Since this article has been linked to now by a number of sites, I thought I’d provide a link to the actual post I wrote on AJAX and accessibility, to which this post is a follow-up! And, if you’re interested in a more recent and extensive article, try Accessibility and Usability Issues with AJAX, from October of 2007. The incredible flexibility provided by Ajax technologies is a big frustration to the accessible design community. Speaking for myself, I’d LOVE to […]
Continue reading “Ajax Accessibility Revisited” »Category: Accessibility
Accessibility with AJAX – it’s coming, slowly but surely.
AJAX, or Asynchronous Javascript and XML (eXtensible Markup Language), is one of the latest popular technologies to drop into a web developer’s bag of tricks. Although quite complicated to work with, the technique can provide an incredible variety of rich web application methods to work with. If you’ve ever visited any of the myriad "Web 2.0" applications, one common feature is the use of AJAX technologies. The fundamental principle behind AJAX programming is that it works, as in the name, […]
Continue reading “Accessibility with AJAX – it’s coming, slowly but surely.” »Making Accessibility Happen
It’s a common misapprehension that making an accessible website is expensive. Not exactly true – it’s more accurate to state that it’s expensive to make a website accessible. There is a subtle distinction between those two statements, but an important one. The same is true in most issues regarding accessibility – it’s not significantly more expensive to make a building, a voting terminal, or a digital resource reasonably accessible from the beginning than it would be otherwise. However, it’s always […]
Continue reading “Making Accessibility Happen” »Perspectives from the Field
One of the challenges in accessible web design is getting feedback from actual users. I know relatively few individuals with low-vision who regularly use screen readers. I know only a few people with handheld web devices – and certainly not enough to cover the entire range of possibilities in that area. This challenge is one of the reasons that web accessibility is so closely tied to web standards. Since most of us can’t test our work "in the field," we […]
Continue reading “Perspectives from the Field” »Accessible Design for the Deaf
The most well-known and thoroughly discussed accessibility techniques make websites more accessible for the blind and partially-sighted. After that, the discussion usually strays into mobile devices or learning disabilities. The deaf tend to get much less attention. One might imagine that the deaf don’t really suffer from web accessibility problems. They can see the images, use a mouse, navigate the site just fine. Right? Well, it depends. Those who are deaf from birth may not actually read written english very […]
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