1. what about the course work?
A general discussion of the week 8 course work comes later in this lecture. This column just deals with the question of how much of the material on accessibility you need to incorporate in it.
Several years of teaching this course has proved that accessible web design is the hardest thing to teach. I think I know why this is. The necessary inclusions and modifications to the code are often "invisible" in the mainstream browsers that most of us use. It does not matter to the majority of visitors whether, say, accesskey attributes are included, whether tables look OK when linearised or link text is always meaningful. But nor does it matter to most people whether public buildings have access ramps. But one day you break your leg, or (and I speak here from personal experience) you have to lug a pushchair and baby up two flights of stairs, and you suddenly realise what prejudices remain in our society and how easy it would be to remove them.
The upshot of all this preaching is that there are marks - quite a number of marks - directly allocated to the following:
- I will check to see whether your web site works, and is understandable, if images are not loaded. Make sure you caption your images properly and use alts on every one.
- I will see what your site looks like in a text-only browser. It does not have to be anything more than barely functional but it will be worth your checking that your tables linearise properly, at least. The previous bullet is also relevant here.
- Your colour scheme should be high-contrast and avoids red-green combinations.
- Text should be resizeable.
- Link text should be meaningful, not "click here".
- Those are the most important points, but "bonus marks" will be available for including other techniques such as skiplinks, access keys and anything else mentioned in this lecture and its related online materials.
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2. summary so far
For all that it might seem an added inconvenience, don't let accessibility become the "hidden" problem that it too often is. If the following weren't true, it would be funny, but unfortunately it is true that the web site of the UK organisation devoted to promoting disabled sport - http://www.disabilitysport.org.uk/ - is not accessible to the disabled. (The problem lies with the menu bar on the left which is unusable by anyone who does not load images or must browse without the use of a mouse.) When that's allowed to happen, something has gone seriously wrong.
Please remember that someone's dis-ability to use a particular building, mode of transport, or web site is caused by the designers' failure to allow for diversity. It is not the "fault" of the (potential) user. It is hard to get it right, and along the way, often requires designers to abandon some tricks and flourishes they might rather have included. But even if you think all this is just "political correctness" (an execrable term usually used as a substitute for thinking), please realise that when you make an environment (real, or virtual) more accessible to those with special needs you tend to make it more accessible to everyone. Not just enabling physical access, but good signposting, helpful captions which let people know what they're looking at, even writing pages in different languages - all these can help in any kind of environment.
The best web sites are those where the designer has always kept in mind that the site is written to be read by others. If you can absorb that, at least, you are on the way to becoming a better designer.
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