The Task You are tasked with developing an educational Web site that includes podcasts, video, and Flash presentations while complying with Section 508. (http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm). Think “details” because government funding of this Web site is at stake. What follows is a rough checklist of considerations when incorporating multimedia into your site. Challenges The biggest challenges in […]
Conducting an accessibility audit for a client
What follows is a rough outline for conducting an accessibility audit for a client. Strategy and scope Clarify the goals of the organization requesting the audit. Why are they doing the audit? What level of accessibility do they want to achieve? What level of accessibility is required for them to achieve if any? Do they […]
Clearing up alt text anxiety
Entering some text in the alt attribute (not alt tag, as it is commonly referred to) always made me feel a little better about the site I was building. There would always be, however, that apprehensive feeling of wondering just what I should be entering as alt text. That nagging feeling would intensify as I […]
Building in accessible navigation from the beginning
Academics mimic life: building site accessibility in the real world This is a good topic to be analyzing while on the cusp of building a new set of list-based horizontal and vertical navigation schemes. I made sure to do my research on accessibility before starting the nav menus that are on my deliverables list, and […]
Using Apple’s VoiceOver: CNN and ESPN quick and dirty accessibility eval
First, some really helpful resources for getting the finer points of Voice Over: (http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/downloads.html) (http://images.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/pdf/VoiceOver_Getting_Started_Leopard_10.5a.pdf) There’s a lot more to VoiceOver than I thought. It seems to be quite controllable, but there are many, many keyboard shortcuts to learn. I downloaded an eval document that helped me narrow down the keystrokes for the following tasks. […]
Some enlightening Web accessibility survey results
Thinking about Web accessibility, even as briefly as I have been, opens up a large chapter in my understanding of Web technology and how well or not well it is working for all of us. While many of us comment on what information overload is doing to our lives, there are many people for whom […]
Web Accessibility
Issues of Web accessibility don’t just affect people who have vision challenges. And since time-based content such as video and audio is common on the Web, there are now temporal pitfalls that affect a broader audience including the hearing impaired as well as the vision impaired. Common accessibility challenges include: Motor ability challenges from spinal […]