Web Axe - Practical Web Design Accessibility Tips

Writing for Accessibility Article

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

In his article Writing for Accessibility, Joe Dolson explains that accessible copy is more than making non-textual elements available, it's also about the main content! He continues to explain how tone and puncuation are very sensitive and important issues when writing for accessibility. Joe suggests:

Keep your sentences on the short side
Avoid excessive parenthetical statements
Avoid excessive subclauses
Read the sentence without giving any particular emphasis to the terms and see how easy it is to understand the statement

WCAG 2.0 published as Candidate Recommendation

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Today the WCAG 2.0 has been advanced to Candidate Recommendation status. This is a big step in the long W3C guideline development process. What this means is that most people agree on the technical aspects of the much needed update to WCAG 1.0, and we can start using WCAG 2.0 as a guideline as it's "Ready to Test-Drive".

In the words of WCAG:

We are excited to announce that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
(WCAG 2.0) was published as a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 30 April 2008. The Candidate Recommendation stage means that there is broad consensus on the technical content, and W3C invites you to implement WCAG 2.

Labels: guidelines, wcag

Section 508 and Higher Education

Monday, April 28, 2008

In his article 508 and Higher Ed., Jon Whiting at WebAIM has blogged about his findings on college web sites meeting (or not meeting) Section 508 requirements. It's pretty sad how even college web sites, in the most part, do not meet even the most basic web accessibility requirements of Section 508. Jon states:

only three of the one-hundred pages complied with Section 508

Labels: law, webaim

Podcast #63: Reviewing Accessible Ajax Recommendations

Thursday, April 17, 2008

In Webcredible's article AJAX accessibility for websites, a list of recommendations is presented for creating accessible Ajax web pages. In this podcast, Dennis and Ross discuss the accessibility issues and benefits of Ajax, and the recommendations from Webcredible which are:

Inform users early in the page that dynamic updates will occur
Highlight the areas that have been updated
Don't change the focus
Offer the option to disable automatic updates
Ensure the site works if JavaScript isn't enabled

Download Web Axe Episode 63 (Reviewing Accessible Ajax Recommendations)

News & Events

Refresh Detroit meeting April 23 (demo night)
Accessible Online Learning
Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards
Guide to semantic use of HTML elements / Why use semantic XHTML
Everything I know about accessibility I learned from Star Wars (MP3) (Derek Featherstone at SXSW)

Labels: ajax, podcast

Why Captioning Sucks

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

As you may know, captioning is required for accessible audio/video presentations. The Open & Closed Project (from Joe Clark) explains the downfalls of captioning on the new web site Captioning Sucks! Reasons cited are as follows (and you'll have to go to the site to fully understand!):

Not enough of it
They don't listen
It's hard to read
The wrong kind
The fox is watching the hen house
There are no standards

Labels: audio, caption

Cognitive Accessibility Survey

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Cognitive disabilities are the least recognized in the world of web accessibility (as opposed to visual, auditory, and motor). The goal of WebAIM's Steppingstones Project is to "help web developers consider issues of cognitive disability in their designs". To assist in this process, WebAIM is inviting people to complete its Cognitive Disability and Web Accessibility Survey. It takes about 10 minutes.

Labels: cognitive, webaim