Editorial:Accessibility, the law, and you. How to make your site 100% accessible.

From Tech Elephant

The NFB^[1] vs. Target law suit was brought to my attention this morning in a company email.

It seems this case is (finally) opening the eyes of the corporate world to the broader spectrum of Internet users and their needs.

Contents 1 Law suite? 2 Quick tips for making your site accessible 3 Final thoughts 4 Notes

Law suite?

Are you finding yourself panicked by the (sudden) need to analyze your site's accessibility?

Don't brush this aside as a problem for large consumer-centric sites: disabled people use every aspect of the web and you should want to make their Internet experience equal to that of the rest of the population.

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Quick tips for making your site accessible

• Have every employee, not just your designers, producers, and developers, read and understand the WCAG^[2] of the W3C^[3].
  • Use this as a basis for your company's Accessibility initiative.
  • Getting everyone in your company on board will help your Accessibility initiative and will create an awareness of the various usability problems your site needs to address.
• Test your site by using a text-only browser.
  • Screen readers "real aloud" the text on your web site to assist blind users; viewing a text-only version of your site will help you to understand how your site will be presented to blind users.
  • Are you able to easily find everything that was presented using your graphical navigation?
  • Does your site still flow without the visual “wow” of your graphics?
  • If you are a retailer, were you able to understand what your products would look like without the associated photo? Maybe you need to add relevant product descriptions to the product photos (alt text) or increase the quality of your product description page's text.
• Turn off your browser's Javascript capabilities.
  • Is it still usable? Provide alternatives for users without Javascript; make sure your site fails gracefully.
  • Assistive technologies do not always support the latest Javascript methods.
  • Simply put, requiring Javascript actually violates the W3C^[3]'s WCAG^[2] 1.0
• Are you jumping on the bandwagon by replacing traditional site functionality with dynamic Javascript, AJAX^[4]?
  • Inserting elements (html fragments) in to the DOM^[5] dynamically is lacking support amongst assistive technologies.
  • Imagine AJAX^[4] being the re-incarnation of the blink tag for screen readers; yeah, what is visually stunning for people who have the gift of sight is audibly lacking or annoying for blind people.
  • Don't believe me? AJAX^[4] has had a bad wrap with Accessibility support for some time now.
  • Maybe you should read James's article, in which he explains his research findings while creating a simple AJAX^[4] page and “rendering” it with asstive technology (e.g., a Screen Reader).
  • You may want to look into some early Javascript/AJAX^[4] accessibility initiatives head by folks like [6]IBM, W3C^[3], and Dojo (Dojo Accessibility Guidelines).
• Does your site use Flash?
  • The latest Flash player supports various accessibility methods. Make sure you are following the Accessibility Guidelines Adobe has created.
• Include Accessibility testing in your product usability testing.

Final thoughts

So, what will you do to ensure 100% of your users can (at the very least) use your site?

Hopefully, you will take the initiative and think proactively. Your users will certainly appreciate it.

Notes

1. ↑ National Federation of the Blind
2. ↑ ^2.1 2.2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
3. ↑ ^{3.1 3.2 3.3}
4. ↑ ^{4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5} Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
5. ↑ Document Object Model
6. ↑ International Business Machines Corporation