Introduction to Accessibility
Posted in Accessibility on: Thursday, February 28, 2008 by Paul Boag
For a while now I have been giving a presentation to various organisations about getting started in web accessibility. I have just recorded it for the new headscape website (which we might actually launch one day). Until that arrives I thought I would share it here.
Yes, I know my presentation on accessibility is inaccessible because there is no transcription. There will be one when the presentation is posted on the Headscape site. Please be patient.
10 Comments
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As always, great job Paul.
Great simple view of what’s going on Paul. This should clear things up for a lot of people.
Any chances on you doing more of these presentations? A whole serie might be to much, but a few more for the loyal fans?
Vimeo made it fully blend in, got to take a look at them, they even hid my mouse pointer!
On a side, I couldn’t stop wondering. What font is that? ;)
@Martijn I am sure there will be more. I think that whenever I give a presentation I would like to reproduce it like that.
Paul. Nice presentation. More please. I have a question about low-budget websites and how you would approach web accessibility in this scenario. I understand about the ‘bare minimum’ and ‘laying a solid foundation’ and I try and build websites using CSS, web standards etc. However, most of my clients have very small website budgets (I’m talking £500 to £1000 here) and doing a lot more than this is often a problem. I appreciate that Headscape’s clients probably have higher budgets but do you have specific web accessibility advice for low budget websites?
Greetings Clive. I’ll be interested to hear Paul’s opinion on this. My own two bits on this would be to do things like:
* Make sure XHTML validates
* Use descriptive ALT tags and TITLES
* Avoid hiding content in Flash
I’m sure I’m missing a few good ones. This question is very relevant to me so thank you for asking it.
Great stuff Paul. Looking forward to more of these.
Great presentation Paul, I’m looking forward to more in the future.
@Clive: My personal opinion on this is that you should only be building accessible websites, irrespective of the budget. I’ve found the more experienced you get the easier it becomes, making a site accessible isn’t like an extra task, its just the way its done in the first place.
Sounds like your on the way there though, stick to CSS/standards and you’ll be laughing.
Obviously this becomes more complicated when you get into Javascript driven applications, for instance a modal dialogue also needs a static page with the same functionality. For a basic website though there shouldn’t be anything stopping you making it accessible whatever the budget.
@Clive: My personal opinion on this is that you should only be building accessible websites, irrespective of the budget. I’ve found the more experienced you get the easier it becomes, making a site accessible isn’t like an extra task, its just the way its done in the first place.
Sounds like your on the way there though, stick to CSS/standards and you’ll be laughing.
Obviously this becomes more complicated when you get into Javascript driven applications, for instance a modal dialogue also needs a static page with the same functionality. For a basic website though there shouldn’t be anything stopping you making it accessible whatever the budget.
@Paul: awesome stuff!
Woops! double posting…
Wait, now its triple posting!