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Re: Best Tips?-Thanks!

for

From: LSnider
Date: Sep 16, 2010 2:27PM


Hi Everyone,

First, thank you so much for your great replies. I am always interested to
see what people will write. I had similar points to most of you, so that was
super.

Jared, I am not a fan of top X anything either :) I totally agree with you
about how one has to be careful and cover as many disabilities as possible,
and it is almost impossible with just 10! I need this first article to be
very generic and then I will go into specific disabilities and how we can
make our sites better, so that everyone has a good experience with the
site-no matter what different abilities people have...

I like to be as inclusive as humanly possible, always have even way back
when...I keep telling people make your site usable for humans of all
abilities and screen readers and you will do just fine with google as well.

Cheers

Lisa

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> There have been many excellent recommendations given. I always find
> such "Top X" lists about accessibility interesting. They, as do most
> of the recommendations given here, tend to focus on the issues that
> have the most distinct impact on a specific audience. Alternative text
> for images, for example, has a distinct impact on screen reader users
> - but not a terribly big impact on about anyone else. Keyboard
> accessibility is vitally important... for users that must use a
> keyboard.
>
> Not to minimize the importance of such things, I wonder if our lists
> would change if we were instead to focus on the issues that have the
> biggest impact on the *largest* number of users.
>
> Having given this about 2 minutes of thought, mine would probably include:
> - Provide relevant and useful content and functionality.
> - Use standard web design and usability practices and patterns. Make
> the page appealing and attractive to the user.
> - Simplify.
> - Use language appropriate to the audience.
> - Use robust technologies that are compatible with the broadest array
> of user agents.
>
> ... and things like that. In many ways, it doesn't matter how
> technically accessible the content and functionality of a page is if
> the user doesn't get anything useful or enjoyable from it.
>
> Jared Smith
> WebAIM
>