“Those People Don’t Visit My Web Site” and Other Unforgivable Internet Assumptions

Accessibility sometimes tends to be rolled into a broader argument for improved Web standards. For those of you not utterly immersed in the Web industry, you may be unaware of a responsible firm’s difficult struggle to define, adhere to, and champion Web standards. The Internet is a hot mess of poor design and shockingly bad markup. And when, like us, you strive to be a benchmark of standards and semantics in a sea of hackery… well, it’s hard to recite poetry in a room full of carnival barkers.

Unfortunately, there’s something more difficult than convincing your peers to raise their standards. And that would be convincing a client.

For example, as recently as the past month, we’ve been in more than one meeting with clients and potential clients who, after our passionate and carefully constructed arguments against using drop-down menus in their navigation because they ignore the needs of those with limited dexterity and visual impairment, stated frankly, “Those people aren’t going to visit my Web site.”

“Those people” is a dismissive phrase that refers to a small group of 54 million disabled in the United States alone. This includes around 8 million people with visual impairments, 16 million with cognitive difficulties, and over 18 million senior citizens.

Let’s put this in perspective. As of 2006, there were 40.2 million African Americans in the United States. Imagine just for one uncomfortable second saying, “Black people don’t matter because they aren’t going to visit my Web site.”

And before you ask, the answer is yes, that can still happen. Not so long ago, when I was at another agency, a client you might very well recognize asked that we remove all African Americans from their promotional photography because “those people don’t visit our store.” Oh, sorry, correction: they asked us to only remove the dark-skinned blacks and lighten the skin of those who were “close.” My boss at the time agreed. We soon parted ways and I burned the hell out of that bridge.

And yes, the client who made that request was a white man.

And yes, those who have insisted to us that the disabled will not use their sites are themselves able-bodied. Sadly, only when the discussion turned to a negative impact on SEO or budget did ears perk up.

When you begin your own Web project, there are a few hard truths you must consider:

1. You are not your audience, nor do you possess an objective view about your own site.
2. Just because most Web sites do it doesn’t make it acceptable.
3. Your site must be navigable by keyboard users and screen readers.
4. Your site will be viewed on a mobile device and must be built accordingly.
5. If your site doesn’t need it, we aren’t going to add it. (cough) Flash (cough)

One of the things we pride ourselves on as an agency is the high level of service you receive as a client. That is not marketing spin. That is a fact supported by the number of comped account service hours I have personally seen in our billing. Here, you get a lot of customer service for your money.

Part of that high level of service is passion. Like it or lump it, we will be candid with you, and that candor is in the interest of making your Web site a wild success. If you are currently with a firm who has never argued with you, fire them now.

Another part of our service is education. There is a movement out there that is struggling. Accessibility, and the bigger picture issue of Web standards, is not easy to sell to a colleague in the industry—and it is currently next to impossible to make non-industry people bat an eye about it. And we can sit around and wonder why that is, or we can fight. We at HCK2 will not cheat our way to accessibility by making it an argument about SEO or budget. It is our goal to evangelize Web accessibility to our clients so that our clients can in turn evangelize it to the world.