One common suggestion concerning the search optimization of images is to use the alt attribute to place keywords relevant to the image contents.

I really loathe this.

If it was an amazing, perfect, incredible search optimization technique which would bring absolutely fantastic traffic I still wouldn’t recommend the technique. Appropriate alt attributes are one of the most critical areas for the user experience of screen reader users — using them inappropriately is a great way to give this section of your market a horrible experience on your site.

Read more: Search Optimization, Accessibility, and Images: Best Practices

Congratulations to Dennis and Ross on two years podcasting on web accessibility!

Recently, I wrote a series of posts about what I choose to call pseudo-accessibility — part of which is the provision of website tools which emulate native browser functionality.

The reason these tools proliferate is because of developer laziness, not because of developer interest in accessibility. For some strange reason, it’s considered more difficult to educate the user about their browser than it is to build a text-resizing widget. (Granted, text-resizing widgets aren’t exactly rocket science.)

Ian Lloyd, of Accessify, has taken to video trying to address the text-resizing problem. You can see the video at his own relevant blog post — Teach a man to fish (or how to resize text).

The video isn’t necessarily a finished product. As of this writing, it’s in it’s second version , as Ian has been graciously accepting comments and re-working the video in order to provide the best video tutorial possible on the subject.

Video, of course, isn’t a perfect solution — but the transcript is available (not on Accessify.com yet, however,) and this is a good start towards user (and developer) education.

Thanks, Ian!

Thanks to Accessites and Mike Cherim for bringing this to my attention.

Following up on tables and CSS, the grid model of layout execution is part of the CSS level 3 working draft. The specifications for the grid layout module being discussed were released on September 5, 2007.

This module describes integration of grid-based layout (similar to the grids traditionally used in books and newspapers) with CSS sizing and positioning. Document Abstract

Semantically, the grid layout system is a nice development — it is a system explicitly and exclusively designed for layout, which has no required HTML component. An excellent companion to the div element.

Read more: CSS3: On Grid Positioning and Layout

This is a task which comes up over and over again for many developers. There are a lot of jobs in maintaining web sites. Our work doesn’t always come with the dream experience of a brand-new web site. Even if a new web site is a major goal, there will inevitably be large quantities of legacy content which will need to be worked into the new accessible design. Working on legacy websites can pose a number of subtle challenges.

If you can’t redesign, what can you do to work towards a more perfect site?

Read more: Working with legacy websites

Recently, it seems like I’m writing a lot about web standards from an unusual perspective (for me). Rather than evangelizing techniques such as CSS and Web Standards, I’m trying to give every argument a fair discussion. I want to evangelize thinking. This is the result of a notable shift in thought: I’ve been moving in a slightly different direction in my way of approaching web development principles. I believe it’s a more sophisticated way of thinking, but I could be wrong….

On that subject, Jeff Croft came out with an interesting opinion piece today on differentiating between “standards” and “web standards”. It’s interesting, and definitely worth reading. There’s one particular comment in it, however, which particularly got me thinking:

[...] I’ll say this emphatically: I don’t care about standards. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

Read more: Care about standards? No, not exactly…

At Cre8asite Forums this week, a lengthy discussion on the ultimate value of pure CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) based layout over the use of tables has been taking place. Sometimes, living in the sheltered world of accessible and standards-based design, I can lose touch with the fact that many people out there simply don’t accept some of the same guidelines I work with every day — and that this does not, in any way, mean that they haven’t given the subject a fair shot. Very good arguments have been made to defend each side.

On the whole, I think this discussion is an old, worn-out subject: those who won’t use tables generally don’t use them out of principle, and those who do use them out of pragmatism and a justified awareness that principles don’t build websites. I want to review the question once more, however, ignoring the entire question of principle.

Read more: Why not tables? Is CSS really better?