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

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

10 Reasons Why It Is Difficult for Person with Dyslexia to Spell Correctly

by: Ghotit
Posted June 21, 2011

It is difficult for a person with dyslexia to break words into phonemes/discrete sounds. 10 Reasons Why It Is Difficult for Person with Dyslexia to Spell Correctly- Full Article

Barriers to Improving the Accessibility Game Plan

By karlgroves
On June 16, 2011

This past March, Jared Smith moderated a session at CSUN titled ” Do We Need To Change the Web Accessibility Game Plan”.

The discussion at and after the session was filled with interesting perspectives. The diversity of viewpoints demonstrates what a complex topic this really is. I’d like to take my stab at addressing this topic, inspired by this blog post by Vlad Alexander
which kicked off the original conversation:

Barriers to Improving the Accessibility Game Plan- Full Article

Applying Web Usability Criteria for Vision-Impaired Users: Does It Really Improve Task Performance?

Available accessibility guidelines do not necessarily guarantee usable Web sites, particularly when specific groups of users with special needs are considered.

Applying Web Usability Criteria for Vision-Impaired Users: Does It Really Improve Task Performance?- Full Article

What are “PDF Tags” and Why Should I Care?

by Duff Johnson

A PDF file equipped with quality-controlled tags may be read effectively using a screen-reader or other assistive technology that reads PDF tags. If the
PDF file is also optimized for reflowing of content, it will read well using assistive technologies that do not use PDF tags, as well as on mobile devices.
If accessibility is important (or mandatory), or if you want your files to work well on mobile devices, then you need to learn to tag your PDFs.

What Frustrates Screen Reader Users on the Web: A Study of 100 Blind Users

In previous research, the computer frustrations of student and workplace users have been documented. However, the challenges faced by blind users on the Web have not been previously examined.

What Frustrates Screen Reader Users on the Web: A Study of 100 Blind Users- Full Article

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