Have you ever validated your site and the validator grumbled to you about not having default place-holding text? Have you never heard of place-holding text nor understood why it’s used?. Gez Lemon has some answers and a method for dealing with place-holders. Keep reading…
Eons ago, Ian Lloyd caused a bit of a hoo-haa within the various web accessibility discussion lists. What had he done that was so controversial? Well, he had raised the subject of acronyms and abbreviations in HTML - a topic that regularly raises its ugly head and generally leaves more people confused afterwards. So, just what is the issue here, and what has it got to do with web accessibility? Ian explains. Keep reading…
Nick Kew of WebThing wrote mod_accessibility to help those in the web development business turbo-charge their site with some useful new features. He explains to Made For All how it all fits together and how it could benefit you. Keep reading…
Dyslexia affects over 1 in 10 people. The chances are that many of your web site users have dyslexia at some level.This article looks at common issues facing dyslexic users on the web, and how we as responsible web developers can make their experience a better one.
A key focus of accessible web site design is providing equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content. This is normally the task of providing alternative text for images, sounds and any client-side scripts that appear in the content. One of the reasons for this focus is to assist screen-reading software to render the content in a coherent format. This enables a variety of users who cannot rely on visual presentation alone, better access to the content of your site. Keep reading…
Many developers still view graphics and accessibility as being on opposing ends of the web development scale. The truth is that including graphics in your documents does not mean your page has to be any less accessible. In fact, as we will see later in this article, graphics can be used to enhance the accessibility of a page.
There are, however, a few key techniques that you can employ to ensure that you don’t have to construct alternative “Text-Only” documents. The web truly is the last frontier where we can treat all people equally with “one size fits all” web documents. There is just a little bit extra we need to do to achieve this. Keep reading…
CSS and XHTML have given tables a pretty rough ride in recent times. Of course, this is the fault of just about all web developers who have at some point in their career used them for laying out page elements.
This article is not about using tables for layout. It is about how to use tables to display information in an accessible manner. Use XHTML and CSS all you want for layout, but at the end of the day (if there is one on the internet) so long as there are informational relationships there will be tables. In fact, to attempt to display any of complex information relationships without a table is a mistake. If you have information to display, use tables and use them well. Keep reading…
Joe Clark is a Toronto based accessibility consultant and journalist renowned for not pulling punches. He is also the author of the book “Building Accessible Websites”. In April 2003, he spoke to Made For All about the state of accessibility. Interview by Made For All editor, Tim Roberts. Keep reading…
Julie Howell joined RNIB in 1994, becoming the charity’s first Website Editor in 1997. In 1999 she became responsible fot the RNIB’s Campaign for Good Web Design, a national initiative to promote the creation of online web sites and services that are usable by people with disabilities. Made for All asked her a few questions to get her inside view on accessibility and the web. Interview by Anitra Pavka - March 2003. Keep reading…