Dive Into Accessibility

I’ve been reading up on accessibility issues for websites and I ran across this very comprehensive online 30 day tutorial by Mark Pilgrim complete with seven different profiles of users (including Google) with accessibility needs. It is copyright 2002, so it’s behind in some areas but it gives a great perspective on the who and how. As more and more companies discover the need to make their sites accessible, it’s a challenge to get developers (including me) to understand their user’s needs.

I ran across this site after following a couple of links on an article on accessibility by Leona Tomlinson at Digital Web Magazine. That article focused on the question of whether or not accessibility statements are useful on websites. The answer was an unequivocal yes, so long as your statement is focused on helping the user and not just used as a “cover your ass” statement. At the bottom of the article is a list of best practices when it comes to crafting your own accessibility statement. I especially liked the suggestion to add a “skip to main content” link. This link saves keyboard users from having to tab through a million nav items.


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