TTI COM Visual Media

“10 Simple Web Accessibility Tips You Can Do Today.” Good reminders.

• on the title attribute, don’t use the same text as what it’s describing (same with alt attributes, duh)
• headings—may be easier to use as page nav for screen reader users (though they mention Skip Navigation, I’ve heard some users more rely on the header tags)
• Interesting link to WebAIM for Links that become visible with keyboard focus; addressing mobility-impaired users that can’t/don’t use a mouse. Might like that as a user myself.
• Labeling form elements, as we’ve mentioned here before.

Do check out the article.

Rhonda and her group have done a bunch of work on using best practices in Word to create accessible PDFs from reports. This is the corresponding info for InDesign CS4.

Page on Adobe site PDF overview

From the PDF’s intro (emphasis added):

Can you read this document with your eyes closed? For people with visual disabilities, that’s a challenge they’re faced with everyday. Fortunately, you can use Adobe InDesign CS4 to make an accessible PDF document. You do this by adding “under the hood” features that don’t affect the look of your pages, but do allow screen readers and other assistive devices to function properly.

I’ve come to think of this conference as a web standards and best practices conference.

• My notes (some excellent links)
• #AccessU09 Twitter stream

A few, not all, highlights

• HTML 5 will be the next doctype for web standards. XHTML is going away since its benefits aren’t getting used (browsers…). So, for now, use the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype. Edit 7-7-2009: I know what you’re thinking. See Jeffrey Zeldman’s article defending XHTML 1.0, right after XHTML 2.0′s going away announcement. Short story: we’ll stick with XHTML 1.0 for now. Use strict when not impractical, transitional otherwise. btw, Jeremy Keith has a good overview of all this.
  
• IE 8: some seriously strange problems with its compatibility modes. Short answer (and there’s no short answer really), for now: design with tight web standards and don’t add MS’s suggested meta tag.
• There are many standards for accessible forms that I was not aware of. Example—here’s how to semantically connect a label with its associated input:
  <label for="dogname">Dog's Name</label>
<input name="name" id="dogname" size="30" />
• Simple semantic stuff I needed reminding of:
  • only one h1 per page (I think there was discussion of this in past years; that appears over), and it’s the title of that individual page
  • h tags must be used successively; i.e., if you use an h4 tag, you must have at least one h2 and one h3 on the page
• The new 508 and state accessibility requirements (coming this fall? Sept. 1?) will be close to the same as the WCAG 2.0. Overview—content must be:
  • technology-agnostic
  • perceivable
  • operable
  • understandable (for non-traditional browsers; e.g., a ‘more info’ link whose content can’t be perceived by screen readers isn’t acceptable)
  • robust