Creating an accessible web site can be challenging. Retro-fitting a web site for accessibility is even tougher. Now try upgrading a humongous, corporate site full of new and old pages. Where to begin? Fortunately, Accessites.org has posted an article by Mel Pedley to help tackle this problem: 5 Steps To Reworking A Legacy Site
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
- Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
- Don’t rely on colour alone
- Use markup and stylesheets and do so properly
- Clarify natural-language usage
- Create tables that transform gracefully
- Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully
- Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
- –
- Design for device-independence
- Use interim solutions
- Use W3C technologies and guidelines
- Provide context and orientation information
Related Links
- Introduction to WCAG Samurai Errata
- WCAG Samurai Errata for WCAG 1.0
- WCAG Samurai Peer Review
- On the WCAG Samurai errata – Bruce Lawson
News
- JAWS 9.0 with AJAX Support?
- SpokenText
- developing Firefox add-on/extension
- can now share recordings
- donate using PayPal
- Why your employer should care about web accessibility
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!
Here’s the Web Axe entry on how to make accessible CAPTCHA: Podcast #40: About CAPTCHA and Accessibility.
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):
Company | Employees | Founded |
---|---|---|
ACME Inc | 1000 | 1947 |
XYZ Corp | 2000 | 1973 |
Links
- W3C Definition of Summary attribute: This attribute provides a summary of the table’s purpose and structure for user agents rendering to non-visual media such as speech and Braille.
- W3C on Data Tables
- page 4 of Semantic (X)HTML Markup: Using Tables Appropriately
- WebAIM: Creating Accessible Tables
- WCAG Samurai
News
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