Accessibility

Accessibility on the web - making your sites available for everone and every technology. Something that developers need to keep in mind from the ground up.

Web Usability - Accessible Forms (#)

A nice overview of forms from the accessibility perspective, with examples of how to layout and markup a form, the appearance and how the layout appears when using a screen reader. If you have never experienced the web from a screen reader, be sure to check out these examples.

The article touches on form grouping with fieldsets, tab order of forms for better usability and accessibility as well as discussing javascript and forms.

Making accessible forms part 1 (#)

A nice first overview for making accessible forms, covering ideas like using labels, using a logical flow to your html and using a title tag for elements that don't have labels (most often search boxes - a search button is not a label!).

Web Usability - PDF and Accessibility (#)

A thourough discussion from 2004 on the state of accessiblity of PDFs, including advice on creating accessible PDFs amd alternatives to PDF files.

10 Reasons Clients Don't Care About Accessibility (#)

Christian Heilmann writes about some of the difficulties surrounding selling accessibility to clients. He really nails this piece in my opinion, and it's worth having this background if you plan on talking to your clients about accessibility.

Making accessible forms part 2 (#)

Picking up where part 1 left off, this instalment deals with grouping information into logical chunks with fieldsets and using the rarely seen <optgroup>.

Understanding Color and Accessibility (#)

An overview, some links and a slightly lively discussion on understanding color and accessibility.

Digital Web Magazine - Accessibility From The Ground Up (#)

From the article:

There are lots of reasons to use accessible design practices in every project. One is that it's simply good design. Sites with consistent design and code and that adhere to Web standards are not only easier to maintain, they're easier to use.

And from there, Matt May goes on to explain how accessibility is a fundamental of web design and should be incorporated from the ground up. He gets into some how, and covers the 'and what about javascript?/Flash?' topics.

Web Accessibility Articles - WATS.ca (#)

WATS.ca provides Web Accessibility Testing and Services (WATS) and offer a selection of articles from an introduction to accessibility to validation to the use of tabindex and accesskeys. Worth a read for an authoritative point of view.

Web accessibility & higher search engine rankings (#)

A nice summary of how, when building an accessible website, you are actually increasing the search engine friendliness of your site. The article outlines 10 different "areas of overlap" between SEO and accessibility.

The 'lang' Attribute (#)

Charl van Niekerk talks about the little thought about <lang> attribute, discussing how it can be used to increase the accessibility of, and add semantic value to, a document.

Colour Contrast Analyser (#)

From the website: It is a tool for checking foreground & background colour combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. Determining "colour visibility" is based on algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Check out the Resource categories for older content

The latest from my personal website,
Mike Papageorge.com

SiteUptime Web Site Monitoring Service

Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:

The Principles Of Successful Freelancing

I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.

The Art & Science Of JavaScript

The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..