Comments on: Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility

By: Simon Sturn

Simon Sturn — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:34:16 +0000

I think that usability is most important thing, and you are right, even the punctuation is absolutely correct it still can confuse some readers. The usage of speech avatars is good decision of the problem. But I don’t like the sites which sounds is on when load. It’s very irritating.

By: [no name provided]

[no name provided] — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:02:45 +0000

There are many ways to write a good statement in order to make it clear and understanding. Use more action words that make your writing more interesting.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:17:25 +0000

Yes, the top-down content authoring model can work when applied at every level of granularity: a general introduction to start off the document, a leading sentence which clearly defines the problem in each section of the document, etc.

Organizing your document in such a manner that it’s crystal clear at any point what subject matter is being addressed is certainly important!

By: Andrea Hill

Andrea Hill — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:59:27 +0000

Great article, Joe. I think this is an area most people ignore when it comes to accessibility: the actual content.

When I worked at LexisNexis, we really endeavoured to introduce accessibility best practices through the entire design/development process, and thankfully the content was accounted for as well. One major change we had was the order of the most relevant bits of information. If you are listening to an entire list of elements, you want to hear the most salient information first, so you can skip to the next element if it’s not what you are looking for.

By: zohai

zohai — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:47:43 +0000

CAPTCHA is needed to remove all those pesky spams =/ I even had to remove comments altogether at one point due to the amount of spams I have.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:12:50 +0000

Using any CAPTCHA is such a challenge — - I definitely like your page of them! I really only resorted to this one out of desperation due to comment spam. It’s frustrating; but I finally just had to do it.

Thanks for those articles. I’m looking forward to reading them (and then returning to this conversation, as well!)

By: tedd

tedd — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:52:08 +0000

The analogy I used simply exhibited a change in behavior based upon the limitations of the medium. For example, I should write less complex because most screen readers have problems with complexity. Similarly IE exhibits the most problems with standards, so I should use that as my browser. In both cases, if the user makes a decision not to dumb-down to the limitations, but rather use their own judgement, then they promote change for the greater good. That was my point. But granted, I probably could have made my point better by using a different analogy.

As to the Alzheimer’s evidence — the original study was done by a nun and published in Time May 14, 2001.

Here’s one article:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999867-1,00.html

And here’s some follow up.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22361498/

I am positive there are more. The article I originally read in 2001 was different than above. How’s that for memory?

Cheers,

tedd

PS: I like your CAPTCHA — here’s a few of my own: http://webbytedd.com/aa/assorted-CAPTCHA/

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:50:11 +0000

I don’t want to tell anybody how to write — - but I do want to point out the consequences of that writing style.

And please, do make a point of distinguishing between “complex sentences” and “overly complex sentences.” If you write well, than this may not be an issue — - but there are a lot of people contributing web content who don’t!

Telling me to change the way I write because of limitations in JAWS is like telling me to use IE because more people use it. If we were all to do that, then M$ would not change their ways nor would we have better browsers like Safari and FireFox.

I don’t think that’s a valid analogy — - first, because I’m not describing limitations in JAWS: I’m describing limitations in screen readers. No screen reader fully effects pronunciation of sentence emphasis or punctuation. Second, because those aren’t correlative: the first part is changing a second party’s user agent, the second is changing your own.

Besides, there’s evidence that suggest people who write shorter sentences have a higher chance of developing Alzheimer’s than people who write more complex sentences — interesting huh?

Can you provide a citation for that? I’d be interested in reading about it!

Thanks for your comments!

By: tedd

tedd — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:01:21 +0000

I understand your point, but I write to express ideas.

Telling me to change the way I write because of limitations in JAWS is like telling me to use IE because more people use it. If we were all to do that, then M$ would not change their ways nor would we have better browsers like Safari and FireFox.

If there is a problem with JAWS, then competition should change that.

Besides, there’s evidence that suggest people who write shorter sentences have a higher chance of developing Alzheimer’s than people who write more complex sentences — interesting huh?

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:50:17 +0000

I think that there are many ways of making a sentence more understandable — - parentheses are one of them. And I don’t think there’s any problem with using them, even for screenreaders — - it’s using frequent or nested parenthetical statements which I think is troubling.

Usually, any long or complex sentence can easily be broken up into multiple sentences which may convey the same idea even better.

It’s not a complaint about “using punctuation” — - it’s about using punctuation instead of rephrasing a statement in more effective and simpler language.

And I’m not even trying to address potential issues involving cognitive disabilities, which are certainly also relevant in this case.