Accessible Web Design - weekly tips
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Tips Archive:
- The Flash Satay method to embed flash in your pages and support standards
- How to make your pages validate when they include urls with ampersands (&'s) in them.
- Develop your sites for a standard compliant browser first then modify for IE/Win
- How to make client-side image maps accessible.
- How to hide a flash movie from screen readers and keyboard users
- What is the object element for? And what's it got to do with accessibility?
- How to get your XHTML pages to validate when using blockquote.
- Start with the assumption that you cannot predict the access needs of your audience
- When a link falls at the end of a sentence always put the full stop outside the anchor tag
- Don't use the statistics defence as a reason to exclude people from your content
- Don't rely on automated tools for checking web accessibility
- Web accessibility for deaf people - adding captions or providing transcripts isn't always enough
- layout your forms using CSS instead of tables.
- Associate form fields explicitly with their labels
- Download ready made style sheets to meet your access needs
- Use Javascript to add default text to input fields.
- Adding Tags to PDF improves accessible.
- Web accessiblity toolbar for Internet Explorer
- 3 tips: free Bobby, free Waizilla, and use Acrobot
- Make HTML pages created from MS Word more accessible
- Check colour contrast by creating a greyscale image of your web page
- use alternative style sheets to give users control of critical elements such as text size or colour on your web pages.
- Understanding colour contrast and accessibility
- If you need help, ask an expert!
- Use HTML attributes, or CSS to set web page colors, but don't use both.
- Structure your menus by marking them up as lists.
- Use favelets to check validation and accessibility of your web pages.
- Use absolute size keywords to set the text size on your pages.
- How to make printable characters between adjacent links invisible.
- Decide whether your non-text elements are functional, decorative or providing content?
- Add structural meaning to image based headings
- Don't try to control visitors to you site.
- Get your 'character encoding' sorted
- Make a start on those 'legacy' pages
- Expand your use of abbreviations and acronyms
- How to provide additional keyboard access to your web pages.
- Accessible web design is not about creating boring sites
- Give visitors your content first (not your navigation).
- Make forms easier to use by creating a logical tab order
- Accessible web design tips: add alt attributes to spacer images
- Making PDFs more accessible
- Add a full stop to end of alt attributes and list items
- Introduce yourself to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
- Code to standards for cross platform compatibility
- Link text should describe the content linked to
- Design for machines first, people second!
- Ensure links work when Javascript doesn't
- Don't rely on colour alone to provide important information.
- Use relative units when setting CSS text sizes
- Test the accessibility of your web page with your own web browser.
These accessible web design tips may be reproduced in a website, e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. so long as the biographical information below is included in full, including the link back to this website. Please e-mail Jim at jim@mcu.org.uk, before using the tips.
Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, by Jim Byrne. All rights reserved. Jim is a recognised authority on accessible web design, author of Making Websites Accessible (SAIF, 2002), and Accessible Web Typography (ScotConnect 2003). He was a founder member of the award winning, accessible web design consultancy established in 1996, 'The Making Connections Unit (http://www.mcu.com).
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Comments
Video Avid | Wed Aug 11 2004
Mr. Grants | Thu Jun 24 2004
オンラӝ | Sun May 16 2004
Designer Jane | Thu Apr 29 2004
James | Sun Oct 17 2004