Accessibility Revisited - Real World Challenges

Questions For Those That Face Those Challenges

[digitalghost]

There have been a couple of excellent threads lately on accessibility issues and I'd like to keep the awareness level up and continue to promote accessibility, especially here in this forum where some of the best and most influential web personalities meet to discuss and shape the future of the web. ;)

First, just a quick run through some of the issues.

1. Valid code does not equate to accessible websites, it's just one step.

2. For the bean counters: Making your site accessible isn't going to bring in huge amounts of revenue. In fact, the ROI most certainly won't be measured in dollars and cents. The return on your investment will be a warm fuzzy and the knowledge that you've helped make the web more accessible to everyone, not just buyers and clients.

3. While there are no laws yet that cover accessibility in the private sector web, history would indicate that those laws are coming.

4. It's a world wide web. For me that means that it should be accessible to everyone. Currently more than 95% of websites are totally inaccessible to the blind and people with severe visual impairments.

5. If you can make the time to make sure a site renders in some obscure browser, you have the time to make your site accessible. ;)

Rather than rely solely on guidelines, I've written to several schools for the blind to get some input. What I'd like to do is get some input from everyone here and create a list of questions. I plan on inviting some folks over to check out this thread. ;) I simply can't think of a better way to realize some of the challenges the visually impaired face other than by asking them.

[edited by: digitalghost at 12:11 pm (utc) on July 24, 2003]

[TheWhippinpost]

http://www.nfb.org/seal/intro.htm

Urgh! Apart from being plain ugly, all the text is in bold and very tiring to read as a consequence...I gave up, and I'm "normal-sighted"

[digitalghost]

Jim Thatcher sent me an email and mentioned something I wasn't aware of. The time out feature of JAWS is actually reset with a reboot. So, rather than a 40 minute trial, you get a 40 minute session with each reboot. Now I know why the trial of JAWS is still working. ;) He also mentioned that 40 minutes is about the limit that a sighted person will use JAWS before getting frustrated with a screen reader. ;) I know from experience that his assertion is correct.

He also provided a link to a side-by-side comparison of WCAG and 508, [jimthatcher.com...]

[g1smd]

Thanks for the links to the various reading materials, and especially to the validation tools.

Looks like my planned projects this week have just been pushed into the back of a queue that didn't exist ten minutes ago.