WOW, Accessibility!

>>Peer support: get involved in a group that has an active interest group
>>addressing accessibile web content authoring, such as the HTML Writer's
>>Guild <http://aware.hwg.org/> or World Organization of Webmasters
>><http://www.world-webmasters.org>.

At risk of sounding like one organization attacking a possible
"rival", I really am wary about citing the world-webmasters.org
URL above when talking to someone about accessibility.  Here's
what I see in Lynx:


                               WOW WOW   WOW
                               WOW WOW   WOW
                         WOW WOW   ____________  __
                              WOW WOW WOW WOW
                              WOW WOW WOW WOW
                Copyright 1999 by WOW. All Rights Reserved.


They have over a dozen images on the homepage, and they all have
ALT="WOW".  (If you can see the images, look at it with images
on and images off, and you'll see how much information is lost
by these meaningless ALT attributes.)

A better idea, for pointing folks to "WOW", would be to find the
pages specifically maintained by BK Delong, someone who understands
and practices web accessibility at the World Organization of
Webmasters -- he doesn't have direct control over the main site,
as I understand it, but he's definitely one of the Good People on
accessible design issues!

The newsletted (edited by BK) is at
http://www.world-webmasters.org/newsletter/newsletter.html and
Bruce Alexander <bba@ici.net> seems to be the accessibility editor
for the newsletter.  You may want to write to Bruce and BK as well
as the webmaster for WOW about the inaccessibility of their home
page.

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org>
President, Governing Board Member
HTML Writers Guild <URL:http://www.hwg.org>
Director, Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center
  <URL:http://aware.hwg.org/>

Received on Monday, 3 May 1999 14:12:37 UTC