WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: What to ask Web designers?

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Nov 18, 2004 12:07PM

> Any more ideas out there?

It's pretty hard for someone who doesn't know anything about web
accessibility to evaluate whether a potential contractor has the requisite
skills in accessible web design or not, since that person will not be able
to evaluate most answers properly. Currently, anyone can say they
understand web accessibility and web accessibility guidelines and even claim
that the sites they design are all fully accessible without necessarily
having the requisite skills.

But here are a couple other ideas of questions to ask potential contractors
anyways:

1. Have they ever done any user testing of a website with people with
disabilities? (either on their own site, or for a client)
- the manager would probably just have to take their word on the answer
to this one

2. Is their own company website designed to meet any set of accessibility
guidelines? Which one(s)?
- you could provide managers with a list of possible answers and even
prioritize that list: i.e. W3C WAI Guidelines, Bobby Approved, Valid HTML,
etc...

3. Does the company have an "Accessibility" policy (either for their own
site, or for the sites they design)
- this is one that could be checked by visiting the company's site or the
site referenced

I would think that these last two questions would be useful in narrowing the
field of potential contractors. The first question is not one that very
many small design companies will likely say yes to, but it may not be
feasible for a small non-profit organization to expect that their web design
company has experience in accessibility design testing unless the small
non-profit has a large web budget and is willing to pursue only the top
designers in the field.

Phil.