There are lots of great new and recent articles, tutorials, and tips about Web accessibility. Today's post includes links to articles and tutorials on Web accessibility in general, accessible forms, accessible style switching, including a look at this site's style switching, accessibility and the blind and low vision users, helpful accessibility tools for Web developers, and more.
As I observed a blind web user navigate through a few pages, he reported that hearing the h1 content on top of the page was boring and redundant for him. Because his screen reader read the content of the title element first, the title element served as the actual title of the document for him, and the h1 - which merely repeated the content of the title element - was useless. Of course, this was only true when the title element contained useful and pertinent information.
Working with Others: Accessibility and User Research, by Maurizio Boscarol, dated 09 October, 2006.
The article also covers placement of navigation on the page, low vision users and the need for larger and bolder text, and the need for far more accessibility research to be conducted and published.
The information about larger and bolder text inspired me to create another style sheet switching option for this website, which I began last night (it's not online yet, as it's not finished, and I need to also test it further).
My current "Larger" style switch choice is aimed more for those who prefer slightly larger text, especially those over 45 with hyperopia, aka far-sightedness or presbyopia, which both result in difficulty focusing close-up.
My current "Contrast" style sheet provides more contrast and has the same font sizing as the "Larger" switcher.
Build your own PHP style sheet switcher by Roger Johansson.
PHP Style Changer Experiment by Mike Cherim.
Graceful Degradation with Style Switching Dated 24 August, 2006, updated 02 October, 2006, by Glenn Yonemitsu.
If you're in or near Sydney, Australia 19 October, 2006 there's a Web Standards Group meeting with speakers on: The Web - A Blind Perspective (Lee Kumutat, Training and Braille Products Manager from Quantum Technology), and The Mobile Web - What You Need To Know Right Now (Dominique Lee, Online Producer at ABC and an active member of the Mobile Content Industry Development Group).
Roger's take on this often-debated topic. Good reading, as usual from Roger. Dated 04 October, 2006, by Roger Johansson, 456 Berea Street.
Hidden text for screen readers, helpful links text, font resizing, more. Dated 07 August, 2006, by Trenton Moss for SitePoint.
Results of a 208-user survey conducted by User Vision, UK. Dated 11 August, 2005 for Out-Law.com.
Be sure to check out the Comments Re: The Great Accessibility Camp-Out, too. Good discussion there. Dated 01 October, 2006 by Gez Lemon and Mike Cherim, for Accessites.org.
How useful are accessibility evaluation tools?
by Karl Dawson, dated 01 September, 2006 for Accessites.org.
AJAX, DHTML, and accessibility best practices. Covers several important articles on tests done and findings. Be sure to check out the comments here, too. Dated 09 October, 2006 by Bob Easton, Access Matters.
"Using simple and semantic HTML, this method uses comprehensive CSS to create visually pleasing and extremely accessible web page forms for all purposes." You can download and use all the markup, CSS, and documentation for use at your own sites or to use as a learning tool to create your own accessible forms. Dated 22 June 2006, by Paul Armstrong, Paul Armstrong Designs.
73 posts as of this post, on accessibility, with plenty more on the way.
Annotated resources for W3C, US Section 508, articles, tutorials, and tips around the Web, accessibility tools, accessibility discussion lists, helpful Web accessibility books, and more. Created by yours truly.
A site dedicated to furthering the cause of web accessibility by offering free tools and other useful resources. Created by Ian Lloyd.
by Chris Pedrick. Highly recommended. I use this every single day. Extremely useful and helpful.
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Not sure how much this will help, but you might want to have a glance through Generating Dynamic CSS with PHP over at Digital Web.
Ah, yes, I'm glad you mentioned your tutorial over at Digital Web. I remember reading it when it first came out, so thanks for the reminder about it. I've left the window tab open in my browser, and I've read through it again tonight.
I really like the PHP approach that you've done for this one. I'll give it a try.
I really want to add cookies or whatever needed to remember the user's choice from page to page, though, so I need to learn more about how to add that so it works well and doesn't have any security holes.
Thanks again for mentioning your tutorial, Douglas.
I just looked at your code, and it appears that it's still using my stuff, and my stuff has always had persistent cookies that work on each page—compare your JS code with the JS code on our blog.
My coding style has changed some over the years; the most current example of that script can be found here.
My guess, without doing a lot of digging into your site, is that one of the many .js files loaded on each page is overwriting the window.onload handler. That's keeping the cookie from being read, and so, the style isn't updated when new pages load. If this is something you'd like me to take a look at, drop me a line.
Ah, fabulous! I see the cookie stuff in there now that I look for it. That is GREAT news, as that was my main reason for thinking I needed to try a different script or maybe try PHP. I think that the persistence from page to page matters. So now to just figure out why it's not working at my site like it does for yours.
I'll email you about all this. Thanks so much, Dori!
That also means no more onload <body onload ... > goodies in my page markup either. Cleaner, leaner, much improved all the way around.
Informative, do you know how to implement this feature into wordpress? I want to built in this feature into my site.