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guidelines podcast wcag

Podcast #55: WCAG Samurai

The WCAG Samurai is an “independent group of developers convened in 2006” and headed up by Joe Clark, accessibility guru. In this podcast, Dennis and Ross discuss the WCAG Samurai’s errata to the W3C’s WCAG 1.0 web accessibility guidelines. This includes:

  • what it is and if we should use it
  • discussing the 12 main points
  • which WCAG 1.0 Priority 3 guidelines to ignore

Download Web Axe Episode 55 (WCAG Samurai)

The WCAG 1 + Samurai Guidelines

  1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
  2. Don’t rely on colour alone
  3. Use markup and stylesheets and do so properly
  4. Clarify natural-language usage
  5. Create tables that transform gracefully
  6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully
  7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
  8. –
  9. Design for device-independence
  10. Use interim solutions
  11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines
  12. Provide context and orientation information

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captcha

Terribly Inaccessible CAPTCHA

Found this terrible, almost humorous example of inaccessible CAPTCHA. If you’re blind, I don’t think refreshing the page will help you read the letters in the image!

form with text under captcha field 'click refresh if you cant read the numbers'

Here’s the Web Axe entry on how to make accessible CAPTCHA: Podcast #40: About CAPTCHA and Accessibility.

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podcast table

Podcast 54: The Summary Attribute

By now most of us should be pretty familiar with creating an accessible data table–use a caption, TH for row and col headers, scope attribute, and the summary. In this podcast, Dennis talks about the least familiar of these techniques–the summary attribute of the table element. The summary attribute is WCAG Checkpoint 5.5 (Priority 3).

Download Web Axe Episode 54 (The Summary Attribute)

Examples of good summary text:

  • The number of employees and the foundation year of companies in Orlando, Florida, in 1988.
  • A warming trend has been observed in Cache Valley, with temperatures about 5 degrees above historical averages over the last two months.
  • This table charts the number of cups of coffee consumed by each senator, the type of coffee (decaf or regular), and whether taken with sugar.
  • Total required by pollution control standards as of January 1, 1971. Commercial category includes stores, insurance companies and banks.

Sample Code (from 456bereastreet’s Bring on the Tables):

Table 1: Company data
Company Employees Founded
ACME Inc 1000 1947
XYZ Corp 2000 1973

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articles

How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers

Here are some good web accessibility tips in an article from the American Foundation for the Blind, How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers. Although thepoints are for blogs, but can be applied to any site.

The main points of the article are:

  • Choose an Accessible Service
  • Describe Your Images
  • Avoid the Dreaded “Click Here” or “More…”!
  • Put Your Blogroll on the Right-Hand Side
  • Check the Comment Form—Is It Labeled Properly?
  • Use Flexible Font Sizes
  • Don’t Force Links to Open in New Windows
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articles

Web Accessibility Articles (Gmail, Screenreader, RadioShack, Process)

Here are some good articles relating to web accessibility: