Chad's Miniblog

Accessibility in Social Networks

One of the issues that I find fascinating is the disabled community’s relationship with popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and others. My primary interest is how these sites are accessed by people with disabilities, what barriers these sites present to people with disabilities, and how disabled people use these sites to build community.

What got me interested?

I joined the web-design world during the anti-table-layout revolution. I never designed a website using millions of <table> tags. I looked to Eric Meyer as somewhat of an oracle—someone who saw the future of web design.

What appealed to me most about the new css-based way to design webpages was that it took into account the many ways that people might choose to view a webpage: on a computer monitor using a traditional browser, on some sort of mobile device, or using an accessibility device for the disabled, such as a screen reader.

In my mind, the great appeal in modern web design was the possibility to separate content from presentation—to deliver content to the end user, but let him decide how he wanted to view it.

As I moved on in my career, I began developing e-learning content for a large corporation. I saw that with such a huge audience of people who were required to view my content, it was essential to make sure that people who were using alternative methods to view web content were able to do so. People were using screen-readers, high-contrast monitors, magnification devices, and a host of other technologies to access my content, and I needed to make sure that they could do so easily.

Why do I care?

Perhaps a better way to state why I care, is to first clarify what I don’t think is important about web accessibility. Most people in the web design community cite Section 508 or ADA compliance as their main reasons for designing accessible websites. I believe this view to be flawed, narrow, and short-sighted.

The compliance view of web accessibility is flawed because it assumes that the primary reason web designers should design accessible web content is to prevent legal action. This view looks at disabled individuals only as potential plaintiffs, not as valued employees and customers. Instead of clinging to the bare minimum required for compliance with Section 508 or the ADA, true web accessibility asks web designers to consider how different people may want to access the content they offer, and how to make sure that no one in the audience is excluded. This viewpoint respects the people who will access content, and is the most flexible. In the future, additional laws and regulations will be passed, and they are likely to have more stringent requirements that Section 508 and the ADA. If web designers focus on the needs of all users instead of just on complying with regulations, their designs are likely to require additional modifications as new, more stringent requirements are passed.

So, to answer the question Why do I care?, the answer is that I care because web users, employees, and potential customers come to web content with a spectrum of needs, desires, and ways of accessing content. I respect this, and I believe that the principles of good design respect this as well.

What am I going to do?

To begin with, I am going to look at how the content of popular social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and others appears when it is accessed by different types of adaptive devices that are used by the disabled. I will be using different simulation sites and software tools to do this.

My second area of discussion is to look at how different disability communities have leveraged the social networking space to build community. Many disability communities, especially the deaf community, have been very effective in leveraging social networking as a tool to link wit others and learn.