I’m as accessibility-conscious as the next web geek… well, to be honest sometimes a little more (read professional work), and other times a lot less (read personal work). What I have found, however, is that since I’ve started paying attention, Ive stumbled across several high profile examples where accessibility seems not to have been considered. And I blame, my keyboard.
You see, since I started learning (or at least attempting to learn) how to use VIM, Ive become sooo conscious about using my keyboard to do things (generaly associated with the point and click analogy), that it’s hard NOT to find a situation where I say to myself… “the trouble with this site, is that if I navigate it with my keyboard, it completely sucks!”
Google Reader takes up that challenge, and offers VIM-esque keyboard accessibility, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that (in the short term at least), attempting to get Nike to make their glamorous Flash animations accessible with a keyboard is like shouting at a lawn and saying “mow yourself!”
What the lawn needs, of course, is a lawn mower… and more importantly someone that is willing to push it. But it raises the issue, does the lawn actually need to be mowed? Is this another of those validation for validation’s sake arguments?
Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween… and there in lies the rub.
UPDATE: Toby has passed on a link to an awesome tutorial on how to be a power user in Google Reader. For those who love their keyboard, this is a must!