Progressive enhancement
29/08/2007 | Filed under Discover
Degrading gracefully isn’t entirely the domain of ageing film stars. It also happens to be an accessible solution to separating content from style in modern web development, says Adam Bankin
Being a Fortune Cookie designer, accessibility is a big part of my world. One of our team is Julie Howell, a well-known name in the world of accessibility. So when a new technique comes along that supports accessibility, our team takes a lot of notice.
“Progressive enhancement” (PE) enables developers to create enhanced interfaces that degrade gracefully without compromising accessibility or usability. According to Wikipedia, the phrase was first coined back in 2003 at the SXSW developers’ conference in Texas. However, I first heard about PE in the summer of 2006. At the time, I was looking for a solution to dealing with browser bugs and I wanted to get my content across to the user without being hampered by technology.
PE is all about presentation. It’s about separating content from style. Developers use PE to “gracefully degrade” web pages. So whatever browser the user has, however their browser is configured and whatever plug-ins the user has, content is successfully displayed every time. It’s a good approach for getting around browser bugs, too.
PE means the designer no longer need be concerned about the technology at the user end. PE detects the combination of technology that the user has installed, and delivers the site content however the user can see it. In other words, every user gets the best possible, richest experience dependent on the technology that they’ve chosen to install. Before PE, web users were subject to quite a lot of negative backchat from their browser. For example, if a user visited a website that required the Flash plug-in and the user didn’t have it, a message would tell them that they would have to download the plug-in or use another website. For commercial sites, this was a disaster, and accounts in part for the reputation that Flash had for being “evil”.
Flash accessibility
Flash has been a much maligned and misunderstood technology. Yet, in the right hands and implemented in the right way, it’s the perfect tool for delivering engaging user experiences. It’s also really important to understand that Flash is not inherently inaccessible. Adobe (and Macromedia before it) has done a great deal to enhance the accessibility of Flash (www. adobe.com/accessibility). The main problem with Flash today is poor PR. Few developers seem to know how to write accessible Flash experiences, and few disabled users (particularly blind people, who suffer the most when Flash is bad) know that Flash is now a lot more accessible than it used to be. While we wait for Adobe to ramp up its PR effort around Flash accessibility, PE is helping a lot.
You can see PE in action on many of the sites that Fortune Cookie has designed. Legal & General (www.legalandgeneral.com) commissioned us to do a total redesign of its customer-facing site to make it fully accessible to disabled people. Naturally, the client wanted us to improve the usability of the site for everyone. PE was the natural approach. SIFR (Scaleable Inman Flash Replacement www.mikeindustries.com/sifr) enabled us to use the Legal & General brand font in headings. We used SWFObject to style the site headings the way the client wanted them without sacrificing accessibility. The site won two industry awards for navigation and usability.
PE enabled us to meet the design brief while ticking all the boxes for accessibility and usability. It can also be used to handle simple updates that might otherwise cause usability problems. For example, drop-down menus typically utilise JavaScript to show and hide section links. So, is PE an accessibility panacea? That remains to be seen. Extensive user-testing with disabled people and the various technologies they use may yet uncover issues to be addressed. However, PE is a way of developing, rather than a set of rules, which must mean that any accessibility issues could be solved.
As a designer, I care passionately about the people who use my designs. But for a long time, I’ve felt restricted because accessibility has lagged behind the latest design innovations. If PE continues to deliver on its promise, we may reach a point when cutting-edge design and accessibility coexist. When you start designing with PE, you’ll never return to how you designed before. Put simply, PE frees the designer to be creative.
At Fortune Cookie, Adam has worked on design and interface development for Kuoni, Financial Times, Passenger Focus, National Express and Legal & General. www.fortunecookie.co.uk
Comments
Dennis / 05/09/2007 / 19:58 / http://checkengineusa.com
Andrew Kirkpatrick at Adobe has been doing a good job in creating more awareness of the accessibility capabilities of Flash, including webinars. Here's a great resource: http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/ Here's an interview of Andrew Kirkpatrick: http://webaxe.blogspot.com/2007/07/podcast-53-interview-with-andrew.html
Julie Howell / 14/09/2007 / 14:29 / http://www.fortunecookie.co.uk
Indeed he is. We're looking forward to Andrew's trip to the UK in October where he'll be speaking at RNIB's Techshare conference http://www.techshare.org.uk
mrs muir / 15/09/2007 / 09:10
but look at his eyes...
