Discuss: What Is Web Accessibility?
by Trenton Moss
- Editorial Comments
12 http://www.w3.org/WAI/
WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative), in coordination with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.
[em][b][url=“http://services.eliteral.com/“title=“SEO India” ]SEO India[/url][/b][/em]
posted at 09:53 pm on May 2, 2004 by SEO India
13 Very informative.
I have been involved with issues doncerning web site accessibility, and I find this article very informative.
Even tough there is some issues with client side scripting, it is still very useful for most visitors. As long as the content is available for all it is nice to use javascript for cosmetic effects.
posted at 11:13 pm on May 2, 2004 by Sorvoja
14 Temporarily disabled
Recently I found myself in a situation were I felt temporarily disabled. The simple task of writing and sending an e-mail took me 10 minutes.
I was in an airport, having to communicate fast to warn of a delay, hooked in a pay-internet kiosk, found myself with a slightly different keyboard, no mouse to speak of, and a very weird pointing device. With a 10mn connection ticking away.
Trying to use that kind of device is very enlightening.
posted at 01:36 am on May 3, 2004 by Sophie G
15 Thanks for succinct overview
An excellent overview of an area which indeed is not rocket science. Accessibility is really quite easy to realise as long as you do not cling on to old ways of doing things (lots of fancy and usually meaningless eye candy, JavaScript used for things HTML and CSS can do).
Thanks Trenton for a fine summary and a list of excellent links.
posted at 02:04 am on May 3, 2004 by Paul Buller
16 Dyslexia - ignored so often
This article does not mention Dyslexia and other related disabilities even though they are far more prevalent than blindness etc. The Uks DDA and SENDA laws cover these whereas W3C/WAI does not. Anyone limiting themselves to just catering for the obvious physical disabilities will find that they could still fall foul of the law.
Since cases are being settled out of court, ‘case law’ is not yet confirming any specific rules or guidelines but it will not be too long before it does.
I would recommend any site offering a service to make use of a style-switcher to provide appropriate fonts, colours and background that improve readability.
A sans font with a rounded ‘a’ not horned is required, like comic-sans, with a slightly yellow or cream background would be one option. I know comic-sans is not a favourite of web designers but it is the customers that count.
posted at 10:33 am on May 3, 2004 by Dave Brinkman
17 Re:Dyslexia
Personally, I think using a style-switcher is a waste of time – your site visitors will all have their own unique needs and it’s impossible to please them all. If people find websites hard to read then they can use their own stylesheet. After all, the main reason for using stylesheets is so that users can adjust the font/colour/size according to thier own needs.
So if you’re a dyslexic web user you can set your stylesheet to always render text as Comic Sans. This will work for all websites that use stylesheets to generate the font.
You seem quite knowledgable about web accessibility and dyslexia, Dave. Is there anything else you’d recommend doing to cater for this group of people?
posted at 01:49 pm on May 3, 2004 by Trenton Moss
18 Similar Resources
Another great read not yet mentioned with a great intro to accessibility is on the WebAIM site: http://www.webaim.org/intro/
At the bottom of that page are links to 4 categories of disabilities (Visual, Cognitive, Hearing and Physical) and the implications of each category on design.
Taking the time to understand things from the perspectives offered in this article can provide extra incentive to a designer to take the time and effort to design accessible sites when other benefits may seem lacking.
posted at 03:03 pm on May 3, 2004 by Christopher Phillips
20 Oh Canada
It’s good to see Accessibility and articles related on accessibility come to the attention of others.
Speaking for myself, you’d be surprised how many companies in here in Canada are either not aware or cannot be bothered to look into such issues. I had a chance to talk to a certain Tourism office run by a certain Provincial Government about what they could do to enhance their existing site. I showed them the facts of their existing site with all of it’s nested tables, non-validating, non-accessible markup and mocked up a home page for them in XHTML, CSS and meeting WAI-AA that looked almost the same as their existing home page.
Needless to say, they thought I was very enthusiastic and all that jazz. They said to me ‘Well, it doesn’t really meet the qualifications of our focus right now. But thanks for the information….etc.’
Perhaps if some major companies here tried to make accessibility more into their focus here in Canada, it would be better off all around and more importantly, show an example to the rest of the businesses as well.
It will be interesting to see the scrambling that happens if Canada imposes something similar to Section 508….but who know when that’ll happen. Probably in another 5 years, or so.
posted at 10:01 pm on May 3, 2004 by Marco
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11 Thanks
Great overview. Many of those links will or have proved useful. It is good to get the information in one spot.
posted at 09:20 pm on May 2, 2004 by Ryan