Design Accessible Web Sites - Thirty-six Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms

One Minute Bottom Line

If you have been working on the web for some time and have embraced the recent focus on standards, semantics and accessibility and want to take you skills to the next level while learning some fascinating new areas of accessibility like multimedia and audio on the web, this title is for you. Written in a straight to the point style, the author covers a wide variety of accessibility topics as well as three extremely useful chapters on WCAG 1.0, Section 508 as well as WCAG 2.0. A great title and a must have for every web developer out there.

Review

Chapter 1 : Why be Accessible?

This chapter answers the question that everyone will ask at some point, Why be accessible? Well, beyond the legal issues involved in making publicly accessible content accessible, the author suggest another reason, it's the right thing to do. He moves on to discuss how accessibility just makes good business sense, makes you content more usable and in general just makes you a better designer and developer because it makes you look and think about what you do from a different perspective everyday.

Chapter 2 : A Brief Introduction to Disabilities

I personally found this chapter invaluable. I have always found that testing for accessibility is very difficult if one does not know someone with a disability who can test your site. But what makes it even more difficult is not knowing what the various disabilities are and how these people are effected by what we put out there. If you still believe in the age old perception that accessible website design is all about blind users, this chapter will change your mind and open your eyes to the various challenges that people face on a daily basis and learn how we can make it easier for them.

Chapter 3 : An Environment for Access

This chapter is all about making accessible thinking and design part of not only your work but how to include your entire team. It also discusses how we can plan for access, create multiple access paths, offer guidelines for accessibility and how to do all this without getting WET. This is the principle of not Writing Everything Twice inspired by the well known "Don't Repeat Yourself", a.k.a DRY, principle by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt.

Chapter 4 : Testing for Accessibility

To my mind, as mentioned before, this is the hardest part of developing accessible websites. Through this chapter the author introduces us to testing as a design decision. He offers up some suggestions on how to build you accessibility testing tool box. To close the chapter off the author admits that in the end there is just no way to successfully test accessibility without getting your hands dirty. Involving users and doing some hands on testing yourself by using for example a screen reader is the only way to really test for accessibility.

Chapter 5 : The Structured Life

As the title suggests this chapter is about authoring structured, semantic markup and introduces the reader to some of the best practices used in the industry today. This involves some topics such as keeping your markup simple and to the point. Using the appropriate markup for the content you are writing such as not using the "blockquote" tag for indentation and not using tables for layout. In the end your markup should convey the meaning of the content you are marking up. The author also shows that using semantic markup does not mean your sites has to be dull and boring and explores how one can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to enhance the look and feel of your site without compromising semantics. To end of with the author looks a little into the future and discusses topics such ass theCSS 3 speech module, version two of the eXtensible markup language specification (XHTML) as well as version five of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification.

Chapter 6 : Round Tables

Yes, this is the chapter about tables that is discussed everywhere but here, instead of talking about how bad tables are, the author takes a different tone and instead teaches the reader how to use tables correctly and introduces the reader to new aspects of working with tables and how table data can and should be designed. From table headers and footers to how the table axis work to connect heading with their content. It really gave me a new perspective on tables and I will be looking at some areas where I have used tables and spruce them up to give more meaning and structure to the end user.

Chapter 7 : The Accessible Interface

This chapter starts of with a heading that really made me think, "It's their web - We're just building in it". This is all about not taking control away from your users, dictating a path they did not expect and presenting content and actions in unexpected ways. The author also discusses web forms and how they should be made accessible to all users independent of their input device. Another topic discussed and clarified in this chapter is one that I was unsure about when first getting involved in the whole standards and accessibility scene. There are two seemingly attributes to various HTML tags that seems to suggest tat they will enhance the accessibility of your site but, alas, they should either be completely avoided or used with extreme caution. The attributes I am referring to here are of course theaccesskey and tabindex attributes.

Chapter 8 : A Picture is Worth...

This chapter is not just about images but color as well. When using images and designing your website you should pay special attention to the colors you use and the contrast that is created. Users with color blindness and low vision may find it impossible to access your site because of the color choices you have made. Here the author discusses what we should look out for as well as how to provide a user with the option of changing the theme, so to speak, of your site to better suit their special needs.

Next the discussion moves on to alternate text for images and making sure that the alt text you use conveys the right message. Sometimes, as with for example charts, the alt attribute is just not suitable. This is where thelongdesc attribute comes in. A very useful and very underused attribute I think. Also discussed are topics such as making captach's more accessible and best practices with regards to text replacement.

Chapter 9 : Video Killed the Something-Something

Although I was very aware of the accessibility issues when it comes to video on the web I have never really had any experience with having to deal with it in my day to day development life so, this chapter presented me with a lot of new material to chew on. From avoiding tags such as the blink tag to more advanced topics such as creating good sub titles and transcripts for video and audio content this chapter covers a whole lot in it's 25 pages.

Chapter 10 : Not All Documents Are Created Equal

This chapter discusses another topic I have not really dealt with. This is the topic of making Word documents and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents more accessible. As we often times offer these kinds of document to our users for alternative content or slides from presentations, it is important to note that especially Word documents are not that accessible by default. Making these documents accessible however is not that easy. There is a lot of vendor lock in with regards to tooling etc. and even the tools that are provided does not make your job of making these documents accessible a breeze. Nevertheless, the author does a very good job at demonstrating how this is done and which tools to use.

Chapter 11 : Scripted Responses

Ajax is cool, Ajax is all the rage and for the most part it changed the web for the better. However, screen readers do not yet play nice with content that changes without a page reload happening. That is then what this chapter is about. Here the author discusses the advances in the JavaScript language itself as well as the way it is being used. He here discusses some topics familiar to most of us such as graceful degradation and progressive enhancement. All of which comes down to the fact that if JavaScript is turned off in the browser, the site should still be completely usable by the end user. Other topics that are discussed is making it clear to the user when an area of a page has changed via Ajax triggered operations and to never remove control from the user.

Chapter 12 : Embedded Applications: Rinse and Repeat

This chapter discusses two technologies often embedded into web pages, the one much less common these days then the other. The two technologies under discussion is Flash and Java Applets. The main discussion topic for this chapter is Flash. As Flash has evolved and become more of a richinternet application platform then just for creating animation for the web, the support for accessibility of Flash has also increased dramatically. I have been out of the loop with Flash for quite some time now and was very surprised by the level of support offered by the modern Flash authoring environment. The downside however, these features are currently only available if the Flash application is running in Internet Explorer on the Windows platform.

Chapter 13 : Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

As mentioned earlier in my review, this and the two chapters that follow it are gems in my opinion. If you have ever tried to read the actual guidelines on the W3 website you will understand where I am coming from, they do not make it easy. This chapter however makes it much, much simpler to understand and you walk away from this chapter with a feeling that you finally understand what this stuff is all about.

Chapter 14: Section 508

This is the United States legislation that forms part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 restricts any federal government from purchasing inaccessible content. The author here describes the similarities and differences between Section 508 andWCAG 1.0 guidelines and as with the previous chapter makes everything clear and understandable.

Chapter 15 : Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

With WCAG 2.0 not yet at recommendation level and WCAG 1.0 still being the de facto standard with regards to accessibility guidelines on the web today, this is really a look into the future of where web accessibility is going. The author discusses what version two is all changing, the current concerns with regards to version two and a broader discussion of the guidelines in general.

Chapter 16 : Meanwhile, in the Rest of the World

This chapter is all about what is happening in the rest of the world outside the United States with regards to accessibility and makes for some fascinating reading.

Chapter 17 : Final Thoughts

All I am going to say about this final chapter is, Keep trying, Stay Informed and above all Have Fun!