Subtitles and accessibility
I was watching the news on tv earlier with the subtitles on. It made me realise just how bad tv is at being accessible. The story on the news was reporting on the storms last night throughout Britain and Ireland. To do this they had a map and were displaying small graphics to represent the type of weather which most caused disruption for each area. Along with the graphics they also had short segemtns of text with extra facts about the weather. Annoyingly this text was at the bottom of the screen where most televisions put the subtitles. A little bit of thought would have made the world of difference.
It’s not all doom and gloom. I have noticed that many documentaries put various pieces of text, typically people’s name when they’re talking on screen, above any subtitles. Or the subtitles are moved further up the screen for a brief period. Someone has obviously been thinging and has done the right thing.
The subtitles issue could be seen as an annoying little niggle, but nothing to worry about. I prefer to view it as an indication that if even simple things aren’t being done to cater for all viewers, then little effort will be put into doing the more complicated ones.
All of this has reinforced my view, which I’ve come to disgracefully recently, that accessibility is one of the most important things in developing a website. It has also made me decide to hold back on releasing the redesign of this site for a few days at least. I’ve checked through Dive Into Accessibility again, and realised that implementing most of the recommendations isn’t good enough. I have to implement all of them, if they apply in even the slightest way.