Categories
articles cognitive screenreader

Writing for Accessibility Article

In his article Writing for Accessibility, Joe Dolson explains that accessible copy is more than making non-textual elements available, it’s also about the main content! He continues to explain how tone and puncuation are very sensitive and important issues when writing for accessibility. Joe suggests:

  • Keep your sentences on the short side
  • Avoid excessive parenthetical statements
  • Avoid excessive subclauses
  • Read the sentence without giving any particular emphasis to the terms and see how easy it is to understand the statement

Related links:

Categories
guidelines wcag

WCAG 2.0 published as Candidate Recommendation

Today the WCAG 2.0 has been advanced to Candidate Recommendation status. This is a big step in the long W3C guideline development process. What this means is that most people agree on the technical aspects of the much needed update to WCAG 1.0, and we can start using WCAG 2.0 as a guideline as it’s “Ready to Test-Drive”.

In the words of WCAG:

We are excited to announce that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
(WCAG 2.0) was published as a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 30 April 2008. The Candidate Recommendation stage means that there is broad consensus on the technical content, and W3C invites you to implement WCAG 2.

Categories
law webaim

Section 508 and Higher Education

In his article 508 and Higher Ed., Jon Whiting at WebAIM has blogged about his findings on college web sites meeting (or not meeting) Section 508 requirements. It’s pretty sad how even college web sites, in the most part, do not meet even the most basic web accessibility requirements of Section 508. Jon states that “only three of the one-hundred pages complied with Section 508”.

Categories
ajax podcast

Podcast #63: Reviewing Accessible Ajax Recommendations

In Webcredible’s article AJAX accessibility for websites, a list of recommendations is presented for creating accessible Ajax web pages. In this podcast, Dennis and Ross discuss the accessibility issues and benefits of Ajax, and the recommendations from Webcredible which are:

  • Inform users early in the page that dynamic updates will occur
  • Highlight the areas that have been updated
  • Don’t change the focus
  • Offer the option to disable automatic updates
  • Ensure the site works if JavaScript isn’t enabled

Download Web Axe Episode 63 (Reviewing Accessible Ajax Recommendations)

News & Events

Categories
audio caption

Why Captioning Sucks

As you may know, captioning is required for accessible audio/video presentations. The Open & Closed Project (from Joe Clark) explains the downfalls of captioning on the new web site Captioning Sucks! Reasons cited are as follows (and you’ll have to go to the site to fully understand!):

  • Not enough of it
  • They don’t listen
  • It’s hard to read
  • The wrong kind
  • The fox is watching the hen house
  • There are no standards