WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

Accessibility basics
Web accessibility might best be described as a set of guiding
principles or guidelines that help us to make websites
that work for all different types of users, regardless of
their ability. We strive to take these differing levels of
ability into account when we code our websites:
Vision impairment (varying degrees of blindness,
low vision, and color blindness)
Mobility or dexterity impairment (requiring use of
voice-recognition software or hardware aids to
facilitate keyboard usage or to help compensate
for different levels of fine motor control)
Auditory impairment (requiring captioning and/or
transcripts for multimedia audio and video, for
example)
Cognitive disabilities (including varying degrees of
dyslexia, autism, and other learning impairments)
To take this wide range of abilities into account, we need
to do some simple things. We make sure that images have
appropriate alt text so that people who are visually
impaired have alternative representations that their
screen reader software can read to them. We implement
solutions that allow users to resize the text on their page
so that they can read it more easily. We have appropriate
color contrast between foreground and background colors.
We label our form fields, We use structured markup
to ensure that the elements we have on the screen use
the best possible HTML elements available—headings,
paragraphs, lists, tables, form buttons, and so on.
One of the long-standing problems with building accessible
websites is that we, as developers, designers, and
content creators, have very little hands-on experience
working with people with disabilities to understand their
true needs and how we can avoid putting accessibility
barriers in their way. Enter the World Wide Web Consortium’s
Web Accessibility Initiative (www.w3.org/WAI).
Accessibility guidelines
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) strives to make the
Web more accessible to everyone and has a set of guidelines
that can be used to help developers build accessible
websites. Don’t worry; it isn’t all up to us. WAI has also
produced guidelines for browser makers and authoring
tool vendors so that they can ensure that the tools that
people use facilitate accessibility. These other guidelines—the
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)
and the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)—
are important, but beyond the scope of what we do as
developers. Our attention should be firmly placed on the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
WCAG (www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php) is a set of
guidelines that give us some starting points for creating
accessible websites. This does not mean, however, that
simply following the guidelines will guarantee our sites
will be accessible. In order to create accessible websites,
we need to generally follow the principles found in the
guidelines, and then test our resulting web pages with
people using assistive technology. This ensures that we
get the best of both worlds. We achieve technical compliance
by adhering to the guidelines, and through testing
with people with disabilities, we create something that is
actually usable to them.
The example presented in this chapter examines many of
the principles of WCAG and includes the results of testing
with various screen readers, voice-recognition software,
and a screen magnifier.
For a detailed and in-depth look at accessibility,
read Web Accessibility: Web Standards and
Regulatory Compliance (friends of ED, ISBN:
1-59059-638-2).
chapter 10 Accessible Sliding Navigation
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