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Comments: 197 +- Technology: Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards on Thursday October 01, @05:27PM
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SethGrimes writes with this excerpt from Information Week's Intelligent Enterprise: "Recovery.gov, a showcase government-transparency Web site that relaunched on Monday, fails to meet US federal government Section 508 accessibility standards and accessibility best practices. The non-compliance issues relate to display of data tables — an essential point given the site's promise of 'Data, Data & More Data' — despite on-site compliance claims. Other elements including navigation maps, while compliant, are poorly designed. Sharron Rush, co-founder and executive director of accessibility-advocacy organization Knowbility, goes so far as to state, 'The recovery.gov Web site is a good example of what NOT to do for accessibility in my opinion.' Louise Radnofsky explains in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog, 'Expectations are high for the site, not least because of its hefty price tag: Smartronix, a Maryland contractor, is being paid $9.5 million for its initial overhaul and is likely to get another $8.5 million to keep the site running through 2014.' Compliance with Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act — a baseline expectation — is a long-standing federal-government requirement for information-systems accessibility to persons with disabilities. The site's accessibility failures — which are shared by another showcase government-transparency site, USAspending.gov — are nonetheless easily seen."
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$9.5 million? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, for $9.5 million dollars I think they can afford to hire a web designer that knows how to make a website accessible. I mean, I made a website that was accessible for two cans of mountain dew and what was left of a can of pringles. Looked better too. Then again, I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me after (she didn't), so I might have underbid just a bit. Still -- I think I would do better than these guys did. :\
Re: (Score:2)
9.5 mil for re-designing a website seems suspiciously high, even for a federal contract. Does the contract include other services that aren't mentioned in the summary?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Then again, I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me after (she didn't):\
You *do* realize she was blind, right?
Wrong line of work! (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.
The site does very little if you don't have Flash, BTW. Many pages don't even give you a "You don't have Flash" message. You just get blank white pages. I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.
...laura
Re:Wrong line of work! (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.
The site does very little if you don't have Flash, BTW. Many pages don't even give you a "You don't have Flash" message. You just get blank white pages. I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.
...laura
While I will agree with you that 1) many sites can be built more user friendly with less work using the right tools and 2) Flash is evil, you must remember they need to interface with a bunch of legacy government servers to get the data. That's a royal pain in itself.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
> If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong
> line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with
> Django and MySQL.
Yes, but it would have take several months and several hundred thousand dollars for specialized lawyers to put together a qualified bid for the job. Much of the work involved in bidding on and completing a Federal contract has to do with complying with loony procurement regulations rather than performing any actual productive
How to do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.
First start a company. Then make campaign contributions to the incumbent politicians that are part of the committee that overseas these things. Start in the Senate. Of course, you'll have to get around the campaign finance laws, but don't worry, there are plenty of law firms that can help - for a very nice price.
That' s not enough though! You also need a lobbying firm to lobby other politicians and the Government offices that also have input - there are folks that will do that for a nice price too.
Now, there will be others who will do the same, so you'll have to be very strategic and get the best advisers.
Now, after winning the contract, just outsource the actual design and implementation to the lowest bidder, and keep the profits; which in this case $10 million minus $5-6 million in campaign contributions and lobbyists less $200,000 (let's be generous!) for the actual software development, leaves you a profit of $3.8 million to $4.8 million.
Of course, you may have to go overseas because, as every CIO says, there are no qualified American programmers and they have to go overseas for the talent! All those people that don't have jobs out in the market now aren't qualified - even though the companies that used to employ them found them to be qualified for years but had to let them go for cost cutting purposes. They're out of work so there must be something wrong with them!
But wait! There's more!
You won't book the $3.8 to $4.8 million! You'll have other expenses and things to pay, tax write-offs and whatnot that will leave you with a loss. Then of course, there's going to be tax credits that will enable you and your buddies to get more money out of the American Taxpayer.
That is how you make money with Government contracts.
Parent
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I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.
Well, the harm is already done
I'd really like to use an alternative, but have been unable to find anything that include both a programming API and a good animation tool. JavaFX seems close to this, having vector and bitmap manipulation in its API, but I haven't seen any good animation tool yet.
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And still the incompetence is staggering...
How very ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)
This stinks.
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That a website promoting our fiscal recovery cost so much. As an American citizen and a professional web developer, I'd like to understand how this amount can possibly be justified.
It's a commercial company hired by the government with, what seems, very little oversight - a recipe for disaster, as you have all the wonders of capitalist cost cutting, with no competition / market hand to keep that in check.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the site has to interface with older, obscure, and/or legacy databases in other government divisions in order to gather its data, then that will eat up a lot of time and money. I suspect that the front end was the cheapest part. It's the back end that probably had the I.T. guys pulling out their hair.
Report 'em! (Score:2, Insightful)
How to do 508 right - www.financialstability.gov (Score:2, Interesting)
Our company developer the Trouble Asset Relief Program's site, at http://www.financialstability.gov/
I am happy to report, MOSTLY compliant with Section 508.
And it has cool stuff, too.
Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
private website: recovery.com (Score:4, Informative)
Here's an interesting note on NPR relating to a private company that is aggregating the same data.
http://recovery.com/ [recovery.com]
"When Congress approved the stimulus bill, it made a point of setting up a Web site called Recovery.gov to allow citizens to track all those billions in spending. But if you've gone looking for it, you might have stumbled across another, very similarly named site, Recovery.com.
The dot-com version is not run by the government, but it also tracks the stimulus -- and much of its information is more up to date. In fact, it has spending information that the government won't have until October, and its data provide a sneak peak into how the stimulus spending is going.
The site is run by Onvia, a Seattle company that collects and sells data on government procurement. Whatever the layer of government -- whether state, county, school district or local water board -- Onvia wants to know what's being purchased."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112893572&ps=cprs [npr.org]
Re:private website: recovery.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Quick comparison:
Recovery.gov
Recovery.com
While showing the data in page format is definitely more accessible from the POV of a screen reader, the graphical map is more useful in terms of finding out how money is being spent around where I live.
The recovery.gov website is actually pretty good, in under a minute I was finding how funds were being allocated in my neighborhood.
Parent
Not a fan of this administration, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm actually glad for this website, as it just reaffirms my belief that this stimulus bill is a load of shit. Most of the recipients of grant money in my local area are accountants and attorneys, who are the ones driving around in Porches and Bimmers while not creating tons of jobs for local citizens. Hurray for progress.
It should have been simple (Score:3, Interesting)
If accessibility is a major concern, you have at least one blind person on your staff that must approve the layout. I worked with a blind DBA for a year and had the luxury of having him critique a website of mine for accessibility and implemented all his recommendations. The changes weren't all that difficult since I don't use evil crap like flash in the first place.
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact it is easier to make a site that blind people can use because the task mostly consists of leaving off superfluous crap.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I make my Geocities-esque personal site more accessible to the blind by substituting looping midi renditions of Spice Girls tunes for tiled animated gif backgrounds.
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an incredibly ignorant response. Why should blind people have to settle for shitty data from a shitty website for which they are paying tax dollars?
The web is primarily a textual medium. That you have a browser that uses the markup to create a visual display doesn't make people who either don't have or cannot use such a browser any less important.
It's not like it's very difficult to make web pages accessible. There are well-defined mechanisms to include attributes for common tags so that alternative browsers, such as screen readers, can present the information in a way that the user can understand and navigate.
As a matter of fact, many traffic signals do have audio indicating when it is safe for a blind pedestrian to cross.
Parent
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I'm trying to figure how one would present tables of data, in a manner that IS blind person accessible. It just doesn't sounds like it would be possible. Sure most of the web is/can be textual, but, how do you provide large amounts of data in a 508 compliant way? This isn't like putting out a paragraph th
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:4, Informative)
On a typical reader, a 508 compliant table would sound something like this, with pauses indicated by commas, and long pauses by semicolons:
Table, Contributions by State; ;
State, New York;
Dollars, 56 million;
Contributors, 120; ;
State, Vermont;
Dollars, 32 million;
Contributors, 140; ;
State, Texas;
(etc.)
Is it usable by a blind person? Yes. Someday, if your eyesight fails you, you may need to get tabular information in exactly this way.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
A conversion that worked well for me when implementing an interface to a game that had many tables:
Visual representation:
item price
car $25,000
bike $500
Audible representation:
item car price 25 thousand dollars
item bike price 5 hundred dollars
In the particular game, the audio representation was often more concise even on screen, as there were often empty or zero-value columns that could simply be skipped.
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. There is nothing inherently 'visual' about data. The function of the site is to make lists and numbers relevant to the operation of the government available to the public. All of the public. That task does not require the use of "Web 2.0" crap. If you think that the data can be better presented in the form of swarms of crawling colored beetles set up your own site, copy over the data (or just link to it) and have at it. It's all in the public domain.
Parent
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Informative)
Which part of Hypertext Transfer Protocol are you having trouble with? Just because you spend most of your time online watching youtube videos and browsing the latest AJAX powered dynamic rollercoaster does not mean that the rest of the web, and especially the parts where real work is done, are "inherently visual". Far from it.
I'd like to take you to task on this, but Steve Krug [webreference.com] has put this far more succinctly that I ever could. Read that link to become educated about
1) Why accessibility is important
2) Why most (able bodied) developers don't care about it, and
3) Why this problem persists (We haven't automated accessibility.)
The most important point Krug makes is the real reason you should care about and implement accessibility in your websites. "It's the right thing to do."
Parent
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Insightful)
> "It's the right thing to do."
If that is the best argument ya got it won't work in the real world. But there is a better one. A site designed to be accessable tends to be a good website, period.
Some of the reason is that accesssable sites must avoid the temptation to take the easy fix of throwing anything complicated into a flash applet or other inaccessable crap. But an equally important part is the opposite argument of one I make in another post about .aspx being the seal of crap. It isn't because the Microsoft stuff can't be made to work with enough effort, it is that only clueless people tend to pick it in the first place and clueless people will do other clueless things. Conversely, people cluefull enough to build a properly accessable site will also tend to make a generally well designed site. And host it on a better and less costly platform like a LAMP server.
Parent
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Insightful)
but, isn't it going a bit far on things that just are naturally aimed for normal people?
I happen to believe that this country's government should do everything possible to help those who want to contribute and be a part of society do so -- normality not withstanding. Most people don't make a choice to go deaf, blind, or become handicapped. It just happens (most of the time). I would feel a lot better going to bed each night if I knew that should such a calamity happen to me, my life wouldn't come to an end literally or figuratively. There's some things that are just humane to do. That's why the rules are there. No, they're not important for you but to someone else it might mean the world.
No, it's not going too far -- it's not going far enough. WHO estimated [afb.org] that in 2002 there were 161 million (about 2.6% of the world population) visually impaired people in the world, of whom 124 million (about 2%) had low vision and 37 million (about 0.6%) were blind. For comparative purposes, it's guessed [arstechnica.com] that Linux commands a 1.7% marketshare on the desktop. Which means, there's more people out there who are blind than use linux -- yet, were I to suggest that support for Linux not be included because it isn't something normal people use or care about, I'd be lynched.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though the web may primarily be a visual medium, it can be navigated without relying only on eyes. People with more severe visual impairments regularly surf the web with text-to-speech software assisting them. Poor design, such as misusing tables in place of [div], [span] and other proper formatting makes things tough, as does the practice
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Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:4, Informative)
I work for a nonprofit organization that receives grants from the federal government. Any web sites for the US-funded projects must be Section 508 compliant. That means:
It can be difficult.
Parent
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:4, Insightful)
So don't take any government money.
This is about a government web site specifically aimed at being accessible. So, no, the comments aren't going too far.
P.S.: It's not just a government web site, it's one that some people got paid a rather large amount to create, and expect to be paid another rather large lot to keep working.
My feeling is that the web site should be marked not satisfactory, and all payment withheld until they do it right.
Parent
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Do you are understand that web accessibility is really not hard?
Incorrect. The web is an information medium. As far as the computer goes, the display and keyboard are really kind of arbitrary, the compelling action takes place between those two!
So, do you think
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
God forbid that one of this days you have an accident and loose any of your senses, especially your sight. Only then you may appreciate why there's all this talk of putting beepers on pedestrian crossings, making websites accessible to screen readers, and hell, even putting car-tones on electric cars.
But what if he doesn't? (Score:2, Interesting)
What if, like the vast majority of people, he doesn't lose his sight or senses? If it is reasonable for people who are impared to wish the same impairment on others, is not reasonable to wish that impaired people did not exist?
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God forbid that one of this days you have an accident and loose any of your senses
I loose my senses every day. But I'm glad I never lose any of them.
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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I spent a lot of effort and time setting up my reporting sites with JS and tables instead of flash for just this reason. Flash doesn't belong everywhere - and not everyone wants it turned on.
There is really no excuse for using it just to display charts.
Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far? (Score:5, Informative)
Flash does have accessibility capabilities in its API, it's just that people don't use it.
Parent
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If you read the article you would see that they are complaining about the text tables the site provides not being marked up properly, not the use of flash.
Flash has accessibility mechanisms (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Okay (Score:4, Insightful)
No surprise at all. The right-wing anti-Obama crowd once again shows how petty they are... Poor accessibility on a web site? $10M for it? Well, here's an idea... we could give billions and billions to companies with strong ties to the Obama administration, and hide everything behind a vale of secrecy. It worked so well for the last administration.
I'm losing my central vision and ability to read, so accessibility is a hot-button topic for me. Gmail is terrible, and that effects me - Google should do something about it. Recovery.gov is far easier to navigate with a screen reader. The first item on their web site is a graphic which does nothing for the blind, but the first link [recovery.gov] under it is to a text version. It's not perfect, but at least average. Anyway, almost no sites pay attention to accessibility guidelines. It's up to programmers behind programs like JAWs to make them accessible anyway, and frankly, they do a pretty good job.
Recovery.org is a huge success. Even for the blind.
Parent
Re:Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
What's impressive to me is that we were even aware of the multi-million design bill.
Airing out your dirty garbage does stink up the place for awhile, but in the end it keeps things fresh.
Parent
Re:Okay (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this is something that should be brought up. It's great that Obama wants to modernize government IT use and communications, but this is different for the government than it is for the private sector. A company can decide they don't really need to go that extra mile to make their site perfect in terms of accessibility, they can be just barely on this side of the law and be fine. However, for the government, the site should be damn near perfect. It's the right of every citizen to be able to communicate effectively with their government. They serve all of us, so there isn't a "good enough" when it comes to access. Companies can choose customers, governments can't.
Parent
Re:Okay (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this really surprise anybody?
Actually yes, the level of "badness" is kind of staggering on this one. There are other "decent" federal and state websites (whitehouse.gov, ca.gov) so I expected that the code would be something that's at least comparable.
When I first read the article (shocking I know) I thought it was just someone trying to nitpick or that the editor is another Obama-troll, so midway through it I visited the site to view the source code myself and I almost threw up.
There are a bazillion (that's 2 LOC right?) JS and CSS includes, XML declaration tags in the middle of the page, tables for layout (top navigation), the works.
For fun, I disabled JavaScript and CSS, and the first few lines that someone without JS/CSS would see are truly amusing:
You are leaving the Recovery.gov Website
Click the link to access
exit
We hope your visit was informative and enjoyable.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
I'm actually surprised that the article left all these issues and picked tables and forms to discuss.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate
I don't know, but I am assuming they are avoiding 2 thru 55 HZ ,,, as to how it applies, I imagine it has to do with the frame rate of flash.