accessibility
Making the Web accessible to all users on all devices has become a major issue during the last five years. One reason for using compliant code is to make your site accessible to users with a variety of devices.
Accessibility is concerned first with users with disabilities. Although vision disabilities are the ones that people usually think of in this respect, there are a variety of other disabilities that must also be considered, including motor and cognitive disabilities. Hearing disabilities are also an issue for sites that convey information through sound files (e.g., providing feedback through sound effects for buttons)
Other users also benefit from design that takes accessibility into account. For example, sites that have been made accessible for screen readers used by those with vision disabilities will also display well on text-only browsers used by several Web-enabled devices (e.g., Web-enabled cell phones and PDA's).
The following resources will give you information about making your Web pages accessible, as well as sites that will test your pages to see how accessible they are.
accessibility information resources
- The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative, an internationally backed collection of standards.
- The W3C's Content Guidelines, a subsection of the Web Accessibility Initiative.
- The home page for Web AIM, an organization working for greater accessibility on line.
- Section 508 from the federal government, an overview of the main US regulation regarding accessibility.
- Access Board, a federal agency concerned with accessibility
- Accessibility information from the Department of Health and Human Services' Usability Web site.
- The Trace Center at the University of Wisconsin, specializing in accessibility research
- The National Center for Accessible Media, associated with WGBH in Boston
accessibility checks
- Bobby, one of the most widely used on-line accessibility checkers
- Page Valet checks pages against the W3C standards
- A page that will show you what your page looks like in a text-only browser (in this case Lynx)
corporate accessibility initiatives
- Microsoft's accessibility information
- Adobe accessibility information
- Macromedia's (i.e., Flash and Dreamweaver) accessibility information
- IBM's accessibility center
- Apple's accessibility information
- Sun Microsystems' accessibility program
articles on accessibility
- What Is Web Accessibility from A List Apart
- Locking Out the Disabled from PC World
- Fed Opens Web to Disabled, news story from Wired about the initial Federal guidelines
- Disabled Accessibility: A Pragmatic Approach, from Jakob Nielsen
- How Not to Make Your Website Accessible, by Peter Seebach at IBM
- Colorblindness and Usability, an aspect of accessibility that gets less attention