Great post, Theo.
Screen readers are interesting pieces of technology. For anyone that's never used one I would highly encourage you to do so if given the opportunity. It's truly and eye opener (no pun intended - really). One thing to remember about Assistive Technology is that it's just software. And it can be every bit as buggy, if not more so, than the programs being assisted. This makes for highly frustrating debugging sessions, especially on development quality code. It also presents unique challenges when preparing for a S508 audit (ie: should we work around this JAWS bug? Are the auditors even using JAWS??). Many A11y shortcomings can be legitimately classified as "bugs". As we all know, software is never bug free and in this regard accessibility is no exception. While it is great to have the goal of producing a 100% accessible application, meeting that standard may be unrealistic (depending on many factors) for complex and highly interactive applications. In some ways its like saying "Let's not have any bugs!". Great goal, but you may kill yourself trying to achieve it. I'm a big believer that the bar should be high in terms of delivering on the spirit of S508. Although it's important to note that the laws are really there to ensure that the tools which are required to do one's job are accessible to the disabled. Said another way, the tools must be "usable". Note the distinction; the laws certainly do not state that disabled users must have the same UX as non-disabled users, or even a UX that is "just as good". That's not the intent. The intent is that they have a tool which allows them to effectively do their job. For anyone that finds themselves working for the government, or for a government contractor, or for a company that has any touchpoints with IBM for that matter, you'll quickly learn the importance of accounting for A11y early in the design cycle. I can tell you from experience that it's no fun trying to make an existing rich-client application accessible. It's tedious and frustrating work, although at the end of the day, it's rewarding work too. Mike
