What Did I Learn Today?

11/14/2008 - [ learntoday accessibility web design ] - posted by fansipans

There's a lot of cool stuff going on in the Web Accessibility world.

WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. (See See WCAG 2.0 quick reference here.)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a standard set of ways to better organize content for accessibility. Mainly just big fat checklists of dos & don'ts, easy to scan/peruse. Great for well-designed sites overall, not just for accessibility issues.

WAI-ARIA: Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (Also see a simple ARIA primer here)

The WAI-ARIA project is trying to manage accessibility issues for the rapidly expanding landscape of Rich Internet Applications. Modern web applications often take advantage of or bastardize every possible feature of modern browsers to implement functionality for which screen readers and users with accessibility issues have no way to use. Preliminary support for the WAI-ARIA specification already exists in major screen readers and recent browsers (Firefox 3, IE8).

Web Accessibility is growing by leaps and bounds, and stands to be a major motive force in making current internet applications suck less. Designing for accessibility reinforces good user interface, user experience, and usability. Any pressure to focus on user experience and usability can often lead to better applications overall, as it can expose and express or better address confusing business logic and requirements.