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Re: Books on making websites accessibe?

for

From: Paul Remy
Date: Apr 17, 2008 2:30PM

Hi, Jared,

I am thinking about designing a elastic layout website so that when the font
is resized the layout expands or contracts. Many sites are using the elastic
method. However, I would seriously consider using the WebAIM.com design
technique to develop my website if it is equally accessible to people with
disabilities like the elastic layout. Can you recommend a book on how to
design a WebAIM.com style website? I have Cerebral Palsy and on a low-fixed
income. The $100 WebAIM training CD is too expensive for me.

Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jared Smith" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:08 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Books on making websites accessibe?


> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Paul Remy < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the information. Does WebAIM have information and examples on
>> how
>> to design Em-Based layout websites?
>
> Nothing too specific, but then again, that's a pretty specific topic
> and one you're not likely to find addressed in a lot of depth in any
> *accessibility* book. If you're talking about broader development
> books (which it appears you are), then I can't really provide much
> info (and it is only marginally on-topic for this list).
>
> If you can be more specific about what you are wanting to accomplish,
> I'm sure you can get some assistance and references here. Are you
> trying to make just the fonts em-based
> (http://www.webaim.org/techniques/fonts/)? Or are you ensuring that
> the page layout accommodates user-resized fonts? Or are you trying to
> make your page width and entire layout based upon the user's default
> font size? Or some combination of the above?
>
> In general, ems are something you need to experiment with in order to
> understand how they really work. While I've seen some pages that use
> ems for page widths, I don't really see the benefit in this. I've
> played around with this a bit and it's rather complex - you need lots
> of negative margin in ems to account for the fact that ems are a
> height and when applied to width, they get BIG fast.
>
> I think something like the Jello Mold
> (http://positioniseverything.net/articles/jello.html) approach that
> WebAIM uses is better - the page width adjusts based upon viewport
> size, but has both minimum and maximum widths to accommodate
> readability (not so narrow that things break and not so wide that it's
> difficult to read long lines of text).
>
> Hopefully that helps a bit.
>
> Jared Smith
> WebAIM
>