Firefox Throttle is a Firefox plugin (Windows only) that allows you to do a number of things, one of which is to demonstrate exactly how slow 56K modem users will be viewing your websites. It does a bunch of other stuff you might also find useful.
A brilliant screencast on YouTube - Importance fo HTML Headings for Accessibility - demonstrating the importance of marking up your web pages with correct headings and how it affects the accessibility of your site for screen reader users. Demonstration is a good way to get this across to people.
E-Access Blog’s post Life In the Post-Guideline Age relates back to a statement by Joe Clark. As Joe points out in the comments, good developers already know this stuff without tomes of guidelines.
I think of this as a pyramid. Web accessibility is the foundation. Usability by disabled people is the next layer. And both of these underpin the ultimate goal: excellent user experiences by disabled people (and everyone).E-Access Bulletin
The BBC have removed the hCalendar microformat from their site due to accessiblity issues with the ABBR design pattern.
Roberto Baca has some expanded conversation to add to Andy Rutledge’s article titled the Employable Web Designer. The world of the web designer isn’t a specialisation of graphic design at all, its far larger and more complex than designing posters that have buttons.
Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax is Jeremy Keith’s contribution to the more responsible use of the XMLHttpRequest Object. Personally I’m coming to the conclusion that even Hijax isn’t worth the issues unless its for trivial enhancement only and even then after being dragged over hot coals in my yellow speedos. Back button, bookmarking, notification of updates for disabled and non-disabled users, and simply playing with user’s mental models based around a web history of page refreshes come to mind.
Chris Heilmann’s Easy Flickr interface makes our friend Flickr just a little more accessible.
WIPA (Web Industry Professionals Association) has published Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 by Roger Hudson.
The Pickards have an excellent rundown of WCAG 2.0 Release Candidate in five parts.
Gez Lemon’s HTML 5 Alt and Authoring Tools shows why I have so much trouble accepting the idea that alt might be optional. I’ll say it again - the current HTML 5 treatment of optional alt (to satisfy Flickr, for example) is a circular argument about spin. Read some of these comments, yep spin. Gez is correct in the article.
Having recently made the botched decision to enhance a contact form with Ajax (kick me for that in the street), I can really appreciate Brothercake’s detailed rant about the immaturity of Ajax and how we should think before using it. Luckily, in my case, it was only a proof of concept and never went live, but I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t be seduced by sexy technology at the cost of what works accessibly already.
Its time to start using WCAG 2 now its a Candidate Release that’s expected to be finalised by the end of the year.
WebAim (Web Accessibility in Mind) have a useful article titled Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility which walks us through the basic controls in the JAWS screen reading software. Its also well worth your while reading the associated article on the WebAIM blog from December titled Learning from Screen Readers.
Joe Dolson has a great little guide to the semantic use of HTML elements.
Spoken Text is a free online text to speech converter. It translates PDF (Portable Document Format), Microsoft Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news feeds, emails and web pages.
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