Accessibility : Introduction to Accessibility

I have been giving a presentation to various organisations about getting started in web accessibility. I have recorded it for the new headscape website (which we might actually launch one day). Until that arrives I thought I would share it here.

The estimated time to read this article is less than a minute

Posted on: Thursday, February 28, 2008

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.

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http://mikereynolds.wordpress.com Mike Reynolds

As always, great job Paul.
Martijn van der Ven

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? ;)
http://www.boagworld.com paul Boag

@Martijn I am sure there will be more. I think that whenever I give a presentation I would like to reproduce it like that.
http://www.cvwdesign.co.uk Clive Walker

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?
http://mikereynolds.wordpress.com Mike Reynolds

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.
http://p163.sg/blog Dinu

Great stuff Paul. Looking forward to more of these.
http://jamie3d.com Jamie

Great presentation Paul, I’m looking forward to more in the future.
http://www.roryf.co.uk Rory Fitzpatrick

@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.
http://www.roryf.co.uk Rory Fitzpatrick

@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!
http://www.roryf.co.uk Rory Fitzpatrick

Woops! double posting…
Wait, now its triple posting!

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Accessibility : Introduction to Accessibility