Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product (e.g., device, service, environment) is accessible by as many people as possible, and the ventures to produce accessible products and services. Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive technology.
#14250
Effects of Pictures, Age, and Experience on Learning to Use a Computer Program 
Research indicates that older people generally do not process information differently than younger people do. Instead, 'the main difference ... seems to be that elderly users are less capable in dealing with any shortcomings in the manuals than younger users. The impact of badly designed manuals is usually greater for elderly people,' (van Hees 1996, p. 531). In line with this view, Hartley (1994) suggests that 'text will be easier for older people to use when their perceptual and memory processing loads are reduced' (p. 171). Although the criteria for good design remain a bit unclear, we can accept the general idea that designing well will help the elderly.
van der Meij, Hans and Mark Gellevij. Technical Communication Online (2002). Design>Accessibility>Software>Elderly
#20656
Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508)
The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) is issuing final accessibility standards for electronic and information technology covered by section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. Section 508 requires the Access Board to publish standards setting forth a definition of electronic and information technology and the technical and functional performance criteria necessary for such technology to comply with section 508. Section 508 requires that when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, they shall ensure that the electronic and information technology allows Federal employees with disabilities to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of information and data by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. Section 508 also requires that individuals with disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or services from a Federal agency, have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the public who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency.
Access Board, The (2000). Resources>Web Design>Accessibility>Section 508
#22999
Engaging Learners with Various Training Methods
While preparing these workshops, I knew that I would be addressing people from many backgrounds. My own background is in education. In pursuing my Master's program in Instructional Technology, I began working on a distance education project for special educators. It was my first introduction to Web accessibility. I eventually came to work at WebAIM where Web accessibility has become my primary interest. Currently, I am coordinating WebAIM's K-12 education initiative. My path to Web accessibility is very unique, as is yours. I would love to hear why you are here learning how to become a better accessibility trainer.
WebAIM (2001). Articles>Education>Accessibility
#28662
Ensuring Accessibility for People With Color-Deficient Vision
If you do not consider the needs of people with color-deficient vision when choosing color schemes for applications and Web pages, those you create may be difficult to use or even indecipherable for about one in twelve users.
Gabriel-Petit, Pabini. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Accessibility>Color
#28759
The Ethics of Special Needs: It's a Matter of Fairness 
The American Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 cites 43 million Americans as having disabilities. Despite the progress the ADA represents in improving equality of opportunity for those with disabilities, much remains to be done--as evidenced by the fact that only 27.8% of working-age people with work disabilities have jobs, compared to 76.8% of those without disabilities. The statistics are even bleaker for minorities.
Voss, Daniel W. STC Proceedings (2007). Articles>Accessibility>Ethics
#28327
European Design for All e-Accessibility Network
The European Design for All e-Accessibility Network is a network of 160 organisations in EU member states. The goal of the network is to support all citizens' access to the Information Society.
#27482
To demonstrate an example of some accessibility issues in HTML Forms, the following content intentionally has accessibility errors.
Abou-Zahra, Shadi. W3C (2004). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Forms
#20049
Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility
This document outlines approaches for preliminary review Web site accessibility, and for evaluation of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. While it does not provide checkpoint-by-checkpoint testing techniques it does include general procedures and tips for evaluation during development of Web sites, and for monitoring of established Web sites. Other resources will be developed for in-depth compliance testing. The measures described here are intended to supplement an organization's existing procedures for content management and quality assurance on their Web sites. For information about why making Web sites accessible is important read the Introductions on the WAI Resources page.
#23304
Evaluation of Websites for Older Adults: How "Senior-Friendly" Are They?
Thirty-six websites designed for older adults were evaluated as to how well they complied to 25 'senior-friendly' guidelines recommended by the National Institute of Aging. Results indicate that a majority of the sites complied to guidelines related to basic navigation and content style but not for text size, text weight, or site map availability. Implications of compliance to these guidelines on user satisfaction and performance are discussed.
Hart, Traci A. Usability News (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Elderly
#23082
Examples: WAI Web Content Accessibility Curriculum
Provides details or examples of one or more techniques that are associated with a particular checkpoint. Where possible, the examples are actually coded so that you will see how that particular technique displays or renders on your browser or user agent. In most cases, the markup that creates the 'live' example is also provided (although you can also 'View Source' to get the exact coding). Where necessary, some text is included to explain what is 'supposed' to happen (for example, if an HTML 4 attribute is not widely supported yet), or for user of non-graphical or older browsers.
Letourneau, Chuck and Geoff Freed. W3C. Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Education
#23000
Expanding Your Training Skills and Knowledge
Becoming an effective accessibility trainer and teacher does not happen overnight. For some, the ability to effectively teach others comes naturally. For others, a lot of work is involved. An accessibility trainer must be a Jack-of-all-trades, and an Ace of a few as well. The more tools you have at your convenience, the more effective you will be.
WebAIM (2005). Design>Web Design>Accessibility
#20367
Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement
Fahrner Image Replacement and its analogues aim to combine the benefits of high design with the requirements of accessibility. But how well do these methods really work? Accessibility expert Joe Clark digs up much-needed empirical data on how FIR works (and doesn’t) in leading screen readers.
Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Usability
#26228
Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility
PDF accessibility is not as straightforward as HTML accessibility. But it can be done, if you put the same care into marking up your PDFs that you put into marking up websites. Joe Clark tells all.
Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Document Design>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat
#22970
Fast Track to Web Accessibility in 5 Steps
Sometimes you don't have the time to sit down and plan out the ideal Web site. Maybe you've just recently been appointed as your organization's webmaster, or have recently been assigned to oversee accessibility operations at your organization, and you discover that your Web site has gaping holes in its accessibility. Rather than panic, you should start with the biggest problems and work your way through the site until you have fixed all of the accessibility errors. After you've 'plugged the holes,' then you can start thinking about a new design, but not until then. This workshop presents a 'fast track to accessibility' that prioritizes your tasks of sorting through and fixing your site's accessibility problems.
Bohman, Paul. WebAIM (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Project Management
#20655
The criteria for web-based technology and information are based on access guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. Many of these provisions ensure access for people with vision impairments who rely on various assistive products to access computer-based information, such as screen readers, which translate what's on a computer screen into automated audible output, and refreshable Braille displays. Certain conventions, such as verbal tags or identification of graphics and format devices, like frames, are necessary so that these devices can 'read' them for the user in a sensible way. The standards do not prohibit the use of web site graphics or animation. Instead, the standards aim to ensure that such information is also available in an accessible format. Generally, this means use of text labels or descriptors for graphics and certain format elements. (HTML code already provides an 'Alt Text' tag for graphics which can serve as a verbal descriptor for graphics). This section also addresses the usability of multimedia presentations, image maps, style sheets, scripting languages, applets and plug-ins, and electronic forms. The standards apply to Federal web sites but not to private sector web sites (unless a site is provided under contract to a Federal agency, in which case only that web site or portion covered by the contract would have to comply). Accessible sites offer significant advantages that go beyond access. For example, those with 'text-only' options provide a faster downloading alternative and can facilitate transmission of web-based data to cell phones and personal digital assistants.
Usability.gov. Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Section 508
#30475
Fieldsets, Legends and Screen Readers
The grouping and labelling of thematically related controls within a form is an important aspect of providing semantic information so users can understand and complete a form successfully. Differences in quality and implementation of support across user agents can hamper some users' ability to benefit from this information. This must not be taken as disincentive to developers, as the benefits of using these elements outweighs the negatives. But it is clear that some assistive technology vendors need to improve implementation of HTML features that enhance accessibility, so their users can gain the most benefit.
Lemon, Gez. Paciello Group, The (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Semantic
#13621
Flash Access: Unclear on the Concept
In Christian theology, it doesn’t matter exactly when you accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. As long as you do it before you croak and ask forgiveness for your sins, you’re in like Flynn. This, apparently, is the Macromedia philosophy when it comes to accessibility. The company’s flagship product, Flash, is intrinsically inaccessible to anyone who cannot see properly and is very often inaccessible to a deaf or hard-of-hearing person. It’s also completely inaccessible on slow computers or any machine that lacks the Flash plug-in, rendering those viewers more functionally disabled than they actually are.
Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Accessibility>Multimedia
#19438
When usability expert Jakob Nielsen proclaimed Flash was 99 percent bad, he was right on at least one account: accessibility. Until the release of Flash MX and the Flash 6 player, about 41 million disabled Web users could not take full advantage of Flash Web sites (According to World Bank in 2000). Even with Macromedia's move to support Section 508 guidelines, the government's plan for Web accessibility, the majority of Flash developers have not adopted the necessary best practices. Advertisement In previous versions of the Flash player, disabled Web users were unable to view any content generated by Flash. The Flash 6 player took a big step in this regard by retroactively providing text equivalents to the application's content. This change has allowed assistive Web browsers such as screen readers to view or speak Flash content. Many Flash developers question the need for Flash accessibility since proper accessibility requires a text-only version of existing Web content. This is a myth: images and animation can actually help users with nonvisual disabilities such as dyslexia. Flash can also benefit the blind by incorporating sound to notify the Web surfer of events.
Perry, Jason Michael. O'Reilly and Associates (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Flash
#13543
Flash MX: Moving Toward Accessible Rich Media
Macromedia released Flash MX in mid-March of 2002, including enhancements to the player and the authoring tool to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. Admittedly, some areas like screen reader access couldn’t possibly get any worse than they were in previous versions of the player: popular screen readers such as JAWS and Window-Eyes ignored Flash content completely. Other features, such as the ability to add captions (which has been available since Flash 5), benefit from improvements Macromedia made to the Flash architecture in this release. The changes have also automatically improved access to existing Flash content when viewed in the Flash Player 6, but to maximize Flash accessibility for your users you’ll need to publish content from Flash MX.
Kirkpatrick, Andrew. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Accessibility>Multimedia
#13668
Those succeeding with Flash usually apply it as an element and mix it with other technologies or images such as streaming audio and video, GIF, JPG, DHTML, and CGI to name a few. Determine what elements you need on your site and study the strengths and weaknesses of each technology to determine which option would work best for each element. You're in good shape if you can use Flash without sacrificing accessibility, readability, navigability, usability, searchability, and ability to update.
Evans, Meryl K. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Design>Accessibility>Multimedia>Web Design
#27669
Formal Objection to WCAG Claiming to Address Cognitive Limitations
Lisa Seeman intends to make a formal objection about WCAG 2.0's claim that they address all requirements for learning difficulties and cognitive limitations, as they do not have the success criteria to back up their claim. Moreover, there are known techniques that WCAG have not included, and people who do intend to cater for people with learning difficulties and cognitive limitations would benefit from knowing of these techniques.
Seeman, Lisa. Juicy Studio (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Cognitive Psychology
#29649
From Starfish to Butterfly ... the Amazing Story of the AccessAbility SIG 
This paper describes the remarkable history of the Society's newest Special Interest Group--the AccessAbility SIG--tracing it back to its origins in 1997 as the Special Needs Committee (SNC). The SNC, founded by Judy Skinner, was originally chartered to assist technical communicators with disabilities in the practice of our profession by researching and publicizing assistive technologies and techniques to overcome those limitations. Over its 5-year lifespan, the committee expanded its mission to include a second overarching goal--assisting all technical communicators in developing information products that are fully accessible to end users with disabilities. Its accomplishments included a data-rich yet eye-pleasing online newsletter, an ever-growing comprehensive web site that is becoming a definitive resource on accessibility, and a robust and dynamic listserv.
Voss, Daniel W. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Accessibility>Community Building>STC
#28757
From Starfish to Butterfly: the Amazing Story of the AccessAbility SIG
This paper describes the remarkable history of the Society's newest Special Interest Group--the AccessAbility SIG--tracing it back to its origins in 1997 as the Special Needs Committee (SNC). The SNC, founded by Judy Skinner, was originally chartered to assist technical communicators with disabilities in the practice of our profession by researching and publicizing assistive technologies and techniques to overcome those limitations. Over its 5-year lifespan, the committee expanded its mission to include a second overarching goal--assisting all technical communicators in developing information products that are fully accessible to end users with disabilities.
Voss, Daniel W. STC Proceedings (2007). Articles>Accessibility>Community Building
#23127
FucinaWeb è un sito indipendente di risorse e articoli per sviluppatori e designer web che volge un occhio di riguardo alle problematiche di usabilità e accessibilità.
FucinaWeb. (Italian) Resources>Directories>Accessibility>Usability
#28298
The Future of Web Accessibility
Accessibility is currently in a great state of change - find out what the future hold for web accessibility and how this may affect your website.
Moss, Trenton. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility
