Topic: Accessibility
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World Grows Small: Open Standards for the Global Web
Molly Holzschlag explains how the practices you already use to create standards-based, accessible websites can serve you in the growing field of internationalization.
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The Accessibility Hat Trick: Getting Abbreviations Right
The acronym element is missing in XHTML 2.0. Internet Explorer 6 ignores the abbr element. JAWS doesn't like dfn. AAA-level compliance requires you to find a solution. Make it work.
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Prettier Accessible Forms
Forms are a pain. You can make them pretty, make them accessible, or go a little crazy trying to achieve both. Nick Rigby offers a happy solution.
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To Hell with WCAG 2
The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are about to be updated for the first time since 1999. Joe Clark takes a close look at WCAG 2 and reports back.
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Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility
PDF accessibility is not as straightforward as HTML accessibility. But it can be done, if you put the same care into marking up your PDFs that you put into marking up websites.
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A More Accessible Map
Nifty web maps powered by Google and Yahoo! APIs are all the rage. And rage is what a visually impaired user may feel when trying to use them. Is there a way to make beautiful web maps accessible? In a word, yes.
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Pocket-Sized Design: Taking Your Website to the Small Screen
Among the many websites that are out there, few are standards-compliant. Among those few, only a handful sport style sheets adjusted to the needs of handheld devices. Of those which do offer styling for handhelds, not all will fit the smallest, lowest-resolution screens without presenting the user with the ultimate handheld horror: namely, horizontal scrolling. This article presents a set of general suggestions for creating a handheld-friendly style sheet that works well even on handheld screens no wider than 120px.
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Flash MX: Clarifying the Concept
In a detailed survey, accessibility obsessive Joe Clark evaluates Flash MX (authoring tool and player) in the context of the often confusing WAI and Section 508 guidelines, finds some things to cheer about, and draws a roadmap for future improvements.
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High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization
It's no coincidence that search engines love highly accessible websites; in fact, by designing for accessibility, you're already using effective search-engine optimization techniques. Andy Hagans explains yet another reason to pay attention to accessibility.
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Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation
Your favorite applications have shortcut keys. So can your site, thanks to the XHTML accesskey attribute. Accesskeys make sites more accessible for people who cannot use a mouse. Unfortunately, almost no designer uses accesskeys, because, unless they View Source, most visitors can’t tell that you’ve put these nifty navigational shortcuts to work on your site. In this issue, Stuart Robertson unlocks the secret of providing visible accesskey shortcuts.
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How to Save Web Accessibility from Itself
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.
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Big, Stark & Chunky
You’ve designed for the screen and made provision for blind, handheld, and PDA browser users. But what about low-vision people? Powered by CSS, “zoom” layouts convert wide, multicolumn web pages into low-vision-friendly, single column designs. Accessibility maven Joe Clark explores the rationale and methods behind zoom layouts. Board the zoom train now!
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Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement
Fahrner Image Replacement and its analogues aim to combine the benefits of high design with the requirements of accessibility. But how well do these methods really work? Accessibility expert Joe Clark digs up much-needed empirical data on how FIR works (and doesn’t) in leading screen readers.
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Flash MX: Moving Toward Accessible Rich Media
Andrew Kirkpatrick of the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media tackles Flash MX from the developer’s perspective, showing how authors can more easily generate accessible Flash content, and where roadblocks remain.
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Why Don’t You Code for Netscape?
Long considered the Holy Grail of web design, “backward compatibility” has its place; but at this point in web development history, shouldn’t we be more concerned about forward compatibility? ALA makes the case for authoring to web standards instead of browser quirks.
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A Backward Compatible Style Switcher
You asked for it, you’ve got it: an Open Source alternate style sheet switcher that actually works in Netscape 4. No, really. Daniel Ludwin shows how it’s done.
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Accessibility, Web Standards, and Authoring Tools
With the advent of more compliant web browsers, the quest for standards shifts to the tools pros use to build sites. Christopher Schmitt spoke with Adobe and Macromedia for the low-down on web standards, accessibility, and authoring tools.
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SMIL When You Play That
A gentle introduction to the SVG and SMIL standards for programmable vector graphics and accessible rich media.
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Accessibility: the Politics of Design
Herrell deconstructs the new U.S. accessibility regulations and their implications for web designers everywhere.
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From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer’s Journey
Redesigning A List Apart using CSS should have been easy. It wasn’t. The first problem was understanding how CSS actually works. The second was getting it to work in standards-compliant browsers. A journey of discovery.
