Kudos to David Shea
For quite some time I have been trying to come up with the right words. I felt I needed to say something well enough to effect what I and many others thought needed changing. I wanted results for the benefit of all. We all wanted results. But it was a tough subject to broach. Now no one has to say a thing as David Shea has taken it upon himself. It began like this:
David Shea created the CSS Zen Garden website. It was and is an inspiration to me and so many like me. You see, David is quite handy with the development and deployment of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, as his Zen Garden website clearly demonstrates. There was one small problem, though. Down at the bottom of that site were three letters: AAA. Those three little letters bespoke of a certain very difficult achievement: That his website met all of the web accessibility requirements of the W3CAI’s Web Accessibilities Priorities checklist. It simply wasn’t true, though.
I thought so at first. Many people did. It’s easy to be fooled when mechanical validators present you with a green light, thumbs up, and a little icon. Validators such as the one David used at Bobby’s Worldwide. There are, however, many things the mechanical validators cannot pick up and as Bobby’s Worldwide states themselves:
"Accessibility is ultimately a human endeavor. It is determined by whether or not a diverse group of people with a variety of abilities and disabilities can access information efficiently. Bobby is just one step in helping to make web pages more accessible, but cannot guarantee total accessibility."
David, like myself was duped into believing the green light, thumbs up, and icon. I found out the hard way when I made my Version Two Green-Beast.com website (my "Experiment" in Modern Web Design) and had it reviewed by experts. They told me it was close, maybe meeting the first priority checkpoint (A), maybe the second one as well (AA), but there was no way it was a triple-A site. But I learned and now know better. Thus, my new Version Three Green-Beast.com is a solid AA site as confirmed by my new friends and fellow members of the GAWDS Organization.
It’s a shame I was fooled the way I was but I do concede to it and tell anyone and everyone. I looked up to David Shea and his ultra-fantastic CSS Zen Garden website — it was my inspiration. His site is the whole reason I got into this web accessibilities thing. However, as I learned more and more, I realized his site didn’t meet the standards. This fact just blew me away. Shortcuts can’t be taken for the sake of design. I mean, really, try explaining that to someone who truly needs these accessibility features. You can’t. It’s a fine line which simply cannot be crossed. That’s why I wanted to tell David this. He was serving as a role model, inspiring people like me to tackle CSS-based web design. Unfortunately he was also showing people, like myself, that accessibilities was easy. I just had to say something. I discussed it with so many people, and we all felt the same way, but nobody, myself included, had the courage to speak up. It would be akin, perhaps, to telling God that He missed a spot in His creation of earth… okay, not quite like that, but you get the idea.
But now nobody has to say a thing. David Shea has done it himself in this Mezzoblue Triple-A Article. And for this David once again has my total respect. Kudos to you David Shea.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 25th, 2005 at 9:57 am →
As of the time of this entry, the AAA still appears on the CSS Zen Garden website. It hasn’t yet been updated and the link it still pointing to the very misleading Bobby’s Worldwide Results Page.
I feel this needs to be changed as soon as humanly possible. Apparently, though, this is difficult to fix as there are a vast number of style sheets — the ones created for the site — all based on the same HTML. I understand. A simple change to that mark-up could have a huge impact on a number of the pages created by others. Nevertheless, I don’t feel it’s as difficult as it may seem. Last night I went to the Comments Page for David Shea’s Mezzoblue Triple-A Article and noted a number of fair and reasonable corrective suggestions. (I mean, really, as long as the AAA appear on the pages and point to Bobby’s, the article doesn’t mean much and the site still sends its misleading message.) None of the suggestion have been implemented yet, though.
The first suggestion, Article Comment #1, provided by Xian (MintChaos) was a decent-enough one. He wrote (March 23, 2005 at 12:09am):
Being that a day had passed and no corrective measures had been taken (yeah, a day is plenty of time to work this out if it’s important — and I feel/have felt that it is), I wrote an Article Comment of my own (#46) (March 24, 2005 at 11:08pm), as follows:
I do have another idea, which I’ll post here, anyway: Since this whole thing is so questionable, perhaps the link should not only point to the revealing article in question, but maybe it should be displayed on the page as ??? as well.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 26th, 2005 at 12:54 pm →
The Saga continues… Here Matt comments on my last post (March 26, 2005 04:24 am):
So I responded as follows (March 26, 2005 09:05 am)
Your questions and comments are certainly are valid, Matt, and I appreciate this opportunity to respond.
In this case, the title attribute for that link states: “Check the accessibility […]” as you know, but it points to the ever-deceiving Bobby’s Worldwide results page, not to the W3C’s published checklist of guidelines, so it’s being misused. If it pointed to the checklist the “AAA” wouldn’t mean a thing as that really is Bobby-speak, thus one would have to investigate the meaning further (which is fine on an educational website). In my eyes this is extremely deceiving to the uninitiated, as I was but a short time ago.
It’s well known that the CSS Zen Garden takes liberties for the sake of design flexibility, but due to the simple fact that it is educational by nature, it shouldn’t take said liberties without a clear and concise explanation supporting them. For the sake of education. Even if this requires a long description as an alternative to the title attribution.
In my opinion it should be clearly presentable as to why the styled-page text cannot be enlarged to Internet Explorer users (not that I’m saying it should be because the paged is backed by a solid html page), or why the links are separated by non-breaking spaces instead of stable character separators, or why an image replacement technique wasn’t implemented for the main heading, or why some of the styles were permitted to use imagery in lieu of proper headings by placing the headings with spans in the first place, or why some of the styles bearing the link are nearly unreadable due to issues with limited contrast or break horribly on Firefox if the text is enlarged. Taking these liberties as such could be deemed as abusive.
Sure the guidelines need work. As long as they allow individual interpretation this is the case. First, the “Must-do, Should-do, and May-do” terminology should be changed to “Must-do, Must-do, Must-do” for starters. But then again, they are guidelines, not rules, and are just asking to be manipulated.
To me, the CSS Zen Garden is as it states: “A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.” It is a fantastic example of this and Mr. Shea has contributed to the design community on this front in the most exemplary way. For this I acknowledge and support his efforts fully. But the site is not an example of accessible design and have long felt this detracts from the site’s educational benefits and merit.
Removing the link entirely might be best, but I do understand the impact this could have. So, perhaps the best thing to do would be to replace the “AAA” with “???” and change the link so it leads to a solid explanation, a page bearing more links on the subject of web accessibilities, perhaps. The site’s educational benefits would be further enhanced if this were done.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: May 26th, 2005 at 1:23 pm →
I went to the CSS Zen Garden yesterday. I was showing my wife there was just a tiny bit of information of CSS on the web via Google Search (91,200,00 pages if I recall). Most impressive, the Zen Garden was fourth on that list, after two from W3C and one from W3 Schools.
Anyway, when I showed my wife the Zen Garden site I explained to her what had happened regarding the “AAA” link leading to Bobby’s results page, my thoughts on the matter, etc. I clicked on the link to show her and I was very surprised — in a good way.
Instead of linking to the Bobby results page, the link now leads to WebExact (also a Bobby’s site) but not to a misleading results page, but rather to an input page. Now, for those really inquisitve folks out there who click on the link, I feel they will no longer be mislead and will be given better chance to come to proper conclusions.
I doubt David Shea will see this or read it, but my hat is off to him for doing what I strongly feel is the right thing. Kudos to you, David!
Robert Clark responds:
Posted: October 31st, 2005 at 11:29 am →
Nice job. I’m planning to come back here in the future.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: November 17th, 2005 at 10:37 am →
Yeah, whatever Robert Clark. I’m really glad to hear that.
Update
The “AAA” link at the CSS Zen Garden I was concerned about, as addressed in this MezzoBlue article, has been changed again, this time leading to a very responsible FAQs entry explaining it. This, to me, is the ultimate fix. So, Dave, again, kudos to you. You did good!