WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Fw: source order

for

From: Ron Stewart
Date: Apr 7, 2008 6:00PM

Good evening, generally I am just an observer on this list since my web
design skills are no longer what they need to be.

I have been following this thread with a bit of interest and it is somewhat
amazing to me to see the assumptions being made about the technical
sophistication and expertise of the average person with a "disability". In
my experience most folks just want to use the pages with the minimum of fuss
and muss. To expect folks to have an individual preference page to
deterimine their preferred presentation style is somewhat idealistic. To
have them regularly turn these pages off and on is a bit far fetched. Good
design goes a long way to accessibility and in fact in most instances
overcomes a multitude of sins primarily driven by web designers not any
practical application of underlying technology.

Let me put in a very real example here, my grandmum has pretty much lost her
vision and wants to use website "x". What needs to be done to the site that
allows her to do so. Her visit to a site is going to be determined by the
number of times she has visited a site. If she is well acquainted with the
site perhaps she has set a favorite to the subsite of her choice but if she
has not then how will she find what she needs without pressing the tab key a
thousand times?

Perhaps I am being naïve here, but give me a few skip navs if necessary.
Visual ones please do not hide them for me, because all are not screen
readers and design your sites for optimum usability not to show technical
prowness.

Ron Stewart