The main consensus is to avoid them. Why you say? Well because it’s not necessary. If you really want to open a link in another tab or window, you can do it yourself:
In Firefox, hover over the link you want to access, right-click your mouse to get a menu and click on “Open Link in [...]
Google cleaned up their search experience with their accessible search engine. Fairly similar to the regular search, but with some subtle differences that can aid a visually impaired person to search better. The system is still being developed but basically it prioritizes results that are accessible.
Check it out a: Accessible Web Search at Google
To learn [...]
It is more and more apparent that accessibility can be beautiful. I came across Accessibility in Focus, a website for an accessible web award.
There was 4 finalist, one of them was the Salford City Council. A fairly large website. Its navigation is straightforward even if at first glance the site looks overwhelming. This site is [...]
I was going to do an evaluation of an authoring tool, but the WAI have thought of it already at www.w3.org/WAI/AU/2002/tools.
I found that the reviews were all a little outdated and I didn’t get a definite conclusion from any review. So I finally decided to go ahead and check out an authoring tool myself. I [...]
The W3C has extensive information on how to properly evaluation a sites accessibility. Here are the underlining steps to ensure that your evaluation is full-proof:
For a preliminary review, select a page that is representative of the whole site or that most people will see. Try to choose a page that has tabular data, images and [...]
So I recently re-did one of my old websites. My client wanted to had some images so I took the opportunity to give her an accessible site. I had done this site a few years ago. I wasn’t aware back then of web standards and web accessibility. I must confess of using tables for layout. [...]
Transcript of the podcast:
[Intro music] Welcome to podcast five of Thinking Accessible. On today’s podcast I will talk to you about some advanced features in accessibility.
First on the menu I will talk about accesskeys. Accesskeys are keystrokes that we can trigger on the keyboard to go directly to a certain element or a certain page [...]
Did you know that according to Statistics Canada in 2006 there was 1,289,420 Canadians with a hearing impairment, 835,960 Canadians with a seeing impairment, 2,856,820 Canadians with an agility impairment, and 752,110 Canadians with a learning impairment. In every case, around 70% of these Canadians said that they had used the Internet in the past [...]
Don’t you just love Firefox add-ons. I do! Especially because they make my life easier.
As a developer it is important to have a feel for what the user is getting out of your site. I found a good way to use a screen reader on any operating system (OS) without paying a dime. I am [...]
Transcript of the podcast:
[Intro music] Welcome to podcast three of Thinking Accessible. On today’s podcast, I will talk to you about my four golden rules for web accessibility.
Rule number 1:
Provide alternative text for non-textual content. What do it mean by this? Images are non-textual content. Audio and video are non-textual content. So for each of [...]
Ok so Canada does not have the national equivalent to the United States section 508. But if you want to know what they recommend you can read their Common Look and Feel standards for the Internet documentation. Obviously the information is for government and public sector websites, but it could be useful to get another [...]
Sure accessibility guidelines are designed to help people with disabilities access the web, but it extends to more than just them. I am talking about the elderly, people with low literacy or little fluency in the language the site is made, people that have dial-up or a low bandwidth connection, and even new or infrequent [...]
