Accessible Web Sites

by Cynthia Waddell, Shawn Henry, Jim Thatcher

Book Overview

Accessibility is about making Web sites that do not exclude people with visual, aural, or physical disabilities. This book will enable Web professionals to create or retrofit accessible Web sites... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904151000
• ISBN13: 9781904151005
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Wrox Press
• Length: 415 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Guiding hand to accessibility

The GlassHaus "Constructing Accessible Web Sites" book has been a great find. I began working to build sites and applications for use in Web browsers that had to be used by individuals with disabilities in 1997. Over these years I picked up a lot of hard won knowledge and experience, but have never run across a resource that fully backed what I had gathered. The GlasHaus Accessibility book not only echoes what I have learned, but has provided new insights to improve upon what I already have. The best part of this book is that I can point others to it and I am assured they will be able to build an accessible site or Web applications that can meet high standards. Many folks think accessibility is a great inconvenience, but it takes a little thinking and planning to do it right from the beginning. Having a great resource at hand makes the process a cake walk. Not only are the processes and guides helpful for creating sites that are accessible for those that are disabled these steps outlined also make the information in the site future ready. Sites that are accessible are much easier to use with a handheld PDA device or from even a cell phone browser. Accessibility for everybody in more situations improves with structuring the information properly, which is all making Web enabled information really requires to get it ready to be consumed. Is your information ready to be consumed by everybody?

No More Excuses.

Two new words have joined the vocabulary of web designers in recent years - usability and accessibility. You will often come across them used in tandem. Usability really became an issue when Jacob Nielsen infamously denounced Flash as 99% bad. Accessibility became a priority for web developers working on government projects after Section 508 was brought into law in the United States. Accessibility became an issue in Australia during Maguire vs SOCOG in 1999, when a blind man filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) that neither Olympic Games tickets purchasing information nor the souvenir programme were available in Braille. Most importantly he alleged that the SOCOG website was not accessible, and to make it so would have been well within budget. SOCOG was found to have discriminated against the complainant and damages were awarded against the organization. Accessibility is now a civil rights issue. It is also not that difficult to implement on a website, once you learn how it can be done. This excellent book, Constructing Accessible Web Sites, teaches you all that and more. It is the first on its subject, and will not be the last, but it is damned a good beginning. All eight co-authors have been pioneers in the field of accessibility, and Glasshaus deserves praise for having assembled such a team. They cover more than website accessibility - their expertise extends to the accessibility of web design tools themselves. An apt reminder that the web is as much about reading as writing, for writers as much as readers, a real medium of two-way communication. All websites can now be made accessible to varying degrees, even Flash websites since Flash MX, as Macromedia Senior Product Manager for Accessibility Bob Regan demonstrates in Chapter 10. So there are no excuses for failing to add increased accessibility, and usability for that matter, to that new project you are just about to commence. Ensure you have a copy of Constructing Accessible Web Sites at hand when you begin. And also take a look at another equally essential reference on the subject due out any day now, Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites. Accessibility is the newest and most necessary website building skill. There are no excuses now.

Book Ensures Sites Reach for the Gold in Accessibility

Don't make the same mistakes the last two official Olympic sites made with regard to accessibility.With many sites overlooking the simple ALT in images, it's no question that many need educating on this important topic. Statistics shows that 15 to 30 percent of the population has a need for accessibility features on Web sites. Happily, people live longer and aging brings seeing and hearing challenges. Furthermore, seniors are responsible for over 25 percent of online purchases, neglecting this group can be costly to the company that abandons them. The number shoots up to 40 percent when including people over the age of 40.CEOs, CIOs, C-level whatevers, managers, designers, programmers, and anyone else who has a hand in a Web site will benefit from the book. Not only does it cover the how, but also the whats and whys by saying, "This is why we should do this and this is how to do it." Upper level management benefit from information on the Web accessibility laws, guidelines, reasons for creating accessible sites, and the accessibility organization strategy. If an executive wants to reach far and wide, then she can get that by reading and applying the knowledge found in the book. One unique chapter explains how to structure an organization to handle and support accessibility issues, a rarely addressed topic in the world of Web accessibility. The Internet has opened the gates for businesses to go global and there's information about the laws from countries other than the US. Designers and programmers get the tools and resources for creating, evaluating, and validating pages for accessibility compliance. Useful is a comparison and report card on Web design software explaining how each program meets or fails to meet in producing accessible code and features. The book echoes the latest cry in the world of Web design in encouraging designers to separate content from presentation.Having an accessible Web site doesn't mean boring looking pages with nothing but text. Quite the contrary, the authors encourage creating well-design sites while keeping accessibility in mind. As one who has written articles on Web design, the book offers insight into techniques that I hadn't encountered. With multiple authors, readers are assured they're hearing from the experts on each chapter topic. One notable expert is Bob Regan of Macromedia who discusses the tools and techniques of using Flash MX to make a site accessible. Any site that wants to be successful and reach the greatest number of people will invest in creating an accessible site. This well-rounded book covers it all from laws to code to help ensure the site does it right.

Enlightening

This book was a real eye-opener for me. As someone who has a great interest in usability issues, I was surpirsed how little I knew about accessibility. To be honest, I suspect the most web designers/programmers are in the same boat. How often do we construct sites taking into account users with visual deficiencies? Not very often I suspect. And shame on us, because as this book shows it's not difficult.It may even be a legal requirement, as we see from the chapters that explain the legal issues in not provide an accessible site - it could be very expensive. These legal issues may scare some site designers, but in reality it's the moral issue that's at stake. We should be ashamed for excluding, or making it difficult for, people access to sites when they can't use the standard browsers.Buy this book now - it's enlightening.

Very Impressive!

I came into this book with some experience of commercial web programming and a knowledge of H.C.I, so I realised that it is important to make information on the web accessible to all, but had little idea on where to start. In the first pages I learnt something new about alt text for images, and realised that this book was going to teach me a lot of essential things about making web sites accessible! It starts with an insight into the legal area of accessibility and moves on to look at common myths such as having a text only alternative to a site. Then it shows you how you can present your content, navigation and data input in the most assessable way, and then shows you ways on how you test your site, making sure everyone can enjoy your online efforts! What I love about this book is the explanation behind it. Not only does it show you the practices, it backs them up with clear and concise reasons on why these techniques can make your web site easy to use for anyone, including those who may have disabilities. It is a major eye opener and it will be a book that sits on my desk day in, day out, whilst I program web sites. I can't recommend it highly enough, and it is an absolute must read for all those who program on the web and those who use the web to display and gather information."