I call myself an accessibility consultant when I’m not building WordPress plug-ins. But in all reality, you should stop hiring accessibility consultants. The work is awful, and nobody wants to do it. Seriously – the work is awful. I mean that. Building accessible web sites and applications? That’s awesome. Training you and your team on what’s involved in creating an accessible resource? Also awesome. Creating tools that help you identify or fix accessibility issues? Really, seriously awesome. Diving into that […]
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When the right hand doesn’t listen to the left.
Thanks to the power of internet criticism, the code discussed in this blog post has since been fixed! Sometimes just making a complaint is all it takes to get something fixed. I was highly critical of the code authors for this low-quality code; but they truly did care, and made changes. Thank you. Authoring forms is an important part of keeping the web fully accessible — not just providing access to information, but allowing users to fully interact with the […]
Continue reading “When the right hand doesn’t listen to the left.” »Best Practices in Web Development: Part 4
Part 1 (Contracts, Site Requirements,Information Architecture) Part 2 (Hosting and Security) Part 3 (Navigation, Scent) Part 4 (Semantics, Structure vs. Design, Universal design) Part 5 (Interaction, Errors, and Administration) So, we’re finally getting to the meat of best practice web development. This is what people are usually thinking of when they ask about best practices in web design or web programming: actually building the web site itself. Web design best practices encompass a wide range of needs — everything from […]
Continue reading “Best Practices in Web Development: Part 4” »Guide to Semantic Use of HTML Elements
This is part 2 of 2. Part 1 is Why use Semantic HTML (HyperText Markup Language)? This guide only deals with HTML4/XHTML elements which have a specific, human-readable meaning. The semantics of elements such as link, which are not seen in normal browsing, have been left out, as have replacement elements like img or object. In some cases, I’ve also addressed specific attributes which are critical to providing semantic value to an element. This is not a guide which demonstrates […]
Continue reading “Guide to Semantic Use of HTML Elements” »Why use semantic HTML?
This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 is my Guide to the use of Semantic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Elements I’ve seen a lot of articles discussing the importance of HTML and XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language – HTML reformulated as XML (eXtensible Markup Language)) semantics. I’ve seen articles describing what it means for a document to be semantic. Most of these articles, however, don’t provide a serious overview of what HTML elements actually may be considered semantic — […]
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