Let’s get some reality on the web accessibility debate.
We all know about WCAG 1, we have all at least had a look at the associated checklists. If you are lucky you may have glanced at WCAG 2.
We all have been developing and designing our sites with semantic content, in compliance with W3C guidelines, using progressive enhancement for the interactive components, unobtrusive Javascript, and graceful degradation of the pages for legacy browsers. Maybe used some of the attributes of ARIA. Sure that’s a no brainer.
We know that doing this will solve most of the accessibility issues.
Tagged: a11y, accessibility, aria, BarCampPerth, calltoaction, inclusive design, p52, patterns, perthbc4, project-52, solution, tokenism, universal design, wcag1, wcag2
You know in accessibility circles we are constantly telling people using drop down CSS menus that when the menus are not visible we shouldn’t be using display:none to achieve this. We all know this one, right. Just to refresh your memory, remember the display:none rule takes an element assigned right out of the picture completely, for anyone using a screen reader the assigned content will just not “exist”.
This is all well and good. Well that depends, maybe there is a case for the use of display:none afterall.
The Australian Web Industry Association is doing it again. Putting on one of those must go to educational web events. This one goes under the moniker of Ideas 5.
They are having an evening of discussions with leading Australian accessibility experts Roger Hudson and Andrew Downie. Roger will be giving the low down on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2 (WCAG 2), while Andrew will be presenting some practical advice on PDF Accessibility. There is also the usual round of networking with your web industry peers and a cash bar.
When: Wednesday 22nd April, from 7:00pm
photo: Ben Buchanan
In a few weeks there is going to be the biggest web event of the Western Australian calendar year. Not just the Edge of the Web conference, there is also Webjam, four workshops and the WA Web Awards all in one roller coaster week.
One of the keynote speakers and workshop presenter at the Edge of the Web conference is Derek Featherstone. Derek is particularly renown for his straight forward and often enlightening approach to accessibility.
The other day I took the opportunity to discuss with Derek his motivation, the future of accessibility and his forthcoming workshop.
