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Google Slaps People with Disabilities in the Face
Note: several hours after I wrote this post, Google fixed the accessibility problem. However, this is not a happy end. You can read my reflections about it.
How funny, if you go to Google, you can play the Pacman game from the main page. But it is not that much fun for all people.
Just picture this situation: blind people, who use their computer with a screen reader start hearing some sound, and later a siren after about ten seconds. Guess what happens, this is what they will have to listen to, instead of their screen readers reading the page to them. Or, at least, hopefully they will hear it well enough to navigate away.
If, at all, they know what it is. Because when you load the Google page, there's no warning that you may not be able to hear your screen reader. And even if there was, you don't have enough time to read through the page to find it. This is the nightmare of screen reader users. To hear some background noise and loose the functionality of their speech program. Read more about how sound can be harmful for screen reader users.
And I will be the first one to stand up for those small companies who didn't think about it, they had no idea, after all, we can't all know how the rest of the world uses a computer.
But a large company, a major service provider who has several people on their accessibility staff, who employs so many programmers who should be aware of at least popular standards.
It looks like it is the direct response for last year's petition to make their site more accessible.
I usually don't post my emotions on this blog. I am dedicated to provide information here, and to educate, so that even those small companies, who don't have the funds to spend big bucks on accessibility consultants could still learn how to help people with disabilities. And this does not have room for personal emotions.
But let's make an exception today. I am angry, and disappointed, this is what the commitment to accessibility means to Google. A company, who provides a separate page to address accessibility issues as a response to people with disabilities. This is the company who is setting trends in search, in the use of the internet. This is the company which states on it's accessibility blog that "We want to make information available to everyone, and that includes people with disabilities, such as blindness, visual impairment, color deficiency, deafness, hearing loss and limited dexterity." Now is this a flat out lie, or they can't find enough information on how to make a site accessible to people with disabilities.
This is effecting hundreds of thousands of people who use a screen reader with their computer, and I'm probably underestimating. If they don't care for people, they should care for their loyal customers.
If you feel that it is compromising the daily work and activities of people with disabilities, please spread the word. Retweet this article, or just talk about it anywhere.
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Well said. Will join my
Well said. Will join my Twitter voice to yours on that one as well.
Actually..
If you don't move the mouse, which, we know the majority of people don't on the Google Homepage, then it never plays. I have this funny feeling that anybody it may adversely affect don't use mice to navigate anyway.
Nonsense
What absolute nonsense. Your post is actually a slap in the face to anybody that appreciates creativity. And it's Google with a capital G, by the way.
Re: Nonsense
What absolute nonsense Stuart. Your multiple posts are also a slap in the face to people that use screen readers and other assistive technologies. If you're going to make multiple ignorant comments like that, do us all a favour and just don't.
@denis
Denis,
Thank you for the support, I appreciate it.
Mouse
I tried it without the mouse, I don't even have the mouse plugged in and the sound still comes on.
@Stuart
Stuart,
Sorry, I have corrected it, now it is with capital G.
I truly appreciate creativity. Actually, if you look around this site, I have stated several times that accessibility should not compromise fancy or attractive design. Rather, accessibility should be built into anything, so even people with disabilities should be able to enjoy it. And this is what I'm missing...
Re: nonsense
@guest, what you refer to is taken care of, Stuart has posted a comment four times, I thought one is enough, so I deleted the other three, which were the exect repetitions of the first one.
Sorry, I hate to moderate, but certain things are just nonsense.
Hey.. this was a one time
Hey.. this was a one time special and what you are arguing about is something which happens ervey day in the internet. Web speicals dont work for some reason on your computer for any reason. They are specials, they go away and don't remain forever... I wouldn't take this so serious....
Stop crying about it. If you
Stop crying about it. If you do not like it go use yahoo
One time
Dear Guest,
I agree with you. It is something that happens all the time. But where do we draw the line? Where do we say that it should not happen any more? I felt that in case of a large corporation like Google, I should complain. It is harder, and less fair to start drawing the line and complaining to small companies who have a hard time paying their bills, let alone paying for accessibility. As much as we would like to make it general practice, we have to admit that at this point, we can't necessarily expect it from all companies. From Google, we can, they have an actual accessibility staff to take care of such issues.
Stop crying
I do use Yahoo! as well. It is true, however, that Google provides services which Yahoo! doesn't. If you look at my follow-up post, fundamentally this is what the real problem is. There are applications which are not accessible and do not have an equivalent anywhere else.
Features triggered by mousemovement
RE: mouse movement triggers - quite a lot of the extra stuff on Google's home page is hidden (or not there) by default, and then triggered to appear by mouse events. So it looks like they're using that as a kind of non-accessibility hook, as it were - something to infer that the user is not navigating with a screenreader, or perhaps more generally, that they're not navigating with a mouse.
I don't know that this is what they're doing, but it certainly seems that way.
And if so, its a mistake -- one I've made myself in the past, because it is a very attractive notion to think that we can detect keyboard users by their non-use of the mouse; and at first-glance it seems self-evident. Unfortunately it's not as simple as that.
Firstly because many users navigate with both mouse *and* keyboard, not just one or the other.
But secondly and more importantly, because the presence of mouse events does not necessariy mean the use of a mouse! For example, Opera's spatial navigation is entirely keyboard-activated, yet it generates mousemove events. Several of JAWS and Window-Eyes' navigation keystrokes also generate mouseover and mousedown events. (Conversely, some of their navigation keystrokes don't generate any events at all, so we can't even rely on keyboard events to infer use of the keyboard!)
Browser event models simply aren't constrained enough to say that mouse or keyboard events prove mouse or keyboard navigation.
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