Re: Making Sites Accessible

Hi Joyce,

I find that by and large designing for accessibility is not different from
other design. There are some cases where there is a little more work to make
things accesible. For example, providing alt and longdesc takes more time
than not providing them, and when I build sites for money I charge by how
long it takes. But the real costs always are in overall information design
and production. And not desiging for accessibility is something i just don't
bother with. I simply explain that it costs whatever ridiculous sum I can
think up to ignore accessibility.

I find that it can be difficult to convince a client that things they have
seen somewhere are a bad idea, but there are things the web is not good
at. (Sadly, this includes making me coffee in the morning, as well as
ensuring that everybody gets pixel-level design control and perfect colour
reproduction in whatever machine they use to view the web.)

My basic position is that accessibility is one of the requirements for
communicating via the web - if the idea doesn't get from person to person
then it is irrelevant how the technology works or is used. Most clients are
pretty happy with that idea.

Just a few personal thoughts...


Charles McCN

On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Taylor-Made wrote:

  So far all we have as guidelines for making sites accessible are some
  validators (excellent ones!) and what we learn from each other on these
  eMail list and the W3C guidelines (WAI) for making sites viewable to as
  large an audience as possible.   I listen to what everyone has to say and if
  I learn something new I test it on my page and then validate it.  I use
  Cast/Bobby, W3C Validator, W3C CSS Validation and I put it through several
  browsers.  If it passes and looks good in the browsers, I feel I have done a
  good job and will use it.
  
  But, I have never felt that designing accessibly was harder than not nor
  that it really took more time.  I made up my mind (when I learned about the
  accessibility issue) to design all my sites this way from that day forward.
  I am choosing to go back over my older sites and start updating them (and it
  is going to take quite a while).  I hand code and am at the point where
  coding for accessbility seems to come naturally.  When I tell  my clients
  how I design their pages, this pleases them.
  
  If one chooses to charge more for designing this way, then that is one's
  choice.  I don't because I feel it should be intergrated in with the design
  from the beginning.
  
  This is only my opinion.
  --------------------
  Joyce Taylor

Received on Sunday, 20 February 2000 10:31:38 UTC