Accessible Showcase
Some time ago I put together a small article demonstrating that accessible
sites did not need to be pig-ugly - they could actually be things of beauty!
Initially, I was hoping to get examples of large corporate sites but I’ve since
come to the conclusion that this is about as likely as me growing a second head.
Nevertheless, I have been sent lots of examples of accessible sites that a worth
a look, but there’s just one thing to clarify …
A CSS-based site does not automatically mean an accessible one. Some people
have pointed this out to me before, as it is not clear from the previous article
that this is the case. It just so happens that the sites are both accessible
and table-free CSS-based designs.A table-based design may actually
be far more accessible for a large audience - for example, the content may have
far more navigation tools to take you around the page and the content may be
excellent, well-written copy that is totally relevent to the person browsing
the site and as such may be far better than a CSS-based layout.
There’s no hard-and-fast
rule, but the general trend seems to be that the people who have taken steps
to learn how to make a site accessible usually don’t stop at simply providing
alt attributes and providing <noscript> elements - they invariably go
‘the whole hog’ and take the accessible site to its extreme. Thus nearly all
of the sites submitted will work on a handheld almost as well as they might
on a PC/Mac. Anyway, now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, shall
we look at what I’ve been sent?
Each of the entries below include quotes from the people who submitted the
URLs - I leave it up to you to decide how genuine the claims are or whether!
- Trinity College Oxford [Matthew ... erm ... something]. Matthew suggested this site as well as his version of an Odeon cinema listings site: "An example of how they could do things properly"
- BHP Billiton [David
McDonald]. “We tried to reach Priority Level 1 of the W3C WCAG and I think
we came fairly close. The site can be read in text only browsers. There are
alternate links to the site map and the content areas for navigation using
non-javascript browsers. Font size can be altered by the user and we used
access keys for all forms. The forms can also be sumbitted by non-javascript
browsers. Tabbed navigation via the keyboard is also enabled.”. The problem is that on my browser - Firebird 0.6 - the navigation failed to work completely. Ah well - Kokhaviv Publications
[Alexander Becker]. “Kokhaviv publications is a non-profit, Germany-based
think-tank: 15.000+ pages; XHTML 1.0 Strict & CSS; 50+ RDF-feeds; Section
508-accessibility … The redesign is still in progress and performed live.” - Guru Instruction
[Scott Kosman]. “… a completely standards-compliant, accessible site
… I was contracted to rebuild their website a few weeks ago. Their old site
was filled with kludgy DHTML hacks and 1998-era browser sniffers. Now it’s
all built in XHTML 1.0 Transitional code, and has been getting really good
reviews from studetns, faculty, and other industry personnel.” - Quote.com [Bryan O'Neill].
"I used to be the designer for this site, which just released using web
standards. I’ve gotten feedback from a visually-impaired user, so I guess
that means we did something correct." More
information on the project available here. - Web Solutions [Bob Sawyer].
"WebSolutions of Georgia recently underwent a major redesign, adding
in accessibility features in addition to a tableless, css-based layout." [Ian comments - "I like this one!"] - University of Minnesota Duluth
[Laura Carlson] “I originally designed and created this web site in 1998.
Since then I have continually update the maintained the site. This past summer
I redesigned the site with a version of our new campus templates in mind.
My goals [were to make it] XHTML Strict, WCAG Triple A (AAA) plus 508 (the
old pages were just 508) and no layout tables (positioning via css floats)” - Hexatex [Sasa Velickovic]
"It could be more accessible, but I think our site is more accessible
than the majority of sites of Web design agencies." [Ian comments: "Possibly ... but possibly not. I don't see any skip navigation links and the design is OK but not up to the standard that design agencies would insist upon"] - More sites have been submitted in the forum discussion …