Web Accessibility – A Starting Point

This is by no means a new topic, it is just an often ignored topic. It is so easy to fall in the trap of assuming that everybody sees the world exactly as we see it. We tend to forget about the blind and visually impaired, when we design our Web. In so doing, we ignore an important audience.

This is the first of several posts on this topic. In this post, we start with the basics. Even if you don’t read any other posts on this topic, following these simple guidlines will make a big difference:

1. I you search the Web, you will find a number of tutorials. My favorite is “Accessibility Guidelines for the Web Designer” at lighthouse.org. It is not a long article, but it worth reading. In a rush to get a page published, it is easy to skip or write non-meaningful alt attributes in an <img> tag. How many of the guidelines to you follow in designing your Web pages?
2. Visual impairments that effect a person’s ability to distinguish colors impacts on that person’s ability to see your page. Have you ever been to a Web site that is virtually impossible to read, because the author uses colors with insufficient contract? How about some with a visual impairment that effects their color vision? Once again, lighthouse.org has an excellent article on this subject, “Effective Color Contrast.” The color charts, and examples, are what make this a valuable article. Also, you need to use hex values for colors. A future post will discuss this critical topic in more depth.
3. It is really tempting to use fancy fonts, but they can be extremely difficult to read. We depend on visual clues to untangle the squiggles. What about someone who cannot see these visual clues? At lighthouse.org, the article entitled “Making Text Legible” provides 10 guidelines for styling text on Web pages.
4. IBM’s Human Ability and Accessibility Center has an excellent checklist for Web Accessibility.

I highly recommend that any one pursuing Web design for the blind and thise with severe visual impairment get a Adriane Knoppix 6.0. ADRIANE is a Linux distro that is for the visually impaired. You get to see how a screen reader views your site. ADRIANE does not require a terminal. It works with special systems that have only voice or braille output devices. Without looking at the screen, try to navigate your sight. Yes, the voice can be hard to understand, but it gives you a clue of how a blind person reads your site.

I am not ignoring Section 508 for governement web sites. Before tackling it, we need to get our feet wet.