RE: Accessibility
"Smith D.B." <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.cms.cms-forum.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
In the UK, this debate should have been happening 5 years ago when the
DDA, as it applies to web sites (called 'further rights of access'),
came into force. The part that becomes law next month ('final rights of
access') only applies to the accessibility of business premises and
public buildings, but I digress.
The DDA says that you must take all reasonable steps to make your
service accessible (sorry, I'm paraphrasing). This would seem to
preclude the provision of a 'different' (text-only) service for your
disabled audience - although that could be a matter of interpretation.
My personal view is that I don't want any of our users to think that
they have to go to the 'disability ghetto' when they visit our site.
CMS vendors are VERY keen on text-only and print versions of your site
because by their nature, their systems make production of these things
fairly easy, but with the judicious use of correct mark-up and style
sheets, neither print or text-only versions are necessary. If you have
a piece of content that you simply can't make accessible, such as a
flash movie, just put a transcript / description of the movie somewhere
handy - it doesn't even have to be on a text-only page, just as long as
your standard page is accessible.
Allowing users to skip over your navigation to the main content should
now be as essential as it is simple: Put a hyperlink as the first thing
in your document <body> that jumps to an anchor at the start of your
content, assign as access key to it and style it to be invisible when
not active.
Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but not being able to create an
aesthetically pleasing accessible design seems to me to be symptomatic
of a lack of design flair and/or commitment to the cause.
Cheers,
Dan