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Browsers

Somebody Else's Problem

Browsers are sort of the red-headed stepchild of Web accessibility. Most webdesigners are not browser designers (in fact we often wish curses upon browser designers) and tend to consider browser accessibility to be Somebody Else's Problem. Browser standards are governed by UAAG (pronounced "you-egg"), which are also often deemed to be Somebody Else's Problem.

However, this notion of Somebody Else's Problem is not entirely justified, even for the average web developer or website owner. It's the chicken-and-the-egg question: Who should go first in implementing stricter standards? Is it the web designers who need to take a leap and make conscientious and judicious use of all available tags, attributes, and other accessibility tools, even though they may not be consistently supported by the browsers? Or are the browsers to blame for failing to enforce and adhere to standards in the way they parse markup, thereby often forcing the webdesigners into desperate attempts to get their websites to render cross-browser "by any means necessary"?

Examples of this problem abound.

  • Internet Explorer often renders CSS slightly differently than Firefox does. This makes proper styling a frustrating proposition sometimes, and in difficult situations website builders often fall back on bad practices like tabled layouts because they are more reliable in how they render in various browsers.
  • Internet Explorer displays the "alt" attribute as a tooltip when the cursor is hovered over an image. This is a standards violation which leads many a well-intentioned novice webdesigner to hide easter eggs of content in the alt attribute, thereby defeating its usefulness and making it more of a hindrance than a help
  • Internet Explorer fails to acknowledge the abbreviation tag, instead recognizing only the acronym tag. This is especially problematic considering that not all abbreviations are acronyms.

This could go on and on, and my bias as a webdesigner is probably apparent by this point. For further reading from sources more qualified than I, check out the Overdoing Accessibility comments and this alt text article.