13 comments

  • Giulio MichelonGiulio Michelon, over 9 years ago

    Ugh, this font

    19 points
  • Elliott PayneElliott Payne, over 9 years ago

    Because the corporations that pay most of our bills still run IE9 across their orgs.

    Also, it's much harder to empathize with a blind person than a sighted person using IE9. There isn't a "compatibility mode" for being blind. Closing your eyes and using a screen reader doesn't quite compare.

    8 points
  • Jake Lazaroff, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    There are plenty of resources and well known best practices for making sites work with earlier versions of IE, because clients often want us to make websites work in them; clients who demand websites accessible for those with disabilities (and therefore resources for creating them) are less common. Does anyone know of any good accessibility checklists or tests for people with disabilities?

    2 points
    • Mark StewartMark Stewart, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

      I work for a University, so I build with accessibility in mind every day. I wish there was a universal checklist, but there are just too many different factors to come up with a catchall list. A lot of people always associate accessibility with just sight/hearing problems, when those specific disabilities are often low on the list. There are usually (according to our research) much more mental (ADHD/ADD), physical (Mobility/Functional), and learning disabilities (Dyslexia) that we need to cater to more than simply vision/hearing issues.

      Here are some good resources:

      WebAim

      WAVE Toolbar for Firefox

      FANGS Screen reader plugin for Firefox

      ChromeVox screen reader for Chrome

      W3 Checklist

      4 points
  • Updula LeeUpdula Lee, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    Image alt

    0 points
  • Clay MacTavishClay MacTavish, over 9 years ago

    That font is handicapping.

    0 points
  • James Young, over 9 years ago

    It's a superbly generic statistic that probably has little relevance to many of the average agencies projects where I'd hazard a guess that IE9 is still a significantly higher chunk of traffic.

    It's probably also pretty hard to accurately track and test for disabilities using standard analytics.

    Not saying the article's wrong, accessible content should be a basic aim of any site but I suspect the answer is a little more nuanced than 3% vs 14%.

    0 points
    • Andrew Richardson, over 9 years ago

      This, I'm all for doing whatever I can for disabilities but comparing it to ONE version of a browser is pretty short sighted, and at that taking into account a general statistic is even more so. I'm looking at our browser statistics right now and IE in general is sitting at 39%, which may be higher than most sites but probably not by much. IE9 specifically is sitting at roughly 8% of total traffic. Combine that with IE8 users and we are at roughly 16% of users, which is still a pretty high number.

      It's also considerably easier to test and compensate for early versions of IE that it's hardly any extra work. I'd love to do more for accessibility and I try to when I know when there's an issue but it's a much more complicated thing.

      0 points