Digithoughts

The Concept

I'd like to propose a thought experiment: Think of Google, Bing and others not as search engines that crawl the web but as disabled users.

Images

Section 508 part a: "A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content)."

When a blind person hits an image, what do they get? If they are lucky, the image has a descriptive alt attribute that tells them what the image represents and their text to speech reader can read it. Without the alt attribute, they get nothing other than the knowledge there was something there.

When a search engine hits that image, they get the same thing. They can't read context out of it. But they can read the alt attribute and know that that is what it represents.

CSS and Styles

Section 508 part c: "Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup."

Section 508 part d: "Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet."

A colorblind user has no idea that some titles are red and some are green and that indicates some are locked and others available. To them, it's just a series of titles.

A search engine can't tell that colors means something either. The search engine gets the series of undifferentiated titles just like the colorblind user.

An accessibility friendly coder will ensure there's additional information – title attributes, <abbr>s and the like. This information gives the additional information to colorblind users and search engines alike.

The same holds true for document structure with appropriate header tags.

Multimedia

Section 508 part b: "Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation."

A deaf user can't hear the soundtrack of a video or audio file. They can however read a supplied transcript.

Search engines can't currently pull the dialog out of a file and so can't index it either. They can index the transcript just like any other piece of text.

A blind user can't see what's happening in a video but they can have their text-to-speech program read the video descriptors.

Search engines can't understand what the video is showing but they too can index text based video descriptors.

JavaScript

When that blind person hits typical JavaScript, they get nothing. Their text-to-speech reader has the JavaScript disabled and they've lost access to the feature, to all of the content it might have shown them.

When a search engine hits JavaScript, it gets just the same experience. It can't run the JavaScript code and explore all of the interactions. It too "sees" nothing.

The quick solution: <noscript> gives both a plain English alternative. The blind person can read it, the search engine can index it.

The better solution: Including all of the content and then progressively enhancing with JavaScript. Search engines and the blind can now read every bit of content that others have access to. As their tools get more complex, they may be able to interact with it in richer and richer ways but they lose nothing either way.

Conclusion

I'm sure you can think of many more examples of how search engines really do work a lot like disabled users. What helps those disabled users usually turns out to help search engines just as much.

In a tough economy, the traditional arguments for Accessibility: "It's the right thing to do." and "It's becoming the law, we should act now to avoid getting sued later." may not be so compelling. Every dollar is precious and sometimes people need to see an immediate return for spending it now, not some vague promise for the future.

Search Engine Optimization is an easy case to make: Without users being able to find your site for the first time, how do they become repeat visitors, subscribers, buyers, ad impressions? That investment in a great site is wasted if no one comes. With that argument in mind, SEO spending can only make sense.

Thinking of Accessibility and SEO as much the same thing with much the same solutions lets you make an even stronger case. Every dollar you spend on SEO is now also a dollar spent on Accessibility. For no extra cost, just a little intelligence in how you implement your solutions, your SEO dollars gain you community good will, access to the many disabled users who aren't accommodated elsewhere and couldn't have used your site anyway and it protects you as the laws continue to change. Not bad for "free."

Nicholas Davison Director of Web Development

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