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Tools, wizards, articles and tutorials on Web Accessibility for the conscientious web developer

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Personal Rant about Standards and Training

Well, I say personal rant, but it’s a little more public than that now. Here is an excerpt from my piece featured over at Mezzoblue’s Second Voice series:

How do you encourage unenthusiastic developers/mark-up authors to adopt forward-thinking web development methods?

How do you engage people who consider their work on the web as just that: ‘only work’, something that pays the bills but doesn’t exactly leave them beside themselves with excitement?

I am but one individual in a team of many (in my place of full-time employment) and I am from a strange breed - I have a passion for the web! What happens when you are part of a team that is not as uniformly enthusiastic to learn?

This is a problem that faces many IT managers and standards advocates working in the corporate sector. Though we’re doing good things in adopting accessibility practices and optimising our code, it’s still very difficult to get a site to conform to all the major standards in the real world. Why is this the case?

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Outside reading

Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
Roger Hudson provides a through transition guide from WCAG 1 to WCAG 2
Beyond CAPTCHA: No bots allowed
James Edwards (aka Brothercake) provides a useful run-down of the problems posed by using CAPTCHAs
Jeremy Keith does an excellent write-up of the Accessibility 2.0 conference (which I was unable to attend)
Sharepoint and Web Accessibility
Bruce Lawson describes the disparity between Sharepoint/MOSS developed web sites and the level of accessiblity that the tool offers to users (summary - it really is not good!)
How does a screen reader user really hear your web site?
Interesting post on Beast Blog about how a screen reader user - a real one! Not one of those fake web developer tester types! - uses the tool to read a web page. A few surprises were waiting in store for author Mike Cherim.
Web Accessibility Toolbar now available in simplified Chinese
The Web Accessibility Tools Consortium (WAT-C) release a simplified Chinese version of the Web Accessibility Toolbar.
Web 2.0 vs Web Accessibility
1-day seminar in London, 25th April, brings together experts in the field to discuss/demonstrate the accessibility issues faced by web 2.0.
Leading accessibility technologists form new alliance to fix problems
The Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA), comprising (among others) Adobe, HP, Microsoft, Novell, and from the assistive tech industry Dolphin, GW Micro and HiSoftware forms to work together "to create and harmonize standards for accessible techn
Fieldsets, legends and screen readers
An excellent run-down of how fieldsets and legends can improve accessibility and how the various screen readers cope with this useful markup.
CAPTCHAs explained - WacBlog
Another really good post on the RNIB\'s Web Access Centre blog explaining captchas, why they\'re bad for accessibility and what the alternatives may be.
Making WCAG easier to read
Derek Featherstone has created some fancy style sheets to make reading WCAG documents a little easier on the eye.
Top Tips for the title attribute
Ann McMeekin provides a set of simple tips regarding when - or rather when not to - use the title attribute. \'Cos sometimes you can try *too much* to be helpful
California court tilts towards mandating web accessibility
Outlaw.com reports (on behalf of The Register) on the Target California class action lawsuit, digging a little deeper into what Target have been doing of late to address matters.
Screen Readers and display:none
Juicy Studio, aka Gez Lemon, investigate some quirks whereby screen readers announce content that they should not be. Perhaps this could be used for good rather than evil?
Google Developer Podcast: The status of accessibility on the Web
An interview with Google research scientist TV Rahman (and Hubbell, his seeing-eye dog!). Lots of talk about CAPTCHAs and accessibility, but no sign of a transcript for this interview as yet.

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