If we call ourselves professionals, we owe it to our clients, their clients, and ourselves, to do our job properly. A chef must care about health, a builder must care about safety, and we must care about accessibility. James Edwards, aka ‘Brothercake’ has published a very neat argument on the frequently-asked question “Why Accessibility?” Read his comments at Why Accessibility? Because it’s our job!.
Continue reading “James Edwards on Web Accessibility” »Tag: Accessibility
An Example of Automated Accessibility Testing
Every once in a while, somebody mentions to me how they’re concerned because their (or my) site didn’t “pass” some online accessibility evaluator or another. This always opens up the conversation for one big, complicated issue: why automated accessibility testing just doesn’t work. This isn’t to say that automated testing doesn’t have a place; but it should never be considered the deciding factor for accessibility. The Functional Accessibility Evaluator from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was pointed out to […]
Continue reading “An Example of Automated Accessibility Testing” »Know your why’s and how’s…
The Accessibility Cookbook: a Recipe for Disaster, by Aaron Cannon. This is a very well-written article which provides an “insider’s” viewpoint from both an accessibility and an interface designer’s perspective. The article remarks, in brief, on the importance of knowing the why’s and how’s of accessibility. If you don’t understand why or how you’re helping a disabled user, you are immediately opening up a gateway to create new barriers. It’s not about following a set of rules; it’s about sitting […]
Continue reading “Know your why’s and how’s…” »More News on the Target Accessibility Lawsuit
For a major issue in accessibility, I have to say that this really hasn’t seen much press. Granted, major lawsuits tend to move slowly — glacially, you might say. However, given the fact that the last announcement concerning the National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corporation lawsuit was in September of 2006, you’d expect some kind of blog coverage on the latest announcement. In fact, I found it difficult to find anything about it at all, at first — […]
Continue reading “More News on the Target Accessibility Lawsuit” »Don’t Rebuild the Browser: Educate The User
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, […]
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