Is Your Website Accessible?

"Accessible" means usable to a wide range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning difficulties, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech difficulties, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also make your Web content more accessible to the vast majority of users, including older users. It will also enable people to access Web content using many different devices - including a wide variety of assistive technologies."

Recommended Reading

Writing Good Link Text

Originally written 28th November 2011 by Léonie Watson

Links are like sign posts. They should tell you what you’ll find when you follow them. Writing good link text isn’t difficult, but there are a few things to be aware of when you do.

Writing Good Link Text- Full Article

Thoughts on a Society of Accessibility Professionals

Léonie Watson writes from her perspective as director of accessibility at Nomensa (a UK-based Web design and development

firm)
April 2012

Léonie Watson

There is a strong esprit de corps amongst the people who work in accessibility. It’s founded on the belief that the digital

world should be more inclusive, and it’s tempered by the shared experiences of championing that belief.

Thoughts on a Society of Accessibility Professionals- Full Article

Screen Reader User Survey

The following survey is a follow-up to the original WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey, and follow-up surveys in September 2009 and December 2010. This survey is primarily intended to collect new information and track updates/trends from previous surveys. By completing this survey you will help inform development choices for those creating accessible web content and web standards. All screen reader users, even those who use screen readers only for evaluation and testing, are invited to participate.

The survey will remain open through May 25, 2012.

Web Accessibility Myths – A Call for Accessibility Advocates to be More Business-Minded

By Professor Jonathan Hassell

As nothing stays still on the web, and many of these blogs are rather old (other than Ian Pouncey’s great blog earlier this year), it’s important that our understanding of accessibility myths moves on too…

Web Accessibility Myths – A Call for Accessibility Advocates to be More Business-Minded- Full Article

Can Assistive Technology Make a Website Accessible?

By karlgroves On April 19, 2012

What is Assistive Technology?

Having a product that doesn’t do much is one thing. Claiming that it can do things that it can’t is something different altogether. These things are like the penis enlargement pills of accessibility. Some customers are so desperate and ignorant that they are almost eager to be duped.

Can Assistive Technology Make a Website Accessible?- Full Article

Text-only is not accessible

By karlgroves On December 28, 2011

Not long ago I participated in a discussion on a W3C mailing list where a participant on the list contended that a site is not accessible because it did not work right in Lynx. Lynx, for those who don’t know, is a text-based web browser – in other words, it offers no support for graphics, video, or JavaScript. There was a time, years ago, when a site working in Lynx was the litmus test for accessibility. If it worked in Lynx, the argument went, it would work in assistive technologies like screen readers. That was before the proliferation of Accessibility APIs, before screen readers used Document Object Model rendering, and before ARIA. These days, people who still view “working in Lynx” as a viable measure of a site’s accessibility are demonstrating their ignorance of assistive technologies, ignorance of the realities of modern web sites and applications and, frankly, ignorance of accessibility. Further, it is indicative of the myopic view that permeates the topic of accessibility that assumes the only people to be concerned about in discussions of web accessibility are blind people.

Myths About Low Vision

By Wayne Dick
July 5, 2011

Most people lump blindness and visual impairment into one group. This is a mistake that does serious harm to many people who have low vision but are not blind. Well meaning people cite accommodations for people who are blind as examples of things that work for all people who are blind or visually impaired. Even experts do this too. This includes many advocacy groups, national, regional and local governments, institutions and even the W3C WCAG Working Group.

Myths About Low Vision- Full Article

The Many Facets of Content Management Systems

ByRosemary Musachio
June 15th, 2011

Overview

Content Management Systems (“CMS”) have become one of the most popular internet-based technologies. They are a collaborative method of composing, editing, publishing, sharing and storing documentation. Documentation can be anything from word publishing and data files to web pages and multimedia presentations. Entire applications can be stored on, and executed from, a CMS.
The Many Facets of Content Management Systems- Full Article

Top 5 Web Accessibility Pitfalls

Followers of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) working group and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Interest Group would have seen a number of emails recently on software packages that claim to be all-in-one web accessibility solutions.

While last month’s column highlighted some useful tools, there is no single tool that can provide a definitive evaluation of a website’s accessibility or make a website accessible.

The challenge is finding out which products are of genuine benefit to avoid investing time and money in a solution that does not meet the full requirements for WCAG 2.0 compliance.

Top 5 Web Accessibility Pitfalls- Full Article

Complying with the Integrated Accessibility Standards (IAS): Captioning and Describing Web Videos

By Geof Collis

Now that the Integrated Accessibility Standards (IAS) are Law it is time to start implementing an often overlooked aspect of Web Accessibility, Captioning and Describing Web Video.

The good folks at Inclusive Media & Design, Inc. have compiled some Tips for you to consider and also have the solution for implementation.
Complying with the Integrated Accessibility Standards (IAS): Captioning and Describing Web Videos- Full Article

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