Media, Reason Magazine: Access Excess

I'm still of the mind that making a site accessible is not as difficult as
it seems.  Even if a web designer cannot design 100% accessible site,
following the guidelines given by some of the top-rated validators makes it
easier to design a site that can be considered accessible, thereby allowing
a wider trange of surfers access to the said site.

I paid a visit to the author of this article's site:

http://overlawyered.com/

and although it did not pass Cast/Bobby because of a Priority 1
Accessibility issue , it would have been easy to make it so.  Alt tags were
missing.  That's all.  Although the webmaster did not use CSS, it still
would have passed accesibility (I believe.)   (I didn't check any further
than Priority 1.)

I am not a big business, but my sites are what gets me referrals for other
web sites and my own clients coming back to me because not only are they
business-like, colorful and easy to navigate, they are accessible.  Of
course some of my clients want server side scripts and these don't always
meet requirements or standards, but the rest of the site does.

I was forunate to have discovered about accessbility issues early on in my
web site design business and so it is normal for me to design accessibly.  I
could easily design otherwise, but I would be unhappy with myself and the
results.

Helping others to achieve what comes naturally for the majority of us should
not even be considered excess.

IMHO



Joyce Taylor

Received on Monday, 1 May 2000 14:40:15 UTC