WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: handheld devices and accessibility

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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Sep 17, 2004 8:43AM

> Of course, we all know that making a site accessible to AT also makes
> it more usable and accessible to those using handheld devices. From
> my experiences, showing can be significantly more powerful than just
> saying, and I would like to be able to show just what a typical PDA
> or cell user would receive.

Agreed. The more we can promote accessibility as being something that
benefits ALL of a client's customers, the more it becomes an easy sell in
terms of pure business logic.

I tend to use the example of a wheel-chair ramp. At first glance it may seem
like an unecessary cost to only accomodate a small percentage of a potential
stores visitors that are in wheel chairs. But it also accomodates mothers
with strollers, the UPS delivery man, the furniture movers, the person with
a cane, the toddler going to the store with dad, the kid on inline skates,
the plumber wheeling in the tools, etc.

> I don't have access to either of these devices that are internet
> ready. So my question is, what is the best way I can show what a
> PDA/cell user would receive -- Lynx might come close to some
> hardware/software combinations, but I know that many of the latest
> PDA browsers are *not* text only ones.

Palm has a very nice PDA emulator that you can run on your desktop. It has a
nice feature where you can double the size of the interface (great for
presentations). There's a PocketPC emulator as well, which I need to figure
out how to get running on my machine...

-Darrel