Alt Tags

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The Invisible Web: A Survey Of Municipal Web Accessibility

Alt Tags recently conducted a series of accessibility tests on 408 municipal websites throughout the state of California. Ninety-one percent of the sites tested failed Section 508 compliance. Eight-Nine percent did not pass WCAG Priority 1. While not surprising, our findings were not encouraging. It appears that web accessibility is not yet on the radar of most municipalities.

Our complete report details our findings and recommendations for municipalities wishing to improve the accessibility of their websites. We’re presenting our report in a PDF format and encouraging readers to pass this on to interested parties in hopes that we can raise awareness of this important issue.

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Do You Care About Accessibility?

It was a moment that is quickly becoming legendary in certain web design circles. The first of many accessibility panels at the 2004 SXSW Interactive conference was well underway when Jeffrey Veen stepped onto the stage just as it was his turn to present. Unexpected travel delays had prevented him from arriving on time for the Accessibility is For Everyone session. As a result, Veen missed the initial presentations by a panel of noted accessibility experts and appeared to walk into the room cold to deliver his portion of the session.

Against a backdrop of hyper sensitivity to accessibility issues Veen steps up and announces, “I don’t care about accessibility.” Veen’s proclamation was met with a few nervous chuckles followed by an uncomfortable moment of silence before he began to build his case.
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Opera Announces Voice Activated Browser

Opera Software has announced a voice-activated browser. The new browser, launch date not yet announced, incorporates IBM’s ViaVoice software and will respond to voice commands from the user. As with other voice recognition programs, the software must be trained to learn the user’s speech patterns and voice. The initial version will be targeted toward the English language market, and Opera predicts the browser will increase accessibility for those individuals with difficulties working a mouse or keyboard.

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Suddenly Accessibility Is Beautiful

The HiFi Design with CSS session generated a fair amount of shock and awe at this year’s SXSW conference. The CSS Zen Garden continues to raise awareness of the amazing possibilities that web standards present. Accessibility advocates are awed by the beauty of standards based design and simultaneously shocked that so many leading designers are citing accessibility as one of their primary goals. Suddenly accessibility is cool (and beautiful too). It’s every accessibility advocate’s dream come true, except some of us seem to be sleeping in.
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Everything Is Usable

When you get right down to it, the goal of accessible website development is to ensure that your entire site is usable. By everyone. By everything.

Okay, maybe not everything. Human and machine. We’ll leave the rocks and minerals to sort out their own computing issues.

So why is this important? Well, a usable site gets used. Sounds like I’m stating the obvious, doesn’t it? If you’ve spent more than five minutes on the Web, you’ll realize I’m not. Setting aside the issue of accessibility (which I believe is a big part of usability), most sites are designed without the end user in mind. The focus is on…well, I don’t know what the focus is; all I can assume is that the person trying to access, buy, or read the site wasn’t considered by the design team.

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