Social networking across devices: opportunity and risk for disabled and older users
Henny Swan, Opera Software
Mobile browsing and social networking today
"Social Networking is popular worldwide and is the leading source of Web traffic for mobile devices."
Opera's State of the Mobile Web Report, April 2008
“…over 50 percent of consumers would substitute their Internet usage on a PC for a mobile device...Worldwide adoption of the mobile phone as the preferred device for accessing the Internet is just around the corner.”
2008 survey on mobile usage, Dr Sungyoul Lee,IBM
"...there are 78 million boomers — roughly three times the number of teenagers — and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34."
New social sites cater to people of a certain age, New York Times
Opportunity
- Employment: Blogs, forums and wiki's are commonplace work (Second Life).
- Health and well being: Medication reminders, on the spot support, finding care/help, group therapy, Wiihab...
- Education: discussion groups, shared projects and learning tools...
- Socialising and dating: For people who are housebound, in a home or find it hard in social contexts.
...all this on the move and on your device of choice (aka-aki).
Risk
- Insufficient ability to access across devices.
- Social networking sites are typically very inaccessible as they have showcased new technologies.
- Technology is leading innovation, not people.
...a danger of technology disabling the people it should be enabling.
Barriers
- Security
- CAPTCHA and Screen readers are incompatible and difficult for most users. Audio alternatives often distorted problematic on a mobile.
- Authentication
- Numerous logins difficult to manage, difficult to port from one network to another.
- Navigation, presentation and layout
- Complex, busy, non-standard and confusing. Lack of skip links, poor keyboard access, poor link text inaccessible tooltips.
- User generated content
- The interface of a social network plus generated content must be accessible.
- Lack of meaningful alternatives for sites such as Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, forums, blogs etc.
- Rich Internet Applications
- Lack of JavaScript support, lack of help text.
"Where's my Google box!"
Patricia, 64 first ever female executive at ABC Sports, now suffers from fibromyalgia.
Ways forward...new standards?
- Replace CAPTCHA
- Antidotes include ReCaptcha, CaptchaKiller and WebVisum (a SN of solutions)
- Industry collaboration needed to find an alternative means to fight spam.
- Authentication
- Using OpenID, OpenDD, OAuth. Ability to port ID, accessibility and presentation preferences.
Ways forward...existing guidelines
- Navigation, presentation and layout
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0): refers to web content produced by website owners and developers.
- Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 (MWBP 1.0): refers to mobile content produced by website owners and developers.
- User generated content
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines1.0 (ATAG 1.0): CMS, WYSIWYG, HTML editors, blogs, forums, social networks.
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- Rich Internet Applications
- WAI Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI ARIA): accessible ajax within web content produced by website owners and developers.
- WAI ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide: how browsers can support WAI ARIA. Must work with access technology vendors.
Ways forward...community and innovation
Bringing together disabled and older users with the web development community to create accessible solutions for sites people want:
Scripting Enabled - JavaScript supports accessibility
Ethical hack days (London and Seattle) creating accessible social networks and sites. So far: Easy YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr working on Google maps, Twitter directions.
Nonprofit project in US universities creating open source software for persons with disabilities. Projects include: barcode reader, mobile currency reader, community captioner.
Fluid Project - accessible functionality library
An open source software focused on building commonly used pieces of accessible functionality that easily integrate into existing applications. Infusion component library and toolkit.
Benefits beyond accessibility
Improved overall usability
- WAI ARIA improves keyboard access on mobiles.
- Improved context sensitive help, forms, structure and semantics.
Cut down development time / costs
- Easier maintenance: less code bloat, cleaner CSS, code libraries.
- Improve SEO, mobile, localisation and internationalisation.
Show me the money
- Baby boomers have plenty of disposable income.
- Disable users are very loyal customers when you get it right.
Looking forward
- W3C need to safeguard accessibility across social networks and across devices.
- Collaboration between the disabled and web development community (more than just user testing).
- Collaboration to develop secure authentication (stop using CAPTCHA).
- Collaboration between browsers and access technology vendors to implement WAI ARIA support.
- Crowdsource: developers are already working on accessible Twitter, YouTube, Flickr..etc..
