Recently in Accessibility Category

Article by Joe Clark at A List Apart about video captioning:

"I’ve been telling people for years that closed captioning, as a general approach, just is not going to work for online video ... What’s the alternative? Open captioning, i.e., captioning everyone sees."

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thisishowthewebgetsregulated

From Digital-Web-Magazine:

"With 75%1 of the US population and 65%2 of the UK population having internet access at home, it is imperative that websites are designed to be both accessible and usable. The WCAG Guidelines, introduced in 1999, go some way to helping web developers create accessible websites—but …we must look further than the guidelines if we are to create websites which are accessible to users with disabilities and the assistive technologies they rely on."

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/understanding_disabilities_when_designing_a_website/

10 free tools to help you evaluate and correct issues which decrease your website’s accessibility.

http://sixrevisions.com/web-standards/accessibility_testtools/

Some commentary at 456bereastreet.com:

"he judge in the case has now given the lawsuit class-action status, which, if I understand it correctly, means that any blind person in the USA who has unsuccessfully tried to use target.com can become a plaintiff in the suit against Target. Good news I think. If a business can’t be bothered to make their website accessible, especially after repeatedly being made aware of the problems and given plenty of time to make adjustments, it should cost them. A lot."

Read more about the Target lawsuit »

Test your site for color blind users

Here are some online color blind analysers and contrast evaluation sites:

Is your website colorblind friendly?
http://www.allwebdesignresources.com/

Colorblind Webpage Filter
http://colorfilter.wickline.org/

Color deficit emulation
http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

Colour Contrast Analyser
http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp

How do disabled people use the Web?

Here are some articles related to how people with disabilities use computers and the Web.

W3C - How People with Disabilities Use the Web?
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/20010104

How do disabled people use computers?
http://www.joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter03.html

Disability and the Web
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_6_20051905120529_10

Browse tips by physical disability
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/by_disability.html

How People with Disabilities Use The Web
http://www.blackwidows.org.uk/resources/access/web-usage.html#colour-blind

A Guide to Making Documents Accessible to People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired
http://www.acb.org/accessible-formats.html

An excellent and concise list of Web resrouce links. Inlcudes tools for validating, accessibility, SEO and more...

Go to UITest.com:
http://uitest.com/en/analysis/

Building Accessible Websites

Joe Clark offers his excellent book on Web accessibility online for FREE!

A great primer/overview of accessibility as it applies to Web sites.

Get your free reading here:
http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/

Firefox Web Developers Toolbar

The Firefox Web Developer Toolbar is a must-have extension for anyone building Web sites. Chris Pederick has it available for download on his site:

http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

Download and install it today. You will be glad you did. I use it all the time...