Joe Clark Spells it Out, Doug Contemplates
Joe Clark writes in A List Apart that web accessibility is under threat from its own guidelines:
An upcoming revision to the Web Accessibility Guidelines is in danger of becoming unrealistically divorced from real-world web development, yielding guidelines that are at once too vague and too specific. Your expertise and input can help create realistic guidelines that work.
In this piece Joe runs through his issues with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines - currently a 14,000 word document if you exclude markup examples which makes the prospect of reading it akin to ‘an anaconda trying to swallow a Range Rover’. Go read it now.
Meanwhile, Doug Bowman says exactly what I myself have been thinking recently - that we’ve been thinking of design only with our CSS heads on, which is limiting creativity. I am guilty of this too, and on a recent project really had to force myself to use Photoshop for wireframe mockups instead of just diving straight in with the CSS layout. It’s hard to get out of the habit, but going cold turkey might be a necessary evil to see things in a new light. As it happens, I’ll be having a different dose of cold turkey very soon as I (temporarily) say goodbye to my everyday toolbox. I don’t recommend this last option, though!