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Accessibility - a new way of thinking



Implementing accessibility features on your site is really just a different way of thinking. I will provide links below to tools mentioned and other useful references.

I have done a lot of research over the last couple of years regarding accessibility and getting a grasp on it all was confusing at times. I don't have any physical, visual or any other kind of impairment so I have to rely on the standards that are laid out by the experts.

I was always put off because it seemed like a battle that couldn't be won. I tried and failed many times trying to have it all in a real world situation (e.g. this site) but by breaking it down into problem areas I was able to show that it is achievable (almost).
This page validates (with bobby) to

  • US Gov Section 508 Guidelines
  • WAI Content Accessibility Guidelines 1999/05/05, Support Level: A
and almost :)
  • WAI Content Accessibility Guidelines 1999/05/05, Support Level: AA - fails on 1 point :( fixable but the reasons are mentioned elsewhere in this section.
  • WAI Content Accessibility Guidelines 1999/05/05, Support Level: AAA - no errors on level 3 but as it does not pass level 2 I can't claim a success :(

Take a look at the links page to see more about my level AA problems

So at least you know you can still achieve results without compromising you current site too much.

I now look at web accessibility very differently. It's not just catering for blind people or people who have limited mobility, accessibility benefits everyone. Websites that follow accessibility guidelines (even in just a small way) are improving overall usability of their site for everyone. Personally I think it should be called something else (suggestions on a postcard:)

Now, if like myself, your budget limited then you'll want to get the following as a minimum for testing your site. They are free so there's no excuse :)

First you will need :
Lynx- a text only browser - no point and click, see how hard it can be to navigate through your site without a mouse.
You might also want to get
simply web 2000 - a free speech browser. It uses IE4+ as its main engine but the main idea is to load your site, turn off your monitor and try to navigate your site and see if it makes sense.

When I first tried this site on Lynx the first thing I noticed was all the navigation links looked pretty similar as it was just a big list of links. Another thing I noticed was, where there were images used as links, the alt text was used as the anchor text. No alt text = no link.

On simply web 2000 I almost despaired as it read out every link on the left before getting to the content. After 2 pages I'd had enough and decided to set to work.

Over the next few pages I will guide you through some of the problems and the solutions.

If all this sounds negative and not worth the effort then let me tell you about some of the positive aspects of making your site accessible.

Firstly, most of the changes are hidden (this site looks identical to what it was before accessibility features were added). As I had previously moved from using tables to using css for layout I was able to concentrate on access issues (I tried with tables but I didn't like the tooltip appearing when accessibility tags where added).

Secondly, as you are adding alt and title tag text and extra labels to forms you increase your keyword count, which will help with search engine ranking. If you remove tables, search engine robots have less bloat to wade through to try and get the content.

Thirdly, you reduce the risk of your content not being viewable by anyone using something other than the top browsers.


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20-Jan-2003




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