Accessibility

Chris_Evans

Hi there,
I'm interested to know a little about accessibility of pages (i.e. what is required). With all my sites I try to do the following:

Add alt tag to images
Use CSS-P (instead of tables - I'm beginning to convert my sites over to this as I used to use tables)

...can't think of anything else. What I'm really looking for is an understanding as to what I need to do in order to comply with the law (apparently it is the law to make a web page accessible - common sense I suppose as well).

Thanks,

Chris

pyro

You can find some good information on this (including an easy to follow checklist) at http://www.w3.org/WAI/. You might also want to check out Joe Clark's book "Building Accessible Websites". I've not read the latter yet, but have it sitting on my desk in my "to-read" pile. 😉

Chris_Evans

Hi there,
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I've already looked there but it appears to me as more of a legal document than an initiative! 😛 Is there anywhere else that is simpler?

Thanks,

Chris

pyro

Yes, the WCAG 1.0 is a bit of a dry read, but worth it. If you not up to that, check out some of these sites:

http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org/
http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/accessibility/
http://www.accessify.com/
http://section508.gov/ (another rather dry read)

Chris_Evans

Great! Thanks for that Pyro. Really appreciate it! 🙂 I've tried to get most of my sites (although my latest isn't quite so successful) to work with all browsers, then I figured: ooh accessibility!

Once again, thanks! 🙂

drawmack

actualy there are no laws about making web pages accessible, you can make them as inacessible as you'd like. However if people can't see your web page then, well people can't see your web page.

pyro

Actually, I believe the UK does have accessibility laws regarding web pages, but since I do not live in the UK, I'm not positive. You might also be interested in Maguire vs. SOCOG (Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games), in which the SOCOG was successfully sued for having an inaccessible web site. See http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html for more information on the case.

drawmack

yeah, I was thinking accessibility by means of viewable in different browsers. I wasn't thinking accessible by those with disabilities. However as long as you make your text, text and use descriptive alt tags on the images then you're safe against this type of ruling.

Elizabeth

Actually, in the US anyway, those standards only apply to Federal web sites, not those in the private sector (at least for now).

http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=11

Chris_Evans

Ah ok. Well it looked correct anyway.

Thanks! 🙂