Alt Tags

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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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SXSW 2004: The AltTags Wrap-Up

Accessiblity was on the radar in a big way at SXSW 2004. Not only was there a track devoted to learning more about accessibility, but people in, well, non-accessible sessions were talking about the subject. The topic of accessibility appeared during sessions on web standards, CSS, and usability. And, much to my surprise, it was part of a discussion on a mailing list completely unrelated to web development. People are thinking about accessibility.

I attended all the sessions in the track, and have to say the presenters did an excellent job of introducing the subject to those who were new to the concept — and they kept the sessions challenging for those of us who know about accessibility. The accessibility workshops, whether by design or sheer luck, reinforced a common theme, one that we at AltTags preach: accessible websites are universally usable.

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Word to xHTML Revisited

A few weeks ago one of our clients called to notify us that one of their web pages didn’t look quite right. The site in question had recently been redesigned using web standards and was table free. This site uses our Content Management System (CMS) to publish pages using xHTML 1.0 strict templates. What could possibly go wrong?

A quick check of the page in question produced interesting results. The page rendered perfectly in Mozilla, Opera, and Safari. Internet Explorer was another issue entirely. The columns seemed to melt together in ways that defied web physics.
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Texas Or Bust

The Alt Tags team is heading to Austin next week for the 2004 South By Southwest Conference (SXSW). SXSW initially began as a music industry conference focusing on independent recording artists, then eventually expanded to include film and interactive media (the Internet to you and me). My last SXSW conference was over a decade ago in the pre-web era, so it will be interesting to see how SXSW has evolved over the years.

Based on the list of panels for this year’s conference we’re looking forward to several days of informative sessions devoted to accessibility, usability, and web-standards. We’re particularly excited about the prospect of so many of the leading figures in the emerging web standards community being in one place at the same time.

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Double Your Trouble

Both Section 508 and the WCAG state that, as a last resort, a separate, accessible website must be provided. As a last resort. Meaning a second site is created if you absolutely cannot achieve accessibility in any other manner.

Wow. If you have to create a mirror site, it makes me ask just what, exactly, is going on with your site in the first place? The sheer amount of effort required to make a site so inaccessible that a second site is required boggles my mind. I can only imagine the effort and maintenance going into this endeavor.

Yet, many developers and their clients immediately assume a second site is the first and best option. After what I can only assume is a quick perusal of the guidelines, it is determined that two sites are better than one.

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