Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
In a conversation today, I referred to Mark Pilgrim’s excellent 30 Days to a More Accessible Web Site.
This is must-read material. I confess to being guilty of neglecting most of the things in this piece, even though I would have gained substantial benefit from some of it at a recent point in my life, when I wasn’t able to operate a mouse and could barely keyboard.
I implemented the “add titles to links” feature. It required me to hack some PHP and is certainly the most substantial thing I’ve implemented without Steve’s help. It’s not much but it’s nice, even for those who have no disabilities–now, when you mouse over a calendar entry, the title of the entry pops up, like a tooltip. And for those using speech readers, now my calendar starts to make some sense.
As a bonus, some of this stuff will make Google treat you better if you implement it.
Read it. Download a copy and save it to your hard drive. And start implementing it.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Best thing I’ve seen since Jacob Nielsen went off the deep end. Thanks for the link.
Jim, by going “off the deep end”, are you referring to Neilsen’s strictly “lowest-common denominator” approach to web usability? I tend to believe he’s a bit unrealistic in what he expects web designers to do, because (IMO) web sites designed following his rules may be informative, but are pretty boring. I still haven’t figure out how he (or his group) “fixed” Flash, except that he consulted with – and I’m sure, was paid handsomely by – Macromedia. I always thought he’d said Flash was just pure evil, and you avoided it. Maybe I just haven’t researched it enough. Just curious as to your thoughts…
Flash isn’t pure evil, just five-nines evil. Or I guess I should say five-nines worth of its appearances on the Web are.
Gratuitous moving images should be avoided as if life itself depended on it.
If Nielsen’s saying it’s OK now, he’s been paid off.
I think Nielsen’s objections were related to navigability between Flash and “real” site content. I’m sure he’s *not* in the Flash-for-the-sake-of-Flash camp now.
It’s a been a while since I’ve read his comments, though. The impression that lingers with me is that a) Nielsen said Flash sucked, then b) the Nielsen Group consulted with Macromedia (with a report available for a price, of course; reports and paper are a revenue stream for him), and finally c) Flash doesn’t suck as much. Without having it fresh in my neurons, I won’t label it a waffle (and now Flash is kewl), a little “Midas touch” syndrome, or an honest improvement.