Accessibility, Display, Reduce motion

This functionality exists for pretty much the same reasons as Success Criterion 2.2.2. In Media Queries, Level 5, CSS adds a way for web developers to respond to and honour the setting to prefer reduced motion.

In CSS, it works like this:

.thing {
  /* some rules */
}
@media (prefers-reduced-motion) {
  .thing { 
    /* some rules for if user
       prefers reduced motion*/
  }
}

In JavaScript, you can also read out the value for prefers-reduced-motion with matchMedia, and even add listen to its change event:

var query = window.matchMedia('(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)');

query.addEventListener('change', () => {
  if (!query.matches) {
    /* some rules */
  } else {
    /* some rules for if user
       prefers reduced motion*/
  } 
}

Conformance

I would say a UI that has moving parts that would cause it to fail 2.2.2, could meet it if those moving parts are removed under the condition of prefers-reduced-motion being set to true. In practice, for this to work, a user would have to set this preference in their operating system and they use a browser that supports it.

The crucial part of the Success Criterion text, I think, is:

for [moving, blinking and scrolling content] there is a mechanism for the user to pause, stop, or hide it

(emphasis mine; exception and exact definition of the content this applies removed for clarity)

I feel setting ‘prefers reduced motion’ could count as such a mechanism, for most cases of moving content.

Is it “accessibility supported”?

In WCAG, there is this concept of ‘accessibility supported’, meaning that you can somewhat trust on platform features, but only if you’re certain they will work for most of your users. Like, if there was an amazing new HTML tag that allowed you to do very accessible tabs, but only one obscure browser can actually render it, that is not considered accessibility supported.

“Accessibility supported” requires two things to be true: it has to work in a user’s assistive technology and there are browsers, plugins or even paid user agents that support the feature (paid, as long as price and findability are same for users with and without disabilities). W3C and the WCAG authors (AGWG) only provide these rules, not a specification of what meets them or doesn’t meet them, so it’s up to the accessibility community to agree.

I believe this is a feature that doesn’t depend on assistive technology support as it lives in browsers, so I will deem that first clause to be not applicable and look just at the browser support. For ‘prefers-reduced-motion`, caniuse shows 93% of users are on browsers that support it. It is important to note that some screenreader users may be on older browsers, for a variety of reasons. Among respondents to WebAIM’s most recent screenreader user survey, Internet Explorer usage was 3.3%. To include even those users, one could use prefers-reduced-motion defensively.

I wrote this would be fine to meet WCAG in ‘most cases’. When is it not? Examples could be those when the ‘moving’ means the site adds new content, like in a stock ticker, as Jonathan Avila suggests on GitHub. Not adding that content would be undesirable, as it would make that content unavailable to users with the setting turned on.

Is this desirable?

If we want an accessible web, we shouldn’t just look for the bare minimum to conform. When I carry out accessibility conformance evaluations, measuring that minimum is what I consider my goal, but, of course, web accessibility is about more than such audits. People with disabilities should have equal usability and that requires best practices and user testing, in addition to standards conformance.

So, ‘is this desirable?’ is a usability question. Will people who need the setting actually discover, understand and use it? The setting can be in a variety of places. MDN has a list of settings that cause Firefox to honour prefers-reduced-motion, presumably these are similar for Chromium and Webkit based browsers. It seems likely to me that lots of people won’t find this setting. So it doesn’t just give control to end users, it also shifts the burden of knowing and using the setting to them. Operating systems can (and sometimes do) improve discoverability of features like these, though.

Generally, I love the idea of features like prefers-reduced-motion standardised primitives to accommodate specific user requirements. I think it’s better than every web developer inventing their own controls to meet the same user needs. In the case of 2.2.2, controls like pause buttons or duration settings. I love the idea that the platform offers generalised controls that aren’t just used on one specific website, but can be respected by all websites.

Similar features

After I published this post, Bram Duvigneau of the Dutch accessibility consultancy Firm Ground, sent me a note that included a few more web platform features that help meet WCAG criteria:

• in most modern browsers, there is a global mute key. Might this mean websites don’t need to build their own mute buttons to meet 1.4.2 Audio Control?
• also in most modern browsers, are controls to decrease and increase text size: we no longer expect websites to have their own buttons for this either

The ‘Mute this tab’ button in a Firefox tab

The mute and text sizing buttons are much easier to find in web browsers for users. Should browsers also expose a much easier to find ‘stop motion’ button whenever a website implements prefers-reduced-motion, so that a user is more explicitly presented with this option?

Summing up

As you can read, I’m a little torn on whether prefers-reduced-motion is a sufficient way to meet 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide for specific cases of that criterion. In terms of conformance, I would say yes, this is acceptable (with exceptions). In terms of actual usability, which is what is most important, I’m torn as it only actually works if real users find this setting on their device.

Over to you! If you’re reading this, I would love to hear what you think!

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