Creating Accessibility on the Web
Web accessibility: Principles and Practice
- Why bother with accessibility?
- Prototyping with XHTML: a solid technique for building in accessibility
- My Web My Way, a groundbreaking effort to inform users about how to make the best use of available tools
- Understanding Accessibility: A Guide to Achieving Compliance on Web Sites and Intranets (in PDF format)
- Accessible Digital Media design guidelines from WGBH-TV (pioneers in digital captioning for streaming media)
- Beyond ALT Text: Design Guidelines for Websites and Intranets Based on Usability Studies with People Using Assistive Technology (in PDF format), a study by the Nielsen Norman Group
- Web Accessibility In Mind: resources, tools, keyboard shortcuts, simulations
- WebAIM Quick Reference: Web Accessibility Principles (in PDF format)
- 'Building Accessible Websites' serialization from joeclark.org
- The Web Standards Project
- Tips & Tricks to Improve Web Accessibility - American Foundation for the Blind
- Planning for appropriate color contrast (and other good resources)
- Web Accessibility - Royal National Institute for the Blind (UK)
- Accessibility of PDF and Flash: Adobe's own recommendations
- List of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- EasyMenu: Semantically correct XHTML-CSS-DHTML menus you can style to suit yourself.
Accessible design using Adobe Dreamweaver
- Dreamweaver CS4 Accessibility as explained by Adobe
- Dreamweaver 8 Accessibility was explained by Adobe in a document that has been removed from their site. Adobe apparently is encouraging abandonment of the former Macromedia product in an effort to force adoption of their Creative Suite version ...
- How to Make Accessible Web Content Using Dreamweaver, a tutorial from WebAIM
- Dreamweaver accessibility setup, a nice step-by-step tutorial from Humboldt State University
Accessible Design with Adobe Flash, javascript and technologies not yet dreamed of
- The Four Essentials of Modern Web Design
- 21st Century Web Design Essentials
- The Theory Behind Progressive Enhancement
- Simply JavaScript: The Three Layers of the Web
- Javascript Isn't Evil
- Progressive Enhancement: Paving the Way for Future Web Design
- Graded Browser Support and Progressive Enhancement
- Everything is a Progressive Enhancement
- The Highland Fling: 2007 conference on progressive enhancement
- Graceful degradation and progressive enhancement
- Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax
- Ajax and progressive browser enhancement
- Adobe Spry 1.6 improves standards support, adds progressive enhancement
- Developing Flash websites using progressive enhancement, an Adobe resource for developers
- Progressive enhancement with AJAX
- Graceful degradation and progressive enhancement
- Progressive Enhancement with CSS 3: A better experience for modern browsers, from the perspective of Opera browser developers
Accessibility: Evaluation Tools
- WAVE 4.0 accessibility assessment (in beta testing, but very promising)
- Cynthia Says online accessibility checker
- A-Prompt offline accessibility checker
- Lynx Viewer, only useful for web developers
- Other Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools catalogued by the W3C
Special rules for government web developers
- From the U.S. Dept. of Justice: Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities (in PDF format)
- The U.S. government's official 'Quick Reference Guide' to Section 508 Resource Documents (in MS Word format)
Web Design: Best Practices, References
- HTML Design Principles as defined by the W3C
- Example: Style Guide for Queen's University
- HTML/XHTML quick reference card (in PDF format)
- HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles from HTML Dog
- Microformats to support sustainable semantic markup
- CSS 2.0 reference card (in PDF format)
- CSS2 reference online
- CSS Reference online at SitePoint.com
Web Design: Free and cheap tools
- bluefish, a programmers' editor for HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP and more (Linux, Mac, others)
- Nvu, WYSIWYG web authoring similar to Dreamweaver with fewer features (Linux, Windows, Mac)
- SeaMonkey, Mozilla-based application suite including a revived Composer (Linux, Windows, Mac)
- NoteTab, a powerful text editor with customizable modules for efficient hand-coding (Win95 and later)
- HTML Kit, a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and more (Win95 and later)
- Intype, a code editor with syntax highlighting and support for scripting and native plug-ins (Windows only)
- Crimson Editor, a professional source code editor with syntax highlighting (Windows only)
Online education: WebCT, Blackboard and other options for distance learning
note: WebCT and Blackboard merged under the Blackboard corporate name in Feb. 2005, and both products are still supported in continuing development
- A 2002 Accessibility Audit of WebCT
- Conformance of WebCT v3.6 to W3C's Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
- Thoughts on Accessibility in WebCT
- Moodle course management system (open source)
- eCollege course management system
- The Sakai Project: Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education (free)
- Tikiwiki content management software (free)
- Drupal content management software (open source)
