Monday, October 18, 2010

Web design for all

Most people want what they make to be seen or used by as many people as possible. Some people however will only target the large percentage of the population that do not need any special access. Is this fair? Is it a smart business decision? The quick answer that most people would give is, NO -especially for web design.

Web Standards and Accessibility
Standard HTML and CSS provide all of the necessary tools to make any web site accessible by anyone regardless of disability. Why then are there tons of sites that are not accessible? For one people are not aware of all of the tags and functionality of HTML and CSS but they are also not aware of all of the different disabilities. There are many different disabilities from physical to mental. HTML can not address everything but it is a framework that other technologies can use to deliver content to the end user in a format that they can understand. For example, you are probably reading this blog post using a standard web browser but someone who is blind does not have that luxury. They must use a screen reader or a braille printer.

HTML Tags that help with accessibility

You might be surprised after reading some of these since you are probably already familiar with at least some of them. Adding these extra tags does not take that much more time and the users that rely on these assistive technologies will love you for it.

<> - This allows the screen reader to read headers for a table
<> <> <> <> <> - This allows the screen reader to read headers first in case the user wants to skip to something they are more interest in
<> - To show emphasis on a word or phrase
< src="" alt=""> - A way to describe the image if the user is blind
<> - The text inside the a tags needs to be descriptive of the link not just "click here."
<> <> <> - Ordered or Unordered lists give structure to data and allows the screen reader a better way to navigate multiple lines of data.


Friday, October 1, 2010

This is probably my new favorite error message.