accessibility? “I really don’t think
there has been enough research taking
place in this area,” admits Hall. “But as
long as anybody can fall back on basic
accessibility principles to support the
developments using WebGL, such as plain
text descriptions, they are still providing
indirect accessibility support.”A WHOLE NEW DIMENSION
Of course, these innovative development
tools are coinciding with some pretty
innovative hardware too. WebVR is a
hugely exciting area: building on top
of the graphical richness of WebGL, it
stands to potentially reinvent how all
of us interact with online experiences- although it doesn’t come without
pitfalls of its own. “VR offers some really
tremendous potential to disabled people
but it also brings with it a whole host
of new accessibility barriers, making
some big assumptions about people’s
bodies and abilities,” explains Hamilton.
“Some, like the requirement to carry a
bulky piece of hardware on your head, are
fixed physical barriers insurmountable
with current tech. That said, VR is the
advancement with the biggest potential
implications and, if we get it right, the
human benefit will be enormous.”
Indeed, the peripherals here that
enable us to transcend the browser
must be accessible enough to make
the technology universally viable. But
some platforms have already squared
this circle: they’ve already seen more
widespread adoption – having become
nigh-on ubiquitous in homes and
pockets – and they evolved out of
tech that targeted accessibility needs
in the first place. “Voice recognition
software has already given way to
powerful digital assistants, such as
Siri and Google Assistant, with these
themselves an extension of technology
originally designed for blind and low-
vision people,” enthuses EJ Mason, senior
software engineer at Webflow. “AR and
VR too represent an exciting frontier
and, used thoughtfully, could grant
disabled web users meaningful access
to content they couldn’t experience
before.” An admirable objective indeed
but how should someone approach these
new frontiers right now? Developers
might be wise not to dispense of the old
conventions too quickly.AI AUGMENTED?
But what of the advancements made in
artificial intelligence that run parallel
to these new paradigms? Surely it’s
plausible that our future web will be
made clever enough to guide us, assist
our exploration and adapt to elements
to fit our needs? “AI will certainly play a
big role in the future of web accessibility,”
agrees Garnier. “We can imagine that
computer vision will eventually lead
to a 3D experience being accurately
described or that voice recognition will
allow people with disabilities to navigate
digital universes.”
Indeed, we are seeing real use cases of
AI-augmented accessibility already, such
as captions and alt tags being computer
generated according to the content of
an image. “HTML image tags have an alt
attribute for holding a text descriptionof the image,” explains Bolonio. “It’s
incredibly valuable for visually impaired
people because screen readers read this
description out to audibly reveal not only
the representation of the image but also
the context of where the image is placed.
In an ecommerce webshop, for example,
the description field is useful for the
seller setting the description of an image
but it’s often not compulsory. Artificial
intelligence could help in identifying the
content of an image and filling the gaps
where humans haven’t provided enough
image information.”HUMAN TARGET
And this gets right to the crux of the
matter: ultimately the most valuable
thing offered by any innovative
technology is how it supports humans
and our lived reality. Often this is too
easily forgotten but no new technology
will displace the fact that usability, by
its very nature, is centred around realFEATURES
The new frontier of accessibility
Above Adrián Bolonio (@bolonio) is a senior
front-end developer and respected accessibility
advocate based in Vienna, Austria