WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader that can be used to access webpages on any computer without the need to install any screen reading software. Try it here... it's a little strange hearing your webpage being read back to you at first. It mispronounces both "disassociated" and my surname (minor detail, plus this is an alpha release), but overall is impressive. To use the system, users first browse ... Read full entry

As Aaron Cannon points out, it's not perfect, but it's a great starting point, and as a bonus, many of the items on the list are commonsense, especially for standards minded web designers, making it even easier to adopt. When I wrote the ... checklist, I attempted to answer the question, "What concise pieces of advice can I give to designers that will have the greatest impact on accessibility in ... Read full entry

Paper money unfair to blind This story has been featured in a few places but I thought it was worth relinking here, as there are usability and accessibility lessons for web designers in it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a 2006 district court ruling that could force the United States to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values. Suggested solutions include ... Read full entry

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations We design a website for its users, and not ourselves, nor even our clients. For a website to succeed it must somehow engage the end user, and finding the best way to bring that about is the role of the web designer. And users means everyone, not those using a particular browser, or accessing the internet at speeds close to the velocity of light. Understand the ... Read full entry

The Open Letter Initiative and the Mobile Web Lisa Herrod and the "we want more discussion about best practice and mobile accessibility issues" Open Letter Initiative. What I'd really like to see is a lot more information presented by web community groups and industry nights that focus on accessibility issues for the mobile web. I don't give a toss about what the latest Nokia is, or what cool data ... Read full entry

Stop using Ajax! James Edwards aka Brothercake, and co-author of the The JavaScript Anthology, argues the case: See, the web already was accessible to everyone. Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the web was all about universal access; and the technologies involved - such as HTTP and HTML - were designed to be platform and device agnostic; it shouldn't matter what kind of technology you use to access the web. ... Read full entry

Why are blind people ignored by websites? Despite the growing awareness in the web development community of the needs of visually impaired, and other web users with mobility issues, there is a long way to go to making websites 100 per cent accessible, according to WebAIM, an organisation dedicated to assisting disabled people use the internet. A study in 2004 showed that 81 per cent of websites failed to meet ... Read full entry

Helping others understand web accessibility Roger Johansson on some of the difficulties designers trying to learn accessibility practices are faced with, including challenging documentation, and the even the attitude of designers in the know, a point that Mike Cherim has also made. In addition to the documentation problem, Mike also mentions the unhelpful attitude held by some people who seem like they don't want to help the less experienced, ... Read full entry

Ideas4, an initiative of The Australian Web Industry Association, takes place in Perth on the evening of Wednesday, 30 January 2008. The Australian Web Industry Association is proud to announce the first speaking event of 2008 - Ideas4. Please come along, hear two great speakers talk about usability, accessibility, web start-ups and more, mingle with industry peers and support the work of the Australian Web Industry Association. Lisa Herrod ... Read full entry

Accessible can be Beautiful. Andrew Faulkner tackles a couple of "design verses accessibility and design loses" myths at fadtastic. It may be true that often accessible sites are created from a pool of fairly unimaginative templates (think the accessible template set from pre-Dreamweaver 8.) They don't do anything wrong (except harm my case thus far) but they're not exciting. They're not really designed. I aim to show you examples of ... Read full entry