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Thread: Basic Website Recommendation?

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From: David Russell
Date: Wed, Aug 02 2023 8:52AM
Subject: Basic Website Recommendation?
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Dear List,

By reply on or off list, could you please suggest a website vendor
such as Wix, SquareSpace, Weebly, or other, that might be the easiest
for a blind person using a screen reader, (NVDA), to set up
independently?
Is a blog just as advantageous and of course, considerably easier to manage?
This would be an author website with primarily information about
activity without a store feature. Primarily text-based if possible.

I could not find helpful info at the AFB website when attempting
different search words. Thanks!

--
David C. Russell, Author
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From: tim.harshbarger
Date: Wed, Aug 02 2023 9:08AM
Subject: Re: Basic Website Recommendation?
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My advice would be to skip using any of the sites you mention and instead
use either one of the many static site generators (SSG's) that are available
or WordPress. In my case, I would probably use an SSG like 11ty and host it
on github pages. Part of the reason I would use that myself is that with an
SSG, I would just write all the articles using markdown which is a format
that is quite accessible for someone using a screen reader.

However, I definitely would wait and see if others have advice to offer and
not base your decision on just my advice.

Thanks,
Tim

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Thu, Aug 03 2023 2:48AM
Subject: Re: Basic Website Recommendation?
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Static site generators are wonderful for content creators since pretty much all of them allow some kind of text-only format like Markdown. This is about the most accessible authoring experience I can imagine, since you can use whatever text editor you like). But bear in mind that you still have to choose (or create) an accessible theme. This is not as easy as you'd think. Too many theme authors seem to believe they can tag a theme as "accessible" if it's easy to use, not understanding what that term is actually meant for....

One benefit of something like Wordpress or Drupal is they've been around long enough that you can actually find accessible themes if you look hard enough. I've had a tough time finding an accessible "technical documentation" theme for my preferred SSG (Hugo).