Building for the blind
How to make your weblog accessible to the visually impaired.
Frédéric De Vries
Content under Creative Commons license
Agenda
- Who am I?
- What is accessibilty about?
- Who benefits?
- Make your weblog accessible in 30 days
- Questions
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Who am I?
- Webdesigner / Art Director / Graphical Teamleader / Creative consulant since 1996
- Lifelogger (by lack of a better word) since 2001
- So I'm all about visual experiences, right?
- Wrong
- I'm about user experiences
- And so are you
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What is it about?
“Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a system is usable by as many people as possible without modification. It is not to be confused with usability which is used to describe how easily a thing can be used by any type of user. One meaning of accessibility specifically focuses on people with disabilities and their use of assistive devices such as screen-reading web browsers or wheelchairs.”
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Who benefits?
- The blind
- The colorblind
- The farsighted
- Your dad
- ... and about 50% of the surfing population
- Trafficwhores
- (That means you)
- Yes you
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Make your weblog accessible in 30 days
- Did I say 30?
- What the hell, make it 25
- Some days 'll take you a minute
- But then again: some might last 48 hours
- It's mostly a once-in-blogtime effort
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Week 2 (first weeks are for sissies)
- Day 6: Choosing a DOCTYPE
- Day 7: Identifying your language
- Day 8: Constructing meaningful page titles
- Day 9: Providing additional navigation aids
- Day 10: Presenting your main content first
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Week 3
- Day 11: Skipping over navigation links
- Day 12: Using color safely
- Day 13: Using real links
- Day 14: Adding titles to links
- Day 15: Defining keyboard shortcuts
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Week 4
- Day 16: Not opening new windows
- Day 17: Defining acronyms
- Day 18: Giving your calendar a real caption
- Day 19: Using real table headers
- Day 20: Providing a summary for tables
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Week 5
- Day 21: Ignoring spacer images
- Day 22: Using real lists (or faking them properly)
- Day 23: Providing text equivalents for images
- Day 24: Providing text equivalents for image maps
- Day 25: Using real horizontal rules (or faking them properly)
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Week 6
- Day 26: Using relative font sizes
- Day 27: Using real headers
- Day 28: Labeling form elements
- Day 29: Making everything searchable
- Day 30: Creating an accessibility statement
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More here
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Questions?
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