Web accessibility pertains to the development of websites that are usable and accessible by all sorts of individuals no matter their abilities or possible disabilities. Designing effective websites with free-flowing accessibility means your websites information architecture and core functionalities will be easily accessible.

For example, if you use JavaScript technology to create an auto expanding web layout by detecting the appropriate screen resolutions, this could greatly benefit those with poor vision as they tend to more than likely use a much larger screen than people who are not visually impaired. This ultimately makes your website more accessible, thus increasing the user base to a much larger audience. Below we’ve put together a list of resources and best practices for accessibility that if put to good use, should enable you to develop websites with a much higher level of accessibility.

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What Is Web Accessibility?

This article will not tell you how to make an accessible website. That’s already been done by Mark Pilgrim in his excellent Dive into Accessibility and by Joe Clark in his extensively researched and beautifully written Building Accessible Websites.

As with all overviews, it is somewhat oversimplified and does not cover exceptions and edge cases. The editors and I hope that it will provide a useful touchstone for those readers who have been standing at the shores of accessible web design, fearing sharks where there are only gentle waves.

RAAKT – the Ruby Accessibility Analysis Kit

RAAKT is a toolkit to find basic accessibility issues in HTML documents. RAAKT can be used in an automated quality assurance process to increase developer awareness of accessibility issues and increase speed in accessibility analysis. RAAKT is written in Ruby and can therefore easily be integrated with Ruby on Rails.

Introduction to Web Accessibility

Most people today can hardly conceive of life without the internet. It provides access to news, email, shopping, and entertainment, at any hour of the day or night. Some have argued that no other single invention has been more revolutionary since Gutenberg’s printing press in the 1400s. Now, at the click of a mouse, the world can be “at your fingertips”—that is, if you can use a mouse… and see the screen… and hear the audio—in other words, if you don’t have a disability of any kind.

10 Common Errors When Implementing Accessibility

Web developers attempting to build accessible websites often make the same mistakes time and time again. Although they’re trying their hardest sometimes their overzealousness gets in the way and actually hinders the accessibility of their websites.

W3C and Web Site Accessibility

The W3C and Accessibility section includes annotated links to W3C’s accessibility guidelines, checklists, articles and tutorials, and related accessibility information at W3C’s site. The W3C and Accessibility section includes annotated links to W3C’s accessibility guidelines and articles and tutorials at W3C’s site on accessibility.

Designing More Usable Web Sites

This section of Designing a More Usable World is dedicated to cooperative efforts linked toward building a more usable Web for all. At the present time, there are a number of interlocking and interrelated efforts.

Java Accessibility Quick Tips

The following are quick tips on how to make Java applications accessible. A full set of guidelines, which also contain code snippets as well as information on how to build custom components, are available in IBM’s Guidelines for Writing Accessible Applications Using 100% Pure Java and The Java Tutorial. A condensed version of these two can be found in Developing Accessible JFC Applications.

Improving Website Accessibility for Better Search Results

Finding the balance between making a website accessible and integrating the latest web 2.0 technologies isn’t one that is mutually exclusive. The deployment of accessibility standards and technologies can bring new benefits and opportunities for business advantage. In general terms accessibility can benefit a broader audience and improve website performance for users. Improved access and usability in turn broadens your website appeal and actively improves your users’ experience online.

AJAX Accessibility for Websites

AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is an innovative way of using existing technologies to create highly interactive web applications. AJAX allows portions of the page to be updated without having to refresh and reload the entire page. It can increase site performance significantly and provide cutting edge user interfaces. Unfortunately it can also be a source of concern for delivering fully accessible web sites.

WAVE Accessibility Eval Tool

WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid humans in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.

Evaluating Website Accessibility

Developers and designers can use these techniques to make sure the sites they build don’t contain any huge accessibility problems, and website owners can use them to assess the quality delivered by their web consultancy.

Beginners Guide To Web Accessibility In The UK

There’s a lot to learn about accessible website design. Here we present some of the facts about web accessibility in the UK, a beginners guide for dummies. **** Note We have just moved this archive to this site – over the next couple of months we are checking the information provided (22 Jan 2008).

Web Accessibility Checklist

As Dr. John Slatin always said, “Good design, is accessible design.” Make sure as you begin your design process at least one person on your design team understands the principles and techniques of making a web site accessible. Consider accessibility and usability from the very beginning of your project. Designing for a defined audience and with known parameters leads to quality results. And while retro-fitting accessibility into a web site is always possible, it isn’t the recommend course of action.

Web Accessibility – Why do it?

What if you were deaf and the world around you were simply muffled vibrations instead of clear, crisp sounds? How about if, when you awoke every morning, your world looked just like it did while you were asleep – pitch black? For most of us, when we want to find out the latest news or do some online shopping, we simply open up our favorite Internet browser and sit back and relax.

Accessible Online Video for Keyboard-Only Users

When making accessible online video we all tend to think about the needs of blind and deaf users, concentrating on subtitles and transcripts. These features, while essential, can be time-consuming and technically difficult to implement, and are still only part of the accessibility job. An oft-forgotten group, when it comes to accessible online video, is the motor impaired and particularly keyboard-only users.

Web Accessibility and the Law

The state of legal requirements and protections concerning the accessibility of websites is far from uniform. Many countries have some form of web accessibility laws in place, but the extent of those laws is radically variable. Furthermore, as many websites serve multiple countries, the question of jurisdiction can become a tricky aspect of accessibility law. It’s well beyond the scope of this article to discuss the exact limits of web accessibility law around the globe, but I do aim to discuss the ramifications and philosophies of these laws for your web-based business.

Evaluating Cognitive Web Accessibility

Web accessibility for individuals with cognitive or learning disabilities is varied and complex. It is an area with little definitive research and few concrete recommendations. Even WebAIM’s report on cognitive research shows that users with these disabilities are as varied as the common recommendations provided by those in the field of web accessibility.

Accessibility and the Swing Set

One important feature of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) is their support for accessibility — that is, support for hardware and software designed for people with disabilities, such as blindness or limited sight, deafness or limited hearing, or dexterity-related disabilities such as the inability to operate a mouse. Support for accessibility is a very important feature of Swing. In fact, the Swing set is the only Java programming language component set that can be used to write accessible user interfaces, whether for web, for desktop, or for people with disabilities.

Web Accessibility and Persons with Disabilities

Inherent to the purpose of the World Wide Web is equal access to its contents by all persons. From an even broader perspective, the evolution of the Internet has been built upon the ideal of leveling the information access playing field for all persons. Since the Web’s inception, concerned designers have struggled with techniques and guidelines to make their pages accessible to a wide range of viewers. We have learned that there is a considerable gap in content accessibility between those with vision, auditory, and mobility impediments and those without such impediments. The gap between these two is closing, thanks to a new Federal law. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 requires that electronic and information technology be accessible to persons with disabilities. Section 508 also required the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) to set standards for compliance with the law.

Accessibility of Links

Links were only identifiable by being a different color from the content around them. They weren’t bolded or underlined. A link was, for example, blue, amidst copy that was black. This can cause significant problems for those with certain types of color blindness or vision limitations that prevent them from seeing certain colors. If you take color out of the equation, there is absolutely no way to visually identify which parts of these pages are links.